MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by dfajgljsldkjag | 2025-12-24 17:35:11+00:00
> This is nothing to do with state resolution; it's due to Synapse's implementation deliberately cutting corners on storage efficiency while trading off for speed.

It's specifically to increase the speed if *state resolution*. If it weren't for the convoluted state resolution system, there wouldn't be a need to store gigabytes worth of state groups in the database.

* https://element-hq.github.io/synapse/latest/usage/administra...

* https://github.com/matrix-org/rust-synapse-compress-state

Maybe there's a way to calculate state without state groups, but I sure don't see one that I can use if I were to run a matrix server.

> Not since https://matrix.org/blog/2025/08/project-hydra-improving-stat...

Simply fixes some of the many ways that rooms can explode or be bricked. Zero confidence that room brickings are totally fixed once and for all.

> There are MSCs for all of these now, and implementations are starting to filter through. The reality is that the project has been in a funding crunch since 2023 and we've had to focus on survival by prioritising stuff people pay for (i.e. big servers for govtech deployments) rather than custom emoji.

A funding crunch since 2023 yet those features have been necessary for many years before 2023.
by ExoticPearTree | 2025-12-24 17:35:51+00:00
Another approach to complex requirements without spending a lot of time querying databases is to use bitmaps. A set of permissions can be expressed through a bitmap and all you need to do in code is to "decode" that to what you actually let the user do.

The downside to this approach is that it requires some planning and to maintain in code what mask retrieves what permission(s).
by Aurornis | 2025-12-24 17:36:02+00:00
I don’t know what research they saw, but the claim was mainstreamed by the popular book “Sapiens”. The author romanticized past life and made claims that life was leisurely until agriculture came along and made us all miserable as we toiled working the soil. Before that we supposedly relaxed all day as our food was easy to catch and we didn’t have to build anything because we were always on the move. There are some very obvious problems with that statement that will be easily spotted by anyone who has ever done any hunting or camping.
by imtringued | 2025-12-24 17:36:25+00:00
The word "concept" here is doing extreme amounts of heavy lifting here.

If I had to bring the point home I'd say that the author himself committed the very mistake he is warning against in that very sentence.

Frameworks define conventions and non-language features (language feature=data structures, callable functions, etc) that cannot be expected to be understood by simply reading the existing code and therefore need to be learned explicitly by reading the documentation of the framework. Frameworks are allowed to bend rules and expectations, because you're supposed to learn and be aware of them ahead of time.

This directly applies to the irresponsible use of the word "concept". The meaning of what he was trying to convey cannot be understood based on simply reading the sentence.
by cbeach | 2025-12-24 17:36:40+00:00
In the UK we told the EU bully bureaucrats to go f*ck themselves in 2016.

The same thing is possible in all EU nations - never give up hope.

The EU bureaucracy stunts growth on the continent. It's undemocratic (only the executive can originate and repeal law - and they are appointed, not elected), protectionist, bullying, expensive and unnecessary.

Successful nations like Switzerland and Norway (#3 and #4 highest GDP per capita in the European continent) show that you don't need to be an EU member state to prosper, maintain peaceful government and strong human rights protections.
by caseysoftware | 2025-12-24 17:36:52+00:00
Gell Mann Amnesia ftw

My wife was a reporter with a top tier news agency in DC and I was shocked how they divvied up topics.

At best, it was "you're good with computers, go report on this hearing on cybersecurity" but more commonly, it was "who has this morning open? You do? Great. Go cover this 9am on the Israel-Palestine negotiations and what the implications are. We'll do a segment in the 11am hour."
by samdjstephens | 2025-12-24 17:36:53+00:00
If LLMs stopped improving today I’m sure you would be correct- as it is I think it’s very hard to predict what the future holds and where the advancements take us.

I don’t see a particularly good reason why LLMs wouldn’t be able to do most programming tasks, with the limitation being our ability to specify the problem sufficiently well.
by phendrenad2 | 2025-12-24 17:38:01+00:00
I think we're going to see a lot more of this thanks to coding assistants, and it's going to get complicated when people start forking open-source programs and modifying them for their own personal use cases. I can see someone adding Feature X to their own fork of Project Y in a way that's incompatible with Project Y's roadmap, leading to drama between people who use the new fork vs people who are willing to wait for the "official" version.
by debo_ | 2025-12-24 17:38:56+00:00
Author doesn't cite how they decided that only MacBook or Framework would fit their needs. I've never had trouble with Dell laptops with any Linux distro I cared about. If I wanted a powerful Linux laptop, I'd probably look at something like Dell's premium model:

https://www.dell.com/en-ca/shop/laptops-ultrabooks/dell-16-p...
by andsoitis | 2025-12-24 17:39:12+00:00
> It will be interesting how Musk wants to comply. He likely can’t just abolish blue checkmarks for EU users only, as they would still be deceived by checkmarks connected to non-EU accounts.

> The only ways I see are a) He abolishes the system or b) does not show any checkmarks on the platform to EU users or c) rolls the system back to a true identity verification. All three options appear unlikely.

The 4th option is simply to position it not as "Verified accounts" but as something like "Paid Subscriber" or something like that.

Currently, Blue Checkmark / Verified account has this very clear explanation what qualifies as "verified": https://help.x.com/en/managing-your-account/about-x-verified...
by oblivionsage | 2025-12-24 17:39:32+00:00
I built this while learning ELF internals for RE work.

Main features:

- Interactive REPL with readline support
- Colored hexdump (null/printable/control/high bytes)
- Address resolver (VA → segment/section/file offset/symbol)
- ELF32/64, little/big endian
- No dependencies beyond glibc

It's not meant to replace readelf/objdump, just a quick tool for common questions like "what section is this address in?" or "what bytes are at this offset?"

~1K lines of C, compiles in seconds. Feedback welcome!

GitHub: https://github.com/Oblivionsage/elfpeek
by tracker1 | 2025-12-24 17:39:33+00:00
I tend to try to approach inbox zero... that said, I will mark stuff left to be done as unread, and tend to get through most things within a few days... at least once a week I will hit 0 messages in my mailbox. I will sometimes move stuff to different docs/archives folders in email for later retrieval, but this is separate from a need to respond to now.
by ceroxylon | 2025-12-24 17:40:01+00:00
As someone who has witnessed a malicious Matrix admin, it has become glaringly obvious that operating on a platform that hinges on any sort of trust in a human who can oversee metadata (even those who you consider to be good friends) is not viable.

I wanted to believe, but sadly privacy must be hard-coded or the people with a large set of technical skill, access to AI agents who will restlessly pursue their mission, and a dysfunctional moral compass will attempt to technologically dominate users.
by tialaramex | 2025-12-24 17:40:07+00:00
Specifically, Rust's _ is not a variable, it is a pattern that matches anything and so let _ = isn't an assignment it's specifically the explicit choice not to assign this value. If we wrote a "dummy" variable the compiler is forbidden from dropping the value early, that "dummy" is alive until it leaves scope, whereas if we never assigned the value it's dropped immediately.

In modern Rust you don't need the let here because you're allowed to do the pattern match anywhere, and as I said _ is simply a pattern that matches anything. So we could omit the let keyword, but people don't.
by Aurornis | 2025-12-24 17:40:24+00:00
> A typo that should have been caught, but surely nothing more than that and certainly not substantive enough to qualify the claim below:

Such an obvious error should have been caught by the authors proofreading their own work, to be honest. Any reviewer would also catch it when evaluating the quality of the sample size.

I find it strange that people are bending over backward to defend this paper and its obvious flaws and limitations.
by phendrenad2 | 2025-12-24 17:40:27+00:00
Your claim that I'm bad faith is itself bad-faith.

> I didn't give any sort of definition of antonym

Oh I'm sorry, what is your definition of antonym? I thought I could understand it from your earlier assertion where you used your definition, but I guess I should have asked you what your definition is first. Pardon me for assuming you wanted your earlier statement to be understood as-is, and not require supplementary info. So yeah. I'm waiting. Or you can stop being a weasel liar that isn't even very good at it.

Also I'm sorry I "went on the attack" but hey, I thought you'd enjoy that since it's all you do here.
by djohnston | 2025-12-24 17:40:27+00:00
> There are no shortcuts to holistic health.

I agree with that.

> I thought it would take a decade for the side effects to catch up with people but this is way faster than expected.

Regarding the side effects, nothing seemed beyond the realm of what you'd read on the outside of an OTC cold medication. I'm not a doctor but they don't seem that severe.
by rapnie | 2025-12-24 17:40:43+00:00
Yes, that is my impression also. Extensively using for a couple of years, and only occasional quirks now and then, e.g. a profile verification issue (seeing the annoying red shields to each comment), but easily fixed. Or a UX update that doesn't necessary feel improvement (this is an Element thing, really).

It may not be good enough for your grandma, but certainly can support your software dev team, and there are countless of those active most probably. I really like Matrix as a daily driver. Also using Discord and Slack, and to me these look like a UX Christmas trees full of blinking lights, and far from anything you can call 'calm technology'.

Update: Seeing who I respond to, taking opportunity to mention these recent UX musings.. there used to be 'favorites' in one click in Element, now it is in a drop-down of filters not shown by default (I make distinction of 3 groups 'favorites', 'people', and 'rooms' for all/other. Not using spaces at all (except for the record)). And then there's paragraph spacing between replies given one after the other, is to small. Setting margin to 10px (think its 4px now) makes a world of improved reading already. Element web UI in firefox. Oh, I might add very long UI (re)loading times of a browser tab refresh of Element, as somewhat annoying and to avoid.
by anon373839 | 2025-12-24 17:40:52+00:00
> My question is why does anybody have to be liable at all?

This question mistakes what civil law is doing. A more accurate framing would be, “why does anybody have to bear the loss?”. But of course, somebody must. So the task of civil law here is to determine who. Certain policy choices will align better or worse with a sense of fairness, better or worse with incentives that could reduce future losses, etc.
by sieep | 2025-12-24 17:41:28+00:00
Thanks for sharing this, I've never heard of it! It's actually a pretty similar approach to what I'm doing, without having dug into the code. Making an ssg does feel like you're reinventing the wheel, but I rather enjoy having creative control over things even if it's not much different from what's out there.

I just started working on my own ssg using Elixir https://github.com/Sieep-Coding/project-ssg

Here's a sample using our 'minimal' template https://project-ssg.vercel.app/
by caseysoftware | 2025-12-24 17:41:30+00:00
^ This.

They're not after money. They're motivated by prestige which CAN be money (ew, tacky) but is actually measured by access to key figures, your name being in the right places with the right people, and the cocktail party circuit.

My wife was a reporter in DC and she was at the White House Correspondents Dinner and everything. Living in those circles is surreal. The namedropping is a whole other level. When I realized I was doing it too (with some legit impressive names at the time), I gtfo. I'd rather be evaluated by what I've done or can do vs who I know or knows me.
by starkparker | 2025-12-24 17:42:43+00:00
> One option is the Framework 13 given that it solves at least some issues I have with the Framework 16 (e.g. it's bulkiness and inability to lower the brightness further), but it also seems to share many of the other issues such as poor speaker quality and (at least from hat I could find) worse heat regulation, and a (possibly) worse battery.

The speakers are bad, but as a 13 owner I don't see or understand the heat or battery complaints specifically vs. the 16, it's considerably better on both fronts in the current iterations of the 13.

Unless you're comparing them to a Mac running macOS? It isn't clear, but in which case yeah, obviously it's worse than a Mac.

What I don't understand is why you bought the 16 instead of the 13. You didn't seem to need or use the discrete GPU, which is arguably the entire reason it exists. The only other feature you mention as useful that the 13 doesn't have is QMK support.
by vitus | 2025-12-24 17:43:32+00:00
std::ignore's behavior outside of use with std::tie is not specified in any finalized standard.

https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2023/p29... aims to address that, but that won't be included until C++26 (which also includes _ as a sibling commenter mentions).
by daheza | 2025-12-24 17:44:20+00:00
I saw first hand the damage that was done by Elon's little purge.
I saw people who were actively trying to make the world better - heal the sick, feed the hungry, and help the unfortunate - blindly struck down from doing those goals by a tiny egotistical mans joke of a initiative.

I will personally never purchase or use anything from any of Elon Musk's companies ever again for the rest of my life and I push others to do the same and share their stories. This selfishness from a man with so much money and yet he only uses it for his own personal gain and to hurt others is disgusting.
by aretu7888 | 2025-12-24 17:44:32+00:00
You just need to know what you are doing. In this case, the problem is not "rewriting the logic" but "mapping Perl syntax to Typescript syntax" and "mapping Perl libs to Typescript libs". In other words, you'd be better off with an old-fashioned script that merely works on syntax mangling along with careful selection of dependencies (and maybe some manual labor around fixing the APIs of the consumers).

This is easy work, made hard by the "allure" of LLMs, which go from emphatic to emetic in the blink of an eye.

If you don't know what you are doing, you should stay away from LLMs if there is anything at all at stake.
by 0_____0 | 2025-12-24 17:44:37+00:00
Just gave it a listen. A lot of what he asserts seems pretty obvious with many examples e.g. the ones he give about IP, DNS, email etc. Centralized movers will always have the advantage of coordination, so decentralized systems have to have a damn good raison d'etre that's immediately obvious (e.g. Tor) or else be eventually consigned to niche use in highly idealistic communities.
by kakwa_ | 2025-12-24 17:44:42+00:00
Just a few bits about that.

I would recommend looking into the chroot based build tools like pbuilder (.deb) and mock (.rpm).

It greatly simplifies the local setup, including targeting different distributions or even architectures (<3 binfmt).

But I tend to agree, these tools are not easy to remember, specially for the occasional use. And packaging a complex software can be a pain if you fall down the dependency rabbit hole while trying to honor distros' rules.

That's why I ended-up spending quite a bit of time tweaking this set of ugly Makefifes: https://kakwa.github.io/pakste/ and why I often relax things allowing network access during build and the bundling of dependencies, specially for Rust, Go or Node projects.
Show HN: Voklit – Cheap international calls without the carrier markup
by ahmgeek | 2025-12-24 17:44:50+00:00
I built Voklit because I was tired of paying $2+/min to call banks and airlines overseas. Needed a US number that works anywhere with actual affordable rates.

It's a web-based VoIP service (mobile apps coming soon). You get a real US phone number, pay-as-you-go minutes on top of a small subscription that covers the infrastructure.

Bootstrapped, solo founder. Built with [Go/Next.js/ and Websockets] if anyone's curious about the stack.

Adding more countries soon. Happy to answer questions or hear feedback.
by justarandomname | 2025-12-24 17:45:15+00:00
I've had a Framework 13 for nearly a year, been very happy with it, I've taken it on international work trips but it mostly sits on my desk with external displays attached. I ran Windows on it until I switched jobs, now its Ubuntu.

I also have an X1 Nano, which I love too, its the around-the-house laptop and a great little machine but whenever it dies, if I replace it at all, it will likely be with another Framework (perhaps the 12")

The real test will be in 2-3 years when I'm itching for an upgrade, assuming Framework is still around, I'll be able to swap out the MoBo and leave everything else as-is. We'll see.
by crystal_revenge | 2025-12-24 17:45:36+00:00
I'm guessing the answer then is "no".

That's a ridiculous metaphor as well because building a compiler is a massive software engineering project that covers a huge range of essential skills. That metaphor would work for building a computer, but not a compiler.

Clearly it shouldn't be a requirement, but it is an excellent use of a programmer's time. I can think of no software project over my career that has improved my skills more than writing a compiler.
by estonianburger | 2025-12-24 17:45:52+00:00
I’ve tried every screen-time tool: limits, grayscale, app blockers, focus modes. None of them worked for more than a week. I just kept scrolling and what i found was a problem that really hadn’t been solved:

The failure of screen-time tools isn’t that users don’t understand the harm; it’s that nothing meaningful happens when they ignore the limit.

So I built a small iOS app that turns excess screen time into a financial penalty. If I exceed my daily limit, a few dollars are automatically donated to a charity I pre-select.

A few observations after running this with ~120 users and +6,000 overrides:

• People override limits constantly when there’s no consequence
• Even a $0.5–$1 “loss” dramatically changes behavior
• Users want friction
• Donation beats punishment

And it seems to be working, which is awesome. We’ve had an overall screen time reduction of ~28% which I think is pretty meaningful.

This is basically a commitment device layered on top of Apple’s Screen Time and Family Controls API suite. We found a novel approach to screen time UX by connecting our backend directly to app shield actions, automatically registering time limit extensions under the hood (even without internet connection!). The hardest part wasn’t engineering but actually getting Apple’s approval for App Store distribution was impossible because of guideline 3.2.2, but we found a way after endless calls with Apple support and reconfiguring the whole app design/flow. I think many people run into the 3.2.2 problem, even for registered 501(c)(3)’s like ourselves.

Building the app has raised one uncomfortable question: Why are most “digital wellbeing” tools designed to be ignorable?

I’m curious whether others here have tried commitment contracts, loss-aversion mechanics, or anti-engagement products and whether this feels like a slippery slope or a missing primitive.

App is called Scroll Toll btw
by CamperBob2 | 2025-12-24 17:46:13+00:00
A more likely trend is that people will just use their native language to tell an LLM what to do. You can get surprisingly far without specifying -- or even knowing! -- what language the LLM is targeting.

Downvote all you want, this already works in many cases. There are many more successful examples now than we saw last year, and almost certainly many fewer examples now than we'll see next year. Only the first couple of time derivatives matter.
by philistine | 2025-12-24 17:47:29+00:00
> In which space? Desktop and high performance servers? Why would it?

Laptops. Apple already owned the high margin laptop market before they switched to ARM. With phones, tablets, laptops above 1k, and all the other doodads all running ARM, it's not that x86 will simply disappear. Of course not. But the investments simply aren't comparable anymore with ARM being an order of magnitude more common. x86 is very slowly losing steam, with their chips generally behind in terms of performance per watt. And it's not because of any specific problem or mistake. It's just that it no longer makes economic sense.
by 0_____0 | 2025-12-24 17:48:10+00:00
The message I got was more "decentralized services have major coordination issues that prevent them from adapting to changing needs".

Also a major point in Signal's development philosophy is building a comms platform that doesn't require that you trust them, because the protocol is built in a way that leaks the absolute minimum of data about the user necessary to make the service usable for the general public.
by Sam6late | 2025-12-24 17:48:33+00:00
The same case was in Italy, and calendars of Vespa were awesome back in the 70s ''Piaggio (maker of Vespa) had had its Pontedera (Italy) factory (where they used to make bomber planes) bombed during the conflict.
Italy had it’s aircraft industry restricted to a great extent as part of the ceasefire agreement with the allies. Enrico Piaggio, son of the founder of the company Rinaldo Piaggio, decided to leave the aeronautical field behind and address the people’s need for an economic mode of transport.
The idea was to make a scooter utilitarian and appealing enough to the masses. Till that time, scooters were mainly used by the military for quick on-ground transportation (you might have seen this in some Call of Duty games).
So, two Piaggio engineers, Renzo Spolti and Vittorio Casini, took to their whiteboard and designed the first-ever Vespa, or maybe not quite. Mr. Piaggio was disappointed with the initial scooter. The scooter was named Paperino, and looking at the photo, you can understand Mr. Piaggios disappointment.' https://www.vespalicious.com/gallery/
by nutjob2 | 2025-12-24 17:48:38+00:00
> The point-punishment only enables abusive and toxic people and behaviors.

Actually that's what it's fighting, people like you.

> I for one believe every human...

People can say what they like, that doesn't mean anyone has to listen to it. Freedom of speech also means the ability to silence speech you don't like.

You don't have the right to spread hate and division on a company's website any more than pedophiles have a right to talk to people's children about sex. In both cases the ability to silence speech is fundamental.

HN chooses what kind of discussion it wants to have because doing otherwise would block the sort of speech it wants to host.

I know this will be hard for you to understand, but if you think about it for a while it makes perfect sense.