MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by keyle | 2026-01-11 12:35:06+00:00
> The fun is still there, untouched.

Well that's a way to put it. But not everyone enjoy the art only for the results.

I personally love learning, and by letting AI drive forward and me following, I don't learn. To learn is to be human.

So saying the fun is untouched is one-sided. Not everyone is in it for the same reasons.
by doodlesdev | 2026-01-11 12:35:15+00:00
For some reason, there's a huge amount of Hacker News readers who are still full-time Windows users. With the forced migration to Windows 11, I guess a lot of them are now not only trying out Linux for the first time (as a desktop system), but also for some reason going for Arch derivatives, which is always fun to see a beginner mess with LOL
by drbig | 2026-01-11 12:36:13+00:00
As a sysadmin I'm very familiar with `makepkg`, its config file and the fact that sooner or later one will need both `clang` and `gcc`, because they're equivalent only in theory ;-)

But as I maintain only a library of pre-build(-once) software, rather than being an actual package maintainer - surely there is the whole other side that I normally do not see, much less touch.

Having said that, I'm all for better tooling - it's just that the project doesn't even hint, much less describe, the actual benefits for the people who will (sooner or later? have to?) use it.

And, unfortunately, I've been doing this for long enough to approach _any_ increase in complexity with at least anxiety, if not outright sadness (at "you could have spent that time/money on more _useful_ work", usually).
by rcarr | 2026-01-11 12:37:04+00:00
In my opinion, governments are going to have to tax the big tech companies hard and distribute the money to funding bodies like Arts Council. I can see a future "Tech Council" for open source software organisations to apply for funding. It'll get to the point where every OSS developer has their own Community Interest Company or join with a few other devs to create a CIO in order to acquire funding.

Of course, now you're opening a whole other can of worms. In the UK, only 1 in 9 Arts Council funding applications is successful.
by naiv | 2026-01-11 12:37:08+00:00
Focusing on chinese medicine, meditation, mindfulness.

He had a burn out. He mentioned to me in the mid 2000s after Max Payne 2 that he could not touch or see a keyboard anymore.

I just saw him last year, he is in good spirits, programming a bit again iirc but we did not talk that much about it. Still one of the smartest people I ever met.
by spoaceman7777 | 2026-01-11 12:37:29+00:00
I love Cachy, but please don't recommend it as a reasonable first step into Linux.

It's a lot more polished than Arch, but it's not for someone who hasn't used Linux before and wants a reliably rock solid and predictable experience 365 days a year, with no fiddling.

It's rolling release, and there are inevitably bugs when updating immediately to every minor version of every part of the OS stack. Arch/Cachy/Endeavour are for experts, and those who enjoy tinkering. (If you want to recommend something Arch-flavored, just recommend Manjaro, and don't listen to the memers who parrot some youtuber's list of ancient and silly engagement-bait grievances.)
by luke5441 | 2026-01-11 12:37:59+00:00
OPs idea is about having a new GPL like license with a "may not be used for LLM training" clause.

That the LLM itself is not allowed to produce copyrighted work (e.g. just copies of works or too structurally similar) without using a license for that work is something that is probably currently law. They are working around this via content filters. They probably also have checks during/after training that it does not reproduce work that is too similar.
There are law suits about this pending if I remember correctly e.g. with the New York Times.
by freefaler | 2026-01-11 12:38:57+00:00
They "operate" in Iran because of OFAC issues general licenses under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (31 CFR Part 560) permitting non-commercial personal communications, including satellite internet for free expression. Starlink activation in 2022 protests and recent events exploited these, as Musk sought formal exemptions for "internet freedom."

And no Tesla factories in Iran I suppose helps too :)
by al_borland | 2026-01-11 12:40:36+00:00
This never lasts long, in my experience. It’s a nice idea, but it’s a huge pain. At some point, I always end up sticking with the OS that has what I need, which is never Linux. Linux is what I install when feeling idealistic, but it doesn’t allow me to do anything I can’t do on a mainstream OS that is mission critical to my life.
by panick21_ | 2026-01-11 12:41:51+00:00
So sick of this dumb conspiracy theory. The whole theory boils down to 'many people have worked in the US space industry since the 80s'. It very fucking dumb.

The increasing in funding for Space companies by DoD in the early SpaceX area (early 2000s) was related to DoD realizing they don't have enough assets over the middle east and wanted smaller companies and rockets to do faster deployment. This evolved further from DoD and since then with Firefly having done a number of missions based on that. Keyword is 'responsive launch'.

Space based missile defense in this period was clearly not the priority and communication, spy sats and navigation sats were getting the overwhelming amount of funding.

NASA on the other hand certainty didn't create COTS for missile defense reasons even if the leader of NASA was a supporter of investment missile defense (as many space people were and are). And the people who designed the COTS program certainty didn't think of that. There are detailed interviews with many of the people involved where they explain their reasons and how and why they came up with the programs.

As for Musk himself, there are details interviews with pretty much everybody that was involved early in SpaceX. And it quite clear that from the beginning Mars was the focus. Musk was not very well informed or interested in US space defense policy early on. And just like literally everybody, he knew much more about NASA then the DoD side of space. Remember that back then, there was much less information available about these things. Musk lived in Canada and then was busy with Internet stuff, he hardly was some kind of US defense nerd.

Its only when SpaceX moved on from the 'Greenhouse on Mars' project to a rocket company that Musk had to start seriously learning about the funding opportunities and commercial opportunity for small rockets. And eventually this lead him to sue DoD over access to contracts.

This whole conspiracy theory hinges on reinterpreting everything that happened in US space development from 1980 to 2020 as some hidden behind the scenes crusade to create Golden Dome and only collects evidence for this to be true and ignores literally all evidence that suggest this isn't the case.

The only thing that is totally clear, and nobody has ever disputed is that many space people in the US have thought about space missile defense since the 80s and always hoped that it would eventually happen.

Missile defense was always part of wider US space consideration, but claiming it was always the driving force for everything is simply not true.
by OlaProis | 2026-01-11 12:41:52+00:00
LaTeX support is a reasonable request! It's not on the immediate roadmap, but here's my thinking:

Options considered:
- KaTeX/MathJax-style rendering (would need a Rust math renderer or JS bridge)
- Typst integration (Rust-native, modern alternative to LaTeX)
- External tool pipeline (render via pandoc/LaTeX CLI)

Typst is interesting since it's also Rust-based and simpler than full LaTeX. Would inline math ($x^2$) and display math ($$...$$) cover your use case, or do you need full document features?

Added to the roadmap consideration list. Thanks for the feedback!
by jeroenhd | 2026-01-11 12:42:11+00:00
Web3 generated plenty of use if you're in on it. Pension funds, private investors, public companies, governments, gambling addicts, teenagers with more pocket money than sense, they've all moved billions into the pockets of Web3 grifters. You follow a tutorial on YouTube, spam the right places, maybe buy a few illegal ads, do a quick rugpull, and if you did your opsec right, you're now a millionaire. The major money sources have started to dry up (although the current American regime has been paid off by crypto companies so a Web3 revival might just happen).

With AI companies still selling services far below cost, it's only a matter of time before the money runs out and the true value of these tools will be tested.
by doodlesdev | 2026-01-11 12:42:29+00:00
Darktable is the best photography editing and classifying software I've ever used. New users should be warned it's quite power-user centric though. Adopting isn't like opening up Lightroom and messing around. You may have to read a bit of documentation regarding the modules and different workflows (i.e. Sigmoid vs FilmicRGB).

I think the Ansel developer has a YouTube series with tutorials on how to edit in Darktable using the Filmic RGB workflow. Not sure if that's where I'd get started nowadays (I've just adopted Sigmoid and it's way quicker to edit with it), but it gave me a solid base in how to use this software.
by jonesjohnson | 2026-01-11 12:42:31+00:00
I can recommend the other way round:

For un-bricking my phone, I had to use some proprietary windows-only software. So I took an old Laptop and installed Windows 10.

Installing it was such a pain already. So many dark patterns, so many privacy issues. I even had to create a microsoft account!

After the deed was done, I closed the Laprop, went back to my Linux system and enjoyed it even more :-)
by bhouston | 2026-01-11 12:42:37+00:00
For comparison:

- The PS5 Slim Digital Edition is 12,700 Kč, which is 575 USD.

- The PS5 Pro is 20,000 Kč, which is 958.19 USD.

I think that the PS5 prices are not yet corrected for the new RAM prices as a result of the AI induced shortage.
by TheDong | 2026-01-11 12:43:19+00:00
I'm someone else, but I also feel like macOS is rubbish.

On linux, if I get a kernel panic, I can dig into the kernel, add debug logs, understand what's going on, and potentially fix it. If I want to swap to a scrolling window manager like niri, I can.

On macOS, it's a black box and any radar I file with apple vanishes in a black hole never to be seen again. There's hardly any customization, and the default UX is horribly undiscoverable and can't easily be driven with just a keyboard.

As a hacker, the above makes macOS garbage, and I'd assume anyone on hacker news would understand that desire to be able to understand and hack on the software you use.
by londons_explore | 2026-01-11 12:43:28+00:00
The ISS is a good example of a fully isolated environment. No new bacteria or viruses arrive there apart from spacecraft arrivals.

I've been curious for a while what human health would look like if there was a small group of people isolated for many decades. Would they effectively be disease free after the first few weeks?

As well as removing flu and colds, might it also reduce things like heart disease and Alzheimer's which we have weak evidence are linked to transmissible diseases?
by simonw | 2026-01-11 12:43:31+00:00
Because we now have LLMs that can read the code for us.

I'm feeling this already.

Just the other day I was messing around with Fly's new Sprites.dev system and I found myself confused as to how one of the "sprite" CLI features worked.

So I went to clone the git repo and have Claude Code figure out the answer... and was surprised to find that the "sprite" CLI tool itself (unlike Fly's flycli tool, which I answer questions about like this pretty often) wasn't open source!

That was a genuine blocker for me because it prevented me from answering my question.

It reminded me that the most frustrating thing about using macOS these days is that so much of it is closed source.

I'd love to have Claude write me proper documentation for the sandbox-exec command for example, but that thing is pretty much a black hole.
by OlaProis | 2026-01-11 12:44:28+00:00
AsciiDoc and RST/Sphinx are definitely more powerful for structured documentation with cross-references, includes, and admonitions.

For now Ferrite is focused on Markdown since that's the most common format for notes and quick docs. But the architecture could support other formats — the parser layer is modular.

If there's demand, AsciiDoc would be the easier addition (cleaner syntax than RST). Would be curious how many folks would use it as their primary format vs. Markdown.
by bazoom42 | 2026-01-11 12:44:41+00:00
Why did markdown become popular when we already have html? Because markdown is much easier to write by hand in a simple text editor.

Original SGML was actually closer to markdown. It had various options to shorten and simplify the syntax, making it easy to write and edit by hand, while still having an unambiguous structure.

The verbose and explicit structure of xhtml makes it easier to process by tools, but more tedious for humans.
by saidinesh5 | 2026-01-11 12:45:08+00:00
I really like my HP Omnibook 14 with the Ryzen AI HX 370 chip.. it's sleek, well built (so far, at least).. insane battery life.. the standby time on Linux is in weeks and the battery life when light browsing/YouTube viewing is easily 9+ hours. Even the finger print sensor finally just works. The touchpad gestures with kwin input actions are as smooth as, if not better than os x.

The only thing my work 16" MBP does better is the speakers.

edit: Updated the battery life to 9+ hours from 7+ hours based on what the battery monitor says.. I remember binge watching a couple of long movies/tv shows without ever having to plug in the laptop that day...
by TacticalCoder | 2026-01-11 12:45:19+00:00
But shitload of vendors won't bother and just sell you a "military grade" or, even in non-english speaking countriess, say a "MIL-SPEC Daniel Defense AR-15". They won't list every spec in detail. And they make good AR-15s (but not cheap).

Anyone who thinks the triggers listed as MIL-SPEC from, say, Geissele here:

https://geissele.com/triggers.html

aren't totally fine is out of his mind. They're amazing triggers, widely used and loved.

And they don't say which specs its passing (at least not on the main page): it's just MIL-SPEC.

As a sidenote my very best laptop passes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-810 but most people will just say it's "military grade" or "MIL-SPEC".

Guess what? Its screen never broke overnight like the one of my MacBook M1 Air did (the infamous "bendgate").

I can bend my LG Gram's screen and it's keeps working fine. I can let it drop. Friend who sold it to me stepped on it when he woke up once.

There's a very big difference between saying: "There are shady vendors" and saying "Military specs do not exists and it's impossible for consumers to buy items passing military specifications".

Yes, there are dishonest vendors.

Yes, military specs do exist.

And, yes, it's possible for consumers to buy products passing (and even surpassing) actual military specs.
by chrisldgk | 2026-01-11 12:46:32+00:00
I think the point is that you can write your code using ES6 and ES7 and the TypeScript compiler allows you to output ES6 or ES5 compatible code if you want to make sure it runs in older browsers as well. You can do that with non-TypeScript ES code as well but you’re bound to use another transpiler. With TypeScript you get it „for free“ since you need to compile your code either way.
by OlaProis | 2026-01-11 12:46:39+00:00
Fair point, and you're right. I should have disclosed this earlier.

The HN responses are AI-assisted — I'm using Claude to help draft replies. Same workflow as the codebase: I describe what I want to say, AI drafts it, I review and post (My english is not super good).

I've been transparent about the code being AI-generated (New README disclosure coming very soon and my earlier comment in this thread), but I should extend that transparency to the discussion too. Thanks for the accountability check.
by mopsi | 2026-01-11 12:47:10+00:00
> After that, despite his campaign promises to fix relationship with Russia, he never personally met Putin officially. (The only time he met Putin, in an official capacity, was in 2019, with French President Macron and German Chancellor Merkel).

Misleading. The so-called Normandy format (involving Ukraine, Russia, Germany, France) was the agreed-upon diplomatic framework for addressing the war and improving relations.

> As Ukraine's President Poroshenko confirmed publicly, on the advise of the western leaders, he had decided to not implement the Minsk treaties they signed with Russia.

Not true. He never said this. It is a well-known distortion circulated by Russian propagandists.

> It is clear that Zelensky too was convinced by NATO and EU officials to do the same as he began to look for a military solution to repressing and dominating the East Ukrainians.

Not true. Zelenskyy prioritized diplomacy, like the aforementioned Normandy format. After Russia renewed the invasion, he was widely criticized for not adequately preparing Ukraine for war and for postponing important purchases of weaponry.

> In the end, EU and NATO got what they wanted - a proxy war with Russia, using Ukraine.

I don't think anyone can argue in good faith that the EU and NATO wanted a war with Russia. You really have to be on the other side of the planet, completely detached from the ground truth, to genuinely believe something like that. The war is a major strain on European economies, both due to the massive support that Ukraine requires and the massive costs of European rearmament to deter further Russian attacks on Europe. European politicians would very much prefer to sprinkle that money around in the form of social programs instead of spending that on bunkers and machine gun nests.
by imtringued | 2026-01-11 12:47:15+00:00
Arch Linux doesn't fork upstream projects and usually only does minimal changes/patches to a package. This means package maintainers spend the vast majority of their time packaging.

When you think about it, a Linux distribution should upstream useful changes to the original project and have the changes be available through configuration. But if that is the case then the vast majority of the code lives outside the Linux distribution. The package manager including the server backend might be the largest code base of Arch Linux and perhaps even the only one that has a meaningful size to begin with.
by adontz | 2026-01-11 12:47:43+00:00
These articles... I'm not sure who are the target audience, because I am definitely not and I don't know anyone who is.
Specific OS is not the important, anything with modern KDE is good enough to replace Windows 10/11.

But do I (and all my colleagues) need Microsoft Office (Word, Excel at least) and/or Drawing software (Adobe or something) and/or god forbid Visual Studio 2026, and some other corporate software to make a living? Inevitably yes.
by simonw | 2026-01-11 12:48:00+00:00
> Anyone claiming "Writing code is no longer needed for the most part" is not a serious software engineer.

You need to recalibrate. Six months ago I would have agreed with you, but Opus 4.5 and GPT-5.2 represent a very real change.

I would phrase this as "typing the code out by hand is no longer needed for the now part", which I think is what antirez was getting at here.
by phicoh | 2026-01-11 12:48:04+00:00
We recently got a PR from somebody adding a new feature and the person said he doesn't know $LANG but used AI.

The problem is, that code would require a massive amount of cleanup. I took a brief look and some code was in the wrong place. There were coding style issues, etc.

In my experience, the easy part is getting something that works for 99%. The hard part is getting the architecture right, all of the interfaces and making sure there are no corner cases that get the wrong results.

I'm sure AI can easily get to the 99%, but does it help with the rest?
by ben_w | 2026-01-11 12:50:40+00:00
> LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. You get an overview, you get a sense of what it's about and most importantly you get a false sense of understanding.

Can be, but… well, the analogy can go wrong both ways.

This is what Brilliant.org and Duolingo sell themselves on: solve problems to learn.

Before I moved to Berlin in 2018, I had turned the whole Duolingo German tree gold more than once, when I arrived I was essentially tourist-level.

Brilliant.org, I did as much as I could before the questions got too hard (latter half of group theory, relativity, vector calculus, that kind of thing); I've looked at it again since then, and get the impressions the new questions they added were the same kind of thing that ultimately turned me off Duolingo, easier questions that teach little, padding out a progressions system that can only be worked through fast enough to learn anything if you pay a lot.

Code… even before LLMs, I've seen I've worked with confident people with a false sense of understanding about the code they wrote. (Unfortunately for me, one of my weaknesses is the politics of navigating such people).
by phplovesong | 2026-01-11 12:51:07+00:00
Thats true, but comes with a cost. TS has become an incredibly complex language, even it only provides types. Thats being said is will always lack features as it only "javascript".

Haxe has a more robust, but simpler typesystem, that comes from ocaml.

Haxe also compiles to C++ so making native tools would have been a breeze.

TS sits at the top chair, but there is many "better" options out there, like Elm (even its kild of a dead languge) and ReScript/ReasonML etc.

TS is good, but will never be a perfect language for javascript. It will always be a mediocre option, that is growing more and more complex in every new release.
by Lerc | 2026-01-11 12:51:09+00:00
I kind-of want to see an experiment going the other way.

Have a repo that has a committee of AI models deciding what to merge. Inform them of the goals of the project and that they should only allow positive changes but people are allowed to make adversarial PRs.

It can be more active because the committee can meet on demand. Then people and AI's can attempt to bend the project to their wills.