MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by isodev | 2025-12-13 06:47:09+00:00
> it seems like an awful idea for a government

You mean the government that’s already the tax authority for which you create and report invoices? I can promise you it’s a good thing. Electronic invoices are a lot easier for us (obviously since it’s just a click instead of a whole PDF operation). It also removes a whole bunch of possibilities for mistakes.

> you have to pay to see the entire standard

The article is wrong about that though, all technical docs are available via the europa portal and reference implementation examples.
by CyanLite2 | 2025-12-13 06:47:29+00:00
You’re right, upon further review you can get budget Lifepo4 batteries shipped to your door from Amazon for as low as $75/kwh, which includes cables, a BMS, and various Bluetooth connectivity. So $65/kwh seems fairly reasonable for raw battery capacity in very large quantities.

But now it’s time to better understand why a Powerwall or other wall-mounted units are so much more expensive. I understand UL-listing costs, marketing, warranty, and other things are thrown in, but it’s $75/kwh versus $1000/kwh, a 13x difference.

If even at a $100/kwh price point all homeowners need to get 10-20kwh in batteries just to help peak shave the grid and save tons of money since batteries will be a fraction of the cost of grid power.
by ryanjshaw | 2025-12-13 06:48:00+00:00
I think this argument conflates “what’s possible” with “what’s reasonable”.

In a complex modern society, we can’t all be expected to have backup plans to the Nth degree.

Is it possible to bore for my own water supply, install solar+inverter/battery backup for electricity, get a medical degree to treat my own wounds? Sure but most would say it’s not reasonable.

It’s why we have regulations and ombudsmans for healthcare, transport, finance, water provider, electricity providers, communications providers etc.

Oddly missing from that list is critical technical infrastructure providers like Microsoft, Apple and Google.
by b112 | 2025-12-13 06:48:33+00:00
There are a few physical Google stores. They aren't really very helpful at anything, and even don't have phones in stock often.

I went to one, wanted a Pixel Fold in the spring, and was told "we'll get one". Some guy left to do so, and 20 minutes later I just walked out. Just as with everything else, when Google does it, it's half-assed.
by globular-toast | 2025-12-13 06:49:47+00:00
The only problem with projectors is there's not much choice if you're sensitive to DLP rainbow effect. I haven't tried one of the newer ones with a faster colour wheel, though. It means I've had to go JVC DLA projectors, but these are now ridiculously expensive and I can't see myself ever spending that much on, well, anything.
by cemoktra | 2025-12-13 06:51:08+00:00
Well from my view as European working in finance. Handling money for customers to pay (buy apps) likely requires an e money license (not sure about other states). And with this there is lot of things coming, like AML and what not. So disabling the account might be due to regulations required for the e money license.

Of course Support should be able to resolve this if proves are given
by antognini | 2025-12-13 06:51:57+00:00
You don't need a full fledged theory of quantum gravity to describe Hawking radiation. Quantization of the gravitational field isn't relevant for that phenomenon. Similarly you don't need quantum gravity to describe large elements. Special relativity is already integrated into quantum field theory.

In some ways saying that we don't have a theory of quantum gravity is overblown. It is perfectly possible to quantize gravity in QFT the same way we quantize the electromagnetic field. This approach is applicable in almost all circumstances. But unlike in the case of QED, the equations blow up at high energies which implies that the theory breaks down in that regime. But the only places we know of where the energies are high enough that the quantization of the gravitational field would be relevant would be near the singularity of a black hole or right at the beginning of the Big Bang.
by bassp | 2025-12-13 06:53:49+00:00
> Some problems are straightforward to specify. A file system is a good example.

I’ve got to disagree with this - if only specifying a file system were easy!

From the horse’s mouth, the authors of the first “properly” verified FS (that I’m aware of), FSCQ, note that:

> we wrote specifications for a subset of the POSIX system calls using CHL, implemented those calls inside of Coq, and proved that the implementation of each call meets its specification. We devoted substantial effort to building reusable proof automation for CHL. However, writing specifications and proofs still took a significant amount of time, compared to the time spent writing the implementation

(Reference: https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/122622/cacm%2...)

And that’s for a file system that only implements a subset of posix system calls!
by firecall | 2025-12-13 06:54:58+00:00
One rather counter intuitive way to “backup” your photos is to install Google Photos and One Drive on your iPhone!

Google and MS don’t charge as much as Apple for storage, and you probably need you need to pay beyond the free limits, but it’s not a huge expense.

Once your installed Google Photos and One Drive on your iPhone, just tell the apps to sync all your photos all the time!

Now I appreciate that isn’t for everyone.

But it works, is reliable, and requires no technical knowledge of running your own service.

The other thing to do is setup a Mac that synchs all your iCloud data, One Drive documents and Google Drive.

Then back up that device with Backblaze.

This gets expensive as a Mac with decent levels of storage isn’t cheap!

I live in fear everyday or my primary Apple and Google accounts getting locked!

I’ve had accounts since day one of iTools and very shortly after Gmail launched….
by boomlinde | 2025-12-13 06:55:48+00:00
Doom has some star power and is instantly recognizable to pretty much anyone, not just video game fans. Its engine is Free software that's easily adaptable to pretty much any input or output method. In this case Doom might also have made a better candidate than another first person shooter because you can't aim up or down in Doom, so there's no need to account for that in the rats' input.
by jval43 | 2025-12-13 06:58:10+00:00
I run a separate Mac Mini that has the full iCloud Photos library on a massive external drive, set to "Download originals". I then rsync that filesystem to a separate Linux box. This works but you must not ever disconnect the external drive.

I don't have a solution for iCloud Drive, as there wasn't a keep offline setting last time I checked. So use it only ephemerally.
by sholain | 2025-12-13 06:59:49+00:00
A complete mischaracterization.

George Floyd ingested quite a lot of fentanyl, enough to die though it was inconclusive - it's a biological and medical reality that characterized the situation in a very real way.

Snowden released a lot of information that had nothing to do with 'whistle blowing' and enormously benefited very bad actors such such as China and Russia - it was a windfall for them, and destroyed years of work by Western intelligence agencies.

This was right after China had discovered and executed a handful of CIA personnel, whereupon it was very, very clear the possible repercussions of such a release.

His actions were inconsistent with those of someone interested only in whistle-blowing and or 'showing hypocrisy' on espionage; there are any number of ways to whistle-blow in a manner that does not result in the negative outcomes. Since he's smart enough to know better, it's rational to conclude the possibility of ulterior motives.

Russia's espionage and influence campaigns are having a severely negative effect on the political situation in the US and West in general, where they have deeply penetrated many nations security and political apparatus, especially Germany.
by b112 | 2025-12-13 07:01:02+00:00
There are escalative methods to employ in such situations.

In many legal jurisdictions, a 'demand letter' holds weight. These can be served by courier, with proof of delivery as valid. One aspect of such a letter is a hard, specific time by which you will start legal action, along with associated additional costs.

You have two paths after the letter. The first is small claims court, or normal court. In many places, small claims court does not allow lawyers, and the judge will even have to explain any confusing terms.

Which means the playing is leveled, including reduced or no disclosure requirements, and legal cost assignments. Where I am, it's $100 to file.

The goal is to force a fix, at threat of legal consequences.

I am sending an email.
by globular-toast | 2025-12-13 07:01:23+00:00
> Yes because it’s completely safe to bike everywhere and how would I bring the groceries back?

Pannier bags. I did this for years. Before I got panniers I filled a big camping rucksack and cycled, but I wouldn't recommend that. Use a small backpack in addition to panniers if you have to, but having just the panniers feels the best.

However, in terms of safety you are unfortunately right. I didn't have a car so I went everywhere by bike but I was essentially a third class citizen in many places. Felt like I could just get wiped out and nobody would even care. There were no people around, only cars. I hate cars, so I had to get a car too :(
by beeflet | 2025-12-13 07:02:07+00:00
I am not convinced by this whole AI water scare. Doesn't the water just evaporate? It's not a finite resource like oil.

If the problem is that these companies are creating an externality by straining the local water supply, then maybe we should simply tax water more where appropriate? I don't think any sort of shame will be effective.

For the past decade water has been mismanaged in inefficient farming practices, like bad irrigation practices or production of alfalfa to feed foreign livestock. We also waste a ton of water on our big dumb lawns. "cooling datacenters" doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
by n2h4 | 2025-12-13 07:02:27+00:00
parisidau, I hope you get your account back.

you can in the meantime, and for the future, try compartmentalizing services you use. the old saying of "all eggs in one basket" applies here as well.

VPS, hard drives, etc. are cheap and keep you more in control of your own data than you're with big tech.
by jdietrich | 2025-12-13 07:04:53+00:00
It's more to do with the bureaucratic costs of getting a product licensed as a medical device. By the standards of the medical industry, an F1 wheel nut gun or a WEC refuelling rig isn't particularly expensive; the prohibitive part is getting a specialist item approved for medical use. Motorsport can do things that don't scale, because no-one is stopping them from using a one-off prototype made to precisely fit their needs. They (and their suppliers) iterate incredibly rapidly Bringing a new medical device to the market is an immensely expensive multi-year project. Obviously there are benefits to the precautionary principle, but I'm not sure that anyone has quantified the costs.
by nine_k | 2025-12-13 07:06:02+00:00
This is a difference in the threat model.

Signal's threat model is that everything around you is hostile to you, except the parties you interact with. You are an undercover rebel in a totalitarian sect which would sacrifice you to Cthulhu if they see your chat history. Losing it is much better than disclosing it.

Your threat model is likely random black hat hackers who would try to get into your communication channels and dig some dirt to blackmail you, or to impersonate you to scam your grandmother out of several thousand dollars. Signal protects quite well against it. But the chance of this happening even in an unencrypted channel is low enough. You don't mind making the security posture somehow weaker, but preserve the possibility to restore your chat history if your secure device is lost or destroyed.

I suppose the problem could be solved by an encrypted backup with a long key which you keep on a piece of paper in your wallet, and / or in a bank in a safe deposit box. Ideally it would be in the format that the `age` utility supports.

But there is no way around that paper with the long code. If this code is stored on your device, and can be copied, it will be copied by some exploit. No matter how inconspicuous a backdoor you are making, somebody will find it and sneak into it. Should it happen in a publicized case, the public opinion will be "XYZ is insecure, run away from it!".
by cdmckay | 2025-12-13 07:06:18+00:00
I would love to feel sorry, but seems you’re technically capable of preventing this (unlike most people), just chose “convenience.”

Well, this is the downside of “convenience.”

If you manage to recover your belongings, I hope you stop preaching around how living in a normal apartment in society is good and everyone should accept the risk of home invasion instead of living in an underground bunker with biometric access controls and armed security.
by burnt-resistor | 2025-12-13 07:06:29+00:00
See also: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c785n9pexjpo

America and Eurozone countries welcoming populist authoritarianism and plutocratic megacorp corruption are also flirting with/rapidly adopting mass surveillance, mandatory digital user identification, and repeal of civil liberties including freedoms of speech and privacy.

The primary, eternal struggle that matters the most is between the rich and powerful, and everyone else.
by hnthrowawy477 | 2025-12-13 07:07:18+00:00
This happened to me really early on when my original Apple ID had an invalid format, as it was an ID made prior to the current version of Apple ID everyone uses, and Apple refused to port what I owned to the ID that I was forced to generate to sign into my newer device. My old ID had software no longer available in App Store, so this wasn’t just a matter of needing to repurchase apps- they were taking away my ability to use applications I bought from them. Since then, I’ve been incredibly wary of losing my Apple ID. I have a lot of respect for Apple, but I would bet that it’s easier to deal with ID related problems for someone with Q level clearance in the U.S. government or even a non-existent Men In Black ID problem than to resolve a problem with an Apple ID. They probably would tell the almighty to get a new ID.
by JoshTriplett | 2025-12-13 07:07:23+00:00
> How are people handling this these days?

Syncthing is wonderful, and does a great job of syncing between an Android phone's photos/videos and a laptop. And if you have regular automated backups of the laptop, you'll have backups of the photos/videos too.

For an iPhone, perhaps you could use iTunes to sync to a computer and back up that computer.
by fouronnes3 | 2025-12-13 07:08:48+00:00
That's an interesting example I hadn't thought of. Probably? I'll need to try it. Thank you for the suggestion!

I think one issue will be that trig functions are kinda weird because they are non-injective. So they work but they are awkward (try solving cos(A1) = 0.5). Inverse kinematics is so well studied, you're probably better off using a dedicated algorithm.
by i_v | 2025-12-13 07:09:51+00:00
Slax brings back fond memories! I used to boot school computers into it to have access to OpenOffice, Firefox, ahem Ophcrack…

I never ran Slackware Linux beyond that but the simplicity of being able to build a custom live USB through their web interface was amazing. I don’t think I’d have gotten as much of a head start with Linux had it not existed.
by b112 | 2025-12-13 07:10:43+00:00
For the average person, including buying apps, this simply isn't a reality.

And Google will now be throwing up massive "OMG! You're going to install an app that isn't from the Play Store?!" warnings to anyone that tries, including requiring some degree of technical skill to do so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908938

You can nitpick this, but the truth is my comments are about the average user, and from that perspective, factually accurate.
by burnt-resistor | 2025-12-13 07:11:23+00:00
> (Here's a hint, it's actually quite affordable right now if you go to a GP out of pocket).

You're wrong and you're conflating your myopic perspective with the experiences of everyone else in the world in other countries. It's only "cheap" where you live. Here where I live, it's insanely expensive with (very expensive) insurance or without insurance (bankruptcy risk) and the average care is shit too.
by xoa | 2025-12-13 07:11:53+00:00
It sounds like you unfortunately have gotten yourself kinda stuck, but I very much sympathize. I too have an account dating back to iTools, and for a long time it was a major frustration that I was stuck with that original email address as unchangeable for the Apple ID, unlike newer accounts. However, some time in the last, I dunno 3-5 years maybe? I can't remember now the exact time I noticed, but after over a decade of requests and fading hope Apple actually did allow me to change the email address for that Apple ID, which I shifted to my own domain. So for anyone else who hasn't checked in a long time, worth noting situation might be marginally better now.

Re: "mac.com isn't doing email anymore", all the original mac.com email addresses still work fine. Apple has played around with various domains (mac.com/me.com/icloud.com) over their decades of bumbling with online services but they made them all interchangeable for older users, mails to the original @mac.com emails still go through. Even originally made aliases (they allowed 5 with iTools) still work. Not sure what your issue was on that one.

Finally yeah, ""security"" questions are one of those horrible legacy anti-patterns that I will cheer to see finally be dead and buried. If you try to answer them honestly probably anyone can learn it with a bit of online searching, if you go for more obscure stuff they're easy to forget defeating the purpose. It's really best just to treat them as extra passwords, use random alphanumeric values and keep them in your password manager same as the password. Apple has also fumbled around with recovery over the years, at one point you had options to have a manual recovery key you could save but I think that's dead and can't set it up after already forgetting. Maybe if you go in person to a store with physical ID and evidence, if you had payment associated with the account and have that credit card for example that might do it.

If you have nothing of value tied to the account though probably no reason not to just abandon it.
by tonyhart7 | 2025-12-13 07:12:45+00:00
my proposal devices is like yubikey but instead of yubikey hardware in place like USB devices form

its in the form of ring or bracelet, its small enough and can be carried everywhere with you all the time

its use NFC like technology, it works without battery, fast and "secure enough" for 99% of people

what if the device is stolen???? we can add authorization like biometric (fingerprint etc) while touching devices so it can be sure the real owner is "giving" auth
by raw_anon_1111 | 2025-12-13 07:13:27+00:00
The issue with OneDrive is that it doesn’t store metadata like the photo location, its damn near useless. But I do pay for storage for Google Photos and iCloud.

If you take all of your photos from your phone, you don’t need your Mac at all. Google Photos will sync directly.

I wouldn’t use BackBlaze (the $7 a month service). It doesn’t support NAS at all and it has to phone home every 30 days or it will erase anything that is stored on external drive.

I would use an app that backs up to their B2 service.

I personally just use my personal AWS account to back up my Plex media and just use the AWS s3 sync command using the AWS CLI and store everything in S3 Deep Archive. It’s less than $2 a month for 2TB.
by NaOH | 2025-12-13 07:14:43+00:00
At least as of Sequoia, the Settings > iCloud > Drive > Optimize Mac Storage option enables iCloud Drive files to be stored offline. Likewise, right clicking any iCloud Drive files in the Finder includes a Keep Downloaded option. Since I minimally use iCloud Drive, in the past (older OSes) I also had Hazel make copies of iCloud Drive files so they were certain to be in backups.
by fouronnes3 | 2025-12-13 07:16:00+00:00
Never used any of those, so I don't know! I'd be curious to read a comparison from anyone who knows about them.

I think what's pretty unique about the bidicalc solver that I made is that it does not depend on the previous input values to update backwards. It's truly solving the root finding problem. The advantage is that there are never any "stuck in a local optimum" problems with the solver. So you can solve difficult problems like polynomials, etc.
by Grazester | 2025-12-13 07:17:19+00:00
I have a car from 2017 that is perfectly dumb. It had been a rehash of a car being produced since 2010 though. All other models of the same year by the manufacturer had telemetry, mobile app start etc. All those models are now dumb though since for those earlier years they used 3G wireless which is now a dead spectrum.
by compounding_it | 2025-12-13 07:17:28+00:00
> However you have to create a trust model where your fault allows you to have a service helping you with it while a fault at the service provider will allow you to restore data from your end too, getting the best of both worlds.

This is why I suggested to have a dual model. Leveraging the cloud and services is really a good choice as long as you have backup systems running independently as well. Your backups may not be as powerful and full fledged as the main provider but in case of emergencies like these, you still own your data and hardware and don’t panic.

In this example a weekly backup of iCloud to a drive connected to a pi with rsync could be a simple solution. 6tb is not even that much given that 500$ gift cards are being used by the author. The backup is not great but it is easy to see why it’s also necessary to own your data.
by retrac | 2025-12-13 07:18:00+00:00
Rust has two parents; it got its looks from C, but much of its character was inherited from its other, less commonly mentioned parent -- ML. Rust has a variation of the Hindley-Milner type system, quite similar to ML (or Haskell). Rust's enum and struct are algebraic data types, also known as sum or product records or types. The type system and pattern matching enable declarative and functional styles of programming that are much less natural to express in C.