MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by albert_roca | 2025-12-25 20:44:27+00:00
The model shows that the surface and volume of an object scale with mass such that electrostatic and gravitational acceleration can be explained through this scaling relationship. This is considered a geometric or structural cost:

C_s ~ m^(1/3) + m^(-2/3)

In terms of intrinsic acceleration, surface and volume scale with mass as:

a_i ~ m^(1/3) + m^(-5/3)

This relationship holds for any object with charge ≠ 0 across electrostatic and gravitational regimes, so the free fall principle is strictly recovered only for mathematically neutral objects.

This allows drawing an intrinsic acceleration curve for objects with homogeneous density, and the minimum point of this curve is identified at:

m_ϕ ≈ 4.157 × 10^−9 kg

If the surface and volume of a not strictly neutral object determine its dynamic behavior, this would theoretically allow measuring m_ϕ with precision and deriving G without the historical dependence on the Planck mass. In this sense, it is a falsifiable proposal.

The geometric logic of the model allows establishing a geometric or informational saturation limit that eliminates GR singularities. At the same time, fundamental particles are not treated as dimensionless points but as polyhedral objects, which also eliminates the quantum gravity problem. The concept of infinity is considered, within the model, physically implausible.

From here, the model allows making the derivations included in this post, which I have not presented categorically, but as a proposal that seems at least statistically very unlikely to be achieved by chance.

The model does not question the precision of the Standard Model but postulates that the particle zoo represents not a collection of fundamental building blocks, but the result of proton fragmentation into purely geometric entities. The fact that these entities are not observed spontaneously in nature, but only as a consequence of forced interactions, seems to support this idea.
by ssl-3 | 2025-12-25 20:46:08+00:00
I hate those, too. Especially when others are around.

The interface is so inconsistent between different implementations that they're always terribly awkward to navigate at best, and completely infuriating at worst. I don't like presenting the image of an progressively-angrier man who is standing around and speaking incongruous short phrases that are clearly directed towards nobody at all.

But I've found that many of them still accept DTMF. Just mash a button instead of utter a response, and a more-traditional IVR tree shows up with a spoken list of enumerated options. Things get a lot better after that.

Like pushing buttons at the gas pump to try to silence the ad-roll, it's pretty low-cost to try.
by PaulHoule | 2025-12-25 20:47:16+00:00
Interestingly my wife helped a friend whose father had the disease during the pandemic.

He had worked as a professor and after retirement had suffered with AD for years but had stayed "independent" because his wife was high functioning mentally but low functioning physically and formed a good team.

He'd bought long term care insurance so he had the resources to afford both a room at a care home but also personal help from home aides, including my wife. He didn't really know what was going on most of the time but he never got angry or flustered and was always pleasant to deal with.

We had trouble with certain homes having a way they want to do things or requiring things that weren't really necessary, one insisted that he get a pacemaker because he had bradycardia. When he lived with his son between homes probably the most difficult thing was that he got up in the night to use the bathroom and would end up urinating in the wrong place. He got much better care than many residents because people were always coming around to see him and the staff knew that we cared and would advocate for him.

He passed away at 92 and outlived many of the people who knew him at work so he had just a small memorial ceremony. I saw it as an example of healthy aging and talked about it a lot with my wife -- and it made me think about myself and my own fear that my ability to compensate for my schizotaxia may degrade when my brain degrades and I can picture myself becoming really nasty and it gives me all the more incentive to rewrite my habits while I still can.
by forty | 2025-12-25 20:47:18+00:00
Yeah thanksfully in Europe we have AOP / AOC (protected name of origin) so that names can have a meaning. Good that Vidalia farmers seem to have managed to do the same somehow.

Regarding Champaign, the funniest part is that Russia granted exclusivity of the name to some local sparkling wine, such that actual wines from the Champaign aera need to use some alternative names there ^^
Show HN: Fill PDFs with API, AI creates optimal layouts
by cgonzar3 | 2025-12-25 20:48:49+00:00
Hey HN, I’m Carlos, dev & designer behind Hundred Docs.

Here’s the deal: I’ve spent way too many days fighting PDFs in production. Two things drove me crazy:

1. Most doc tools give total freedom → anyone can make a layout disaster + UX is terrible.
2. PDF libraries are a nightmare to integrate

So I hacked something that actually works:
- You describe the doc in plain English
- AI turns it into an editable template
- Non-tech folks can tweak it visually
- Devs just POST JSON to an API → get a professional PDF back

Would love to hear what you think about the product idea and your experience with PDF generation in software products.
by fcatalan | 2025-12-25 20:49:51+00:00
Not as hugely generous as this story, but during his whole college professor career since the 70s, my father always took care that none of his students spent any major holidays alone and away from home, so we always ended up having 2 or 3 of them around for Christmas, the New Year, Easter...
They were from everywhere around the country and the world, and it was so very enriching for me and my siblings. I had a huge postage stamp collection from the ever increasing well wishing mail that arrived.
It's also kind of comforting to think that anywhere in the world you are not that far from someone that remembers you fondly.
by coryrc | 2025-12-25 20:51:13+00:00
I didn't think my explanation implied how you interpreted it.

I thought everybody knew Wayland was started by some people working on Xorg already; I did not mean to imply otherwise. Many or all were paid for their work. They believed Wayland was a better approach, and, AFAIK, continued to be paid full-time to work on Wayland instead of X. Which, sounds a lot like they convinced their employer (or a new employer) to pay them to work on Wayland instead of X. Do you believe this is a fair summary of the situation?
by lewo | 2025-12-25 20:51:35+00:00
I think this is really close to the way nix2container works (https://github.com/nlewo/nix2container). nix2container generates metadata at build time and streams the required data at runtime.

At build time, it generates a JSON file describing the image metadata and the layers data location.
At runtime, it consumes this JSON file to stream layer data and image configuration to a destination. This is implemented by adding a new transport to Skopeo. Thanks to this implementation, nix2container doesn't need to handle all various destrination since this is managed by Skopeo itself.

Recently, we introduced a mechanism to also produce such kind of JSON file for the base image (see https://github.com/nlewo/nix2container?tab=readme-ov-file#ni...).

I'm pretty sure the added (not usptreamed yet) transport could be useful in some other close contexts, such as Bazel or Guix.

I'm the nix2container author and i will be glad to discuss with you if you think this Skopeo transport could be useful for you!

(btw, your blog post is pretty well written!)
by h3half | 2025-12-25 20:51:40+00:00
The way NASA did it for decades was conference calls. Nowadays it's Teams meetings.

The outputs of the meetings are decisions that are later encoded in very many very long documents. It's just faster to hash out engineering details when the relevant engineers are able to talk to each other in real time and relevant decision makers are present to be able to unofficially bless or reject what the engineers come up with (formal acceptance of these decisions is of course a paperwork thing).

So, in this domain anyway, it's not a literal phone call. But it's what we see as the modern equivalent.
by busyant | 2025-12-25 20:52:06+00:00
> the fake Alzheimer's they induce ....

I used to work with a guy who had been a scientist at a large pharma company (we were both working at a small biotech start-up at the time).

He told me an interesting story... basically, scientists at his company would get an extra year-end bonus if they had worked on a drug candidate that made it past animal studies and into human (clinical) trials.

He told me that one way to 'consistently' get the extra bonus was to work on candidate drugs for neurological diseases (e.g., Alzheimer's, etc.) because ... the animal models for those diseases were (generally) dog shit, so it was easy to find a drug that 'cured' whatever happened to be your neurological disease of interest in mice/rats/etc.

Then you get your bonus and the drug fails in humans.

Lather, rinse, repeat.
by yial | 2025-12-25 20:52:35+00:00
This is such a charming project! I’ve been quite taken for years by the “Christmas” decorations that spin using a candle.

I quite like these more - mainly because they could be added onto a lamp that puts off heat, and be kind of a perpetual decoration with subtle motion.

I love your “dad turbine” design, and the flying wing has some magical quality to it.

Thank you so much for sharing!
by FiloSottile | 2025-12-25 20:53:24+00:00
Browser vendors have absolutely thought about this, at length.

The web platform is intricate, legacy, and critical. Websites by and large can’t and don’t break with browser updates, which makes all of these things like operating on the engine in flight.

For example, click through some of the multiple iterations of the Schemeful Same Site proposal linked from my blog.

Thing is, SameSite’s primary goal was not CSRF prevention, it was privacy. CSRF is what Fetch metadata is for.
by AnotherGoodName | 2025-12-25 20:56:46+00:00
On this note I’d be willing to support a html port with inline python code running via pyodide if the helps wanted too.

See https://rubberduckmaths.com/eulers_theorem for an example where i wrote a blog post with lots of inline runnable Python code samples.

I think this is the best format for python code samples and tutorials. It’s even better than notebooks. No IDE to setup, a completely static and saveable html page, easily runnable and changeable python.
by Aurornis | 2025-12-25 20:56:55+00:00
> - You can actually buy the drug here: https://focusbiomolecules.com/p7c3-a20-nampt-activator-prone... It's a simple small molecule. If this stuff works, expect it to be everywhere within just a couple of years.

There are numerous chemical supply companies that will list chemicals like this “for sale”. They might not have it in stock but they hope they’ll get your search traffic and be able to synthesize it if you place an order.

If you look at the amounts, they’re tiny. I don’t know the doses that would be used in humans but typically ordering from chemical supply shops would be economically infeasible for just about any drug. These are meant for one-off studies and experiments, not ongoing human use.

There have been a growing number of online groups arranging to do group buys of synthesized experimental drugs based on studies. I’ve followed a few of them and the results range from people losing their money, receiving product that is too contaminated to use, or in some cases they go to great lengths to verify the chemical but then discover it doesn’t do what the original study promised it would do. In some of the more horrifying cases I’ve seen forum posts from people reporting long lasting chest pains from one chemical, and another chemical was sending people into psychosis. So if (when) these chemicals start appearing on group buy sites I suggest ignoring it until more research is done. Making yourself into a lab rat is not a good idea.
by gsnedders | 2025-12-25 20:57:28+00:00
> Performance isn't all that matters, especially once you have an established codebase and ecosystem.

And this is no small part of why Java and JS have frequently been pushing VM performance forward — there’s enough code people very much care about continuing to work on performance. (Though the two care about different things mostly: Java cares much more about long-term performance, and JS cares much more about short-term performance.)

It doesn’t hurt they’re both languages which are relatively static compared with e.g. Python, either.
by piskov | 2025-12-25 20:57:40+00:00
That’s why I specifically told what I meant: it is jot about being able to swap SSD, but that for at least 5-7 years you will be able to repair it (expensively).

Moreover in basically every corner of the earth there will be either authorised service or local one that will help you if soak your laptop in thailand or what have you.
by rzerowan | 2025-12-25 20:57:47+00:00
With the sadder realisation from the article that more independent co-lo facilities are getting shutdown leaving many largescale deployments withno recourse but to go to the cloud for hyperscale.
As a business at least in the US , im not seeing any greeenfield facilities being spun up to compete with the big5(Oracle/Google/Azure/Amazon/IBM) clouds.
by josephg | 2025-12-25 20:59:12+00:00
Why? Lots of people more or less use their computer as a glorified web browser, with some zoom calls and document editing thrown in for good measure. 256gb seems overkill. My girlfriend is somehow still rocking a 2011 MacBook Air. She mostly just uses it for internet banking and managing her finances. Why would she want more than 256gb?
Show HN: Later – Schedule URLs to open later
by adagradschool | 2025-12-25 21:00:18+00:00
I built Later to scratch my own itch: I'd find interesting articles but not have time to read them, or I'd forget to join meetings because I was deep in code.

Later is a browser extension + local daemon that lets you schedule any webpage to open at a specific time. Press Option+L, pick a time (or use presets like "In 1hr" or "Tonight"), and the page opens automatically – even if your browser is closed or you're in another app.

Technical details:
- Browser extension (Firefox + Chrome) for the UI
- Python daemon (FastAPI + SQLite) handles scheduling and opens URLs via the system
- launchd integration for auto-start on macOS
- Everything runs locally, no accounts or cloud

The daemon approach was intentional – it steals focus when the time comes, which is what you want for meetings. A pure extension would open tabs silently in the background.

Built on a lazy Christmas afternoon with Claude Code. Happy to answer questions about the architecture or implementation.
by jeffreygoesto | 2025-12-25 21:00:50+00:00
The most important thing IMHO is to "rotate the structure 90 degrees" from package to function. You start with "all files of one package" and get "all files of all packages, that serve the same purpose" like for example all includes, all man pages, all binaries. This simplifies and speeds up a system, as you only need one or a low number of paths per function.
by yial | 2025-12-25 21:01:32+00:00
I have a love of wooden blocks.

I’ve seen some sets that are blocks with random flat surfaces but still balanced.

However, I notice that many antique block sets seem far superior to newer sets.

(I’m sure someone must make an amazing new set, I see some suggestions in the comments).

Having made some wooden block sets from scratch, what I am always amazed about with a good set is balance / size of pieces, coupled with variety and quantity. The balance being a vitally important part that seems to be overlooked in “bad” sets.
by heresie-dabord | 2025-12-25 21:01:47+00:00
> a video and/or audio editor is really an entirely different beast, in which the user is continually adjusting any and all parameters and states of the project, expecting undo/redo histories, and so on and so forth.

If you accept that there is some similarity to game development or a real piloting system for an aircraft, these complex adjustments would be split among components to be developed and tested separately and then integrated.
by uecker | 2025-12-25 21:02:09+00:00
I remember seeing Linux gaining some traction 15 year ago, and Ubuntu focusing on polishing the user experience (with initiatives such as fixing "One hundred paper cuts"), but then this changed instead of keeping this stable the great rewriting began. Seeing Wayland (which is just one example) users having a problem with screen sharing just convinces me how much of a self-own this was from the Linux community.
by wtallis | 2025-12-25 21:02:10+00:00
From a supply perspective, 256GB seems ridiculous because you can get way more capacity for not very much money, and because 256GB is now nowhere close to enough flash chips operating in parallel to reach what is now considered high performance.

But from a demand perspective, there are a lot of PC users for whom 256GB is plenty of capacity and performance. Most computers sold aren't gaming PCs or professional workstations; mainstream consumer storage requirements (aside from gaming) have been nearly stagnant for years due to the popularity of cloud computing and streaming video.
by port11 | 2025-12-25 21:02:51+00:00
Seems based off CNBC's more informative article: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/salesforce-ceo-confirms-4000...

It does seem like Salesforce relies on Agentforce and therefore doesn't need as much support stuff. But the pressure was also to “reduce heads”, which is a bit of a tone-deaf way to describe firing thousands of people.
by piskov | 2025-12-25 21:03:46+00:00
Name me premium one, I dare you.

Take screens for example. Sure OLED is nice (if it won’t burn in or have terrible PWM on low brightness), but most of them in past years couldn’t afford custom resolution with great DPI: 220-250.

No, those fuckers will install you either full hd or 4k resolution which is only good for movies.

In every other case you’ll need to use fractional scaling that will make your UI, fonts, what have you look like blurry shit.

—

The list goes on for battery life (google how many milliwatts apple consume during sleep), performance (full regardless whether they are plugged-in), etc.

Mind you, I would love to see apple-quality hardware with linux on it.

It just doesn’t exist yet. Geohot lamented this recently: https://youtu.be/M96O0Sn1LXA
by yial | 2025-12-25 21:04:32+00:00
As an adult, I bought on impulse a set of wooden dominos intended for domino runs. It included a few other props. It was on clearance for almost nothing because the box was damaged.

With friends and family on occasion (individuals ranging in age from 27-70) , multiple hours have passed setting up and playing with this domino set.

I really believe that play is vitally important at all ages.
by bri3d | 2025-12-25 21:04:46+00:00
They do have a loophole; they import them as kits and “build” them at a Magna facility in Arizona (similar to how early Sprinter vans were re-assembled in the US and sold as Freightliners). But, they are FMVSS compliant (besides steering wheel) and have had several NHTSA organized recalls like any other compliant car might.
by forty | 2025-12-25 21:05:26+00:00
I was also quite chocked that you did this ^^ I'm not sure who is the naive one, either you or me, but I would never have assumed that such a name would sell for more than 2k (but at least it was worth it for you here).

I'm really wondering how important the domain was here. I feel it's more just what got you the motivation to do something rather than anything else then your hard work and the quality of the product made the rest (that makes me think of Dumbo's magic feather) but I read in another comment and your bio that you seem to feel strongly about domain names and how much they impact the success of a business (you probably know better)
by coryrc | 2025-12-25 21:05:49+00:00
How much surface land does public transit occupy per primary transit user? How much does pedestrian-first and bicycle-first occupy per primary walking/cyclists? Now how much land does car-first take per person primarily using car for mobility?

The last is far, far higher than the others. Depending on the city, cats get dedicated infrastructure covering 25-75% of all land! Add buildings and parks and you get scraps for everything not cars.
by mort96 | 2025-12-25 21:06:00+00:00
If Mozilla did that, we'd have monthly news stories about them adding ads into the client, removing features people depend on, cramming in AI where it doesn't belong, abruptly making all sorts of controversial ToS changes, going back on old promises, and all kinds of other things we know and love Mozilla for. All before they'd get bored and discontinue the product after a couple of years.

Or maybe they'd just buy some existing closed source Slack competitor, promise to open source it, and then just never get around to it. You know, like how they bought Pocket in 2017, promised to make it open source, but somehow never got around to it before discontinuing it in 2025.
by everforward | 2025-12-25 21:06:05+00:00
Pypy has much slower C interop than CPython, which I believe is part of the tradeoff. Eg data analysis pipelines are probably still faster in numpy on CPython than pypy.

Not an expert here, but my understanding is that Python is dynamic to the point that optimizing is hard. Like allowing one namespace to modify another; last I used it, the Stackdriver logging adapter for Python would overwrite the stdlib logging library. You import stackdriver, and it changes logging to send logs to stackdriver.

All package level names (functions and variables) are effectively global, mutable variables.

I suspect a dramatically faster Python would involve disabling some of the more unhinged mutability. Eg package functions and variables cannot be mutated, only wrapped into a new variable.
by wewewedxfgdf | 2025-12-25 21:09:32+00:00
In England the advice is that the best thing you can do for homeless people is refer them to the correct social services, which has the resources and skills to deal with people who are often mentally damaged or unwell in some way.

The case of Aaron Barley triggered this after a lovely and caring family took in a homeless boy into their own home leading to a terrible situation in which he murdered two of the family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4elLA4FpnHQ

There's no way I'd let random people into my home - you absolutely do not know what might happen, what their history is, their mental state, their criminal background. Be kind in other ways.
by roughly | 2025-12-25 21:09:49+00:00
Old joke:

A pair of mathematicians are sitting in a park chatting. There’s a snack shack near by, and while they’re talking, three people walk into the building. Some time later, four people walk out, and another couple walks in. A bit after that, two more people walk out. One of the mathematicians notices this and comments to the other, “you know, if one more person walks into that building, it’ll be empty.”
by ibizaman | 2025-12-25 21:11:10+00:00
> Own Your Data — Self-hosted means your customer data never leaves your servers. No vendor lock-in, no surprise price increases, no data mining.

+1

> No Per-Seat Pricing — One install, unlimited users. Pay nothing or pay for support—your choice.

+1

> Open Source — AGPL-3.0 licensed. Inspect the code, modify it, contribute back. Transparency builds trust.

Fully agreed.

From reading the readme and the docs, I am left with wondering how the software would benefit me. I would like to see more screenshots and use cases.