MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by reify | 2026-01-26 13:10:57+00:00
On linux I use qpdf

example; to keep pages 1-9 and 26-end of the original file input.pdf and save them to outputfile.pdf:

qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-9,26-z -- outputfile.pdf

reduce pdf file size

qpdf --compress-streams=y --recompress-flate --optimize-images 1.pdf 2.pdf

converted a 16mb file to 1mb reduction

qpdf --help

Run "qpdf --help=topic" for help on a topic.
Run "qpdf --help=--option" for help on an option.
Run "qpdf --help=all" to see all available help.

Topics:

add-attachment: attach (embed) files
advanced-control: tweak qpdf's behavior
attachments: work with embedded files
completion: shell completion
copy-attachments: copy attachments from another file
encryption: create encrypted files
exit-status: meanings of qpdf's exit codes
general: general options
help: information about qpdf
inspection: inspect PDF files
json: JSON output for PDF information
modification: change parts of the PDF
overlay-underlay: overlay/underlay pages from other PDF files
page-ranges: page range syntax
page-selection: select pages from one or more files
pdf-dates: PDF date format
testing: options for testing or debugging
transformation: make structural PDF changes
usage: basic invocation

For detailed help, visit the qpdf manual:

https://qpdf.readthedocs.io
by lancebeet | 2026-01-26 13:11:04+00:00
>Maybe what surprised me most is that the mistakes NanoBananna made are simple enough that I'm absolutely positive Karpathy could have caught them. Even if his physics is very rusty. I'm often left wondering if people really are true believers and becoming blind to the mistakes or if they don't care.

I've seen this interesting phenomenon many times. I think it's a kind of subconscious bias. I call it "GeLLMann amnesia".
by magicalhippo | 2026-01-26 13:11:18+00:00
> The American-built F-35 fighter jet dominated its Swedish rival [Gripen] in terms of technical and military capabilities during a competition held by the Defence Department in 2021.

A Gripen in the air will perform a lot better than a F-35 on the ground. As Denmark notes:

> "They're in for repairs about half the time or even more," he said, "so the Americans have all the power of actually destroying our air force just by shutting down [parts] supplies."

Here in Norway we went with the F-35 as well, so stuck in the same position as Denmark. Then again we just have a handful of 'em so not like we'd make a serious dent should Russia or US try something, so probably doesn't matter much anyway.
by wizzwizz4 | 2026-01-26 13:11:33+00:00
It uses React Native, via https://github.com/microsoft/react-native-xaml. This is probably mixed with "native" XAML components, but it's still firmly in the "buggy React app" category in my book: a framework that works well with React probably has the same design flaws that lead to React-esque crashes.

It's very difficult to find information about this online: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471701 is the only thing that remotely smells like a secondary source, with most of the rest of the search results being obvious ChatGPT output. (That, too, is Microsoft's fault.)
by xkbear | 2026-01-26 13:11:54+00:00
I built StarSeeker, an open-source Chrome extension that exports comments from Reddit (primary), Xiaohongshu, and X, and runs GPT-powered analysis using your own API key.

The motivation came from my own workflow as a product builder and researcher. I realized that the most valuable signals are often hidden in comment sections — pain points, emerging trends, and controversial opinions — especially on Reddit. But reading and organizing hundreds of comments manually is extremely inefficient.

StarSeeker helps with:
- Exporting comments with post title and source (Reddit first, then Xiaohongshu and X)
- Running topic clustering and insight extraction with GPT
- Producing structured data for content, product, and market research

The extension is fully open-source, does not collect any user data, and all API requests go directly to OpenAI using the user’s own API key.

I’d love feedback from the community, especially on:
- Which Reddit workflows are most valuable
- New platforms to support next
- Analysis templates that would be most useful

Repo: https://github.com/PingoJ26/starseeker
by ineedasername | 2026-01-26 13:12:18+00:00
Why is it odious to say “it got excited” about a process that will literally use words in the vein of “I got excited so I did X”?

This is “talks like a duck” territory. Saying the not-duck “quacked” when it produced the same sound… If that’s odious to you then your dislike of not-ducks, or for the people who claim they’ll lay endless golden eggs, is getting in the way of more important things when the folks who hear the not-duck talk and then say “it quacked”.
by curt15 | 2026-01-26 13:12:39+00:00
>And today this is.. not sufficient. What we require today is to run software protected from each other. For quite some time I tried to use Unix permissions for this (one user per application I run), but it's totally unworkable. You need a capabilities model, not an user permission model

Unix permissions remain a fundamental building block of Android's sandbox. Each app runs as its own unix user.
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-01-26 13:13:03+00:00
Yup; I'd make the claim (as an internet commenter, not an expert) that audio / video is more aimed at passive entertainment, whereas reading and more importantly deep comprehension etc takes more effort and time, and it's harder to monetize.

Not impossible, mind - the author posted this on Substack which is a way that one can monetize writing (blogpost style articles anyway).
by GabriDaFirenze | 2026-01-26 13:13:05+00:00
Coaching doesn't imply superiority. Most coaching can be done with little to no context and the goal is to guide the other person in finding the right answer on their own. I think you might be confusing coaching with mentoring.

As an example, I attended a coaching training session and when we broke out in groups I played the coach role. The other individual brought up a concrete issue they were having and I was able to unblock them and I never met that person before. I was their guide even though I had no context (but I have experience mentoring and coaching).

I've been a manager for years and there's a lot outside of raw technical ability that a good coach and mentor can keep you honest on. Rarely will you find someone who's reached full potential or who doesn't want to improve at all (maybe surprisingly based on your comment but I have found seniors to be the most eager to grow)
by dzogchen | 2026-01-26 13:13:07+00:00
It's on our roadmap to support alternate projections, but as you can imagine it's a big project that so far nobody has been willing to pay for to implement unfortunately.

MapLibre GL JS does support globe mode. https://maplibre.org/maplibre-gl-js/docs/examples/display-a-... May we should update our examples to use globe mode when showing examples, especially those that show a world map. We will take that feedback into consideration!

You can use the Equal Earth projection with a plugin: https://equal.bbox.earth/maplibre-americas/
by hnfong | 2026-01-26 13:13:28+00:00
Developing in Hong Kong has been much harder and expensive than before. The high speed rail that connected Hong Kong to the mainland system was (IIRC) the most expensive rail project per kilometer. (They did it anyway since it was a national objective from the central authorities.) And, given the recent tragic fire in Tai Po, there has been a lot more worry about people not being able to afford to renew aging infrastructure (as in residential buildings).
by tl | 2026-01-26 13:13:46+00:00
Most of the job is noticing friction and clearing paths — which requires context and trust more than technical superiority.

In practice: Start a note for each engineer you manage. Fred Brooks called this a "career file". Start by writing down things that frustrate them enough to complain about publicly. Add hurdles that come up in their one-on-one. Identify problems you can solve, problems you understand but cannot solve right now and problems you do not understand.

Then put on your PM hat; sort by priority and execute.
by willtemperley | 2026-01-26 13:14:04+00:00
It's actually worse than that because the Web Mercator projection is unusable for navigation too - it doesn't preserve angles or area! (Angles are nearly preserved).

Well done Google. Slow handclap.

The NGA advised it's likely to cause geolocation errors of up to 40km near the poles:

https://www.gpsworld.com/nga-issues-advisory-notice-on-web-m...
Show HN: Encrypter v2.0 – Time-lock files and rich text in the browser
by zealer | 2026-01-26 13:14:04+00:00
I previously shared a text-only version. I've now released a major update (v2.0) that supports full file attachments and rich text.

It packages everything into a single portable `.capsule` file that cryptographically cannot be opened until the future timestamp (using Drand/tlock). Still 100% client-side with no server storage.
by djb_hackernews | 2026-01-26 13:14:06+00:00
I am an EM that manages several senior engineers currently. I find it super common for senior engineers to get promoted mostly on technical merit, we end up thinking the rest "can be coached". Or it's coaching to the next level. Here are some areas I coach them on:

- influencing without authority. Managing up. Leadership.

- getting work prioritized

- providing useful performance feedback (promos etc)

- coaching and giving feedback to early career engineers

- communicating ideas effectively

- developing 1YP+ plans for their areas.

- idk, there are a lot, senior engineers are rarely "complete"
by dijit | 2026-01-26 13:14:08+00:00
It's ironic, because I was using image generation a while back when it was introduced and got frustrated with moderation.

On almost every scene generated I was met with a huge number of "Content Moderated" outputs (sufficed to say, not in generating pornography or lewds) and it frustrated me enough that I even emailed in saying that "You need to sort out the amount of moderation, no way I'll subscribe if 40% of my tokens are going into the bin).

Now, I feel some level of guilt, because I guess they listened, but it opened the door to a lot of bad actors.
by 0kl | 2026-01-26 13:14:15+00:00
In my experience, I have used coaches that don’t have more technical skill than me, but are able to provide insight, questions, and provoke me to think through my problems in ways I might not have otherwise.

I break things down into coaching vs training vs mentorship.

Training is when you need to learn a very specific skill from someone that knows more than you. A great example is learning how to drive - it requires training from someone who knows more than you.

Mentorship is when you need to grow more holistically and are learning from someone that is significantly more advanced in your chosen area of study than you. Usually this involves not just technical training, but also a mindset that you wish to learn. Examples of this are apprenticeships or when you seek out a mentor that you think has done well and wish to learn from.

Coaching is when someone may not have more technical skill than you, but is still able to help you improve by probing, prompting, reflecting, or observing. A great example are sport coaches, who are not necessarily more skilled than many of the players they coach.

These are loose and blurry definitions, but I hope it helps frame another perspective on coaching.
by reb | 2026-01-26 13:14:16+00:00
Amen. It's one real "downside" in this day and age is that it requires fairly undivided attention to be used... that aside, it's without question my favorite way to interact with information.

On that note, a big thank you to whoever added "read this page" to Safari on iOS! Being able to turn long form articles into ad-hoc podcasts has been a game changer for me.
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-01-26 13:15:06+00:00
This is why I think all video content should have auto generated transcripts for various reasons; subtitles, auto translations, but more importantly index- and searchability.

You can't expect anyone to view 20 million videos a day to find trends in current day video discourse. In theory machines could do it, but it costs a fortune. But 20 million text transcripts? That's doable on someone's local machine.
by electroly | 2026-01-26 13:15:07+00:00
How do I square "he has debunked that" with the article about his brain fMRI and the results about his amygdala, linked above in this subthread? It's full of direct quotes from both Honnold and the doctors. Where did he debunk it... and how? He's got a more accurate analysis than the fMRI? Do you have a link?
by oasisaimlessly | 2026-01-26 13:15:15+00:00
IIRC, that is actually the standard proof that there are infinitely many primes[1] or maybe this variation on it[2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid%27s_theorem#Euclid's_pr...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclid%27s_theorem#Proof_using...
by yomismoaqui | 2026-01-26 13:15:19+00:00
In an LLM world text will also be is king.

Sure, LLMs can understand images and video, but when you make your program spit debug text you make it easier and faster for Claude Code to iterate on it and fix any problems.

See how much value does a text UI program like Claude Code provide, it really doesn't need anything else than cannot be done in a terminal.
by mft_ | 2026-01-26 13:15:46+00:00
Not the OP, but I’ve had success starting with a blank app created by Xcode with the appropriate language/frameworks (ie something that will already run but does nothing). You then ask Claude to start from that point.

The only issue I’ve had is sometimes Xcode not ‘seeing’ new files that Claude has created along the way, and needing to add these manually into the Xcode project. (A Google around suggests this shouldn’t happen if you create the project in the right way, and yet it still sometimes does.)
by threethirtytwo | 2026-01-26 13:16:04+00:00
Beautiful and disgusting at the same time.

It’s vandalizing public property in the same way that human shit vandalizes a lot of public property in SF. I don’t know which one is worse. One can be beautiful, the other is done because he has no choice.

For graffiti I’m in support of lashing or whipping the people that do this. It’s effective in Singapore. But then we lose all this great public art.
by ichicoro | 2026-01-26 13:16:16+00:00
I don't know about Canon's offering... but Sony's is lackluster to say the least. On my A6000 (and possibly other older models), you can't import RAWs, only JPEGs. Not to add that manual connection to the camera's wifi is a rather "annoying" process, having to go into the camera settings, manually turning on wifi, going into the phone's settings/quick menu to connect to said hotspot, then open the app, etc...

It's just a plain worse experience to just some extremely good phones like the iPhones with pro camera apps
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-26 13:16:25+00:00
Yes, A) there shouldn't be mafia period.

But also B) if both companies get fined almost same for i) doing something so obscene that I don't want to describe it and ii) thinking that banning any website or every in a short notice of 30 minutes worldwide by the mafia is undemocratic

This just doesn't send a strong signal if this is the only thing which happens to X, It would be a slap on the wrist for almost war crimes that it committed.

Charge them criminally for the first time. I read it when anthropic got fined I think ~6% or some Billions when they literally scraped all books without any consent and teh consensus on HN was to charge them criminally.

If the only result out of doing crime is fine, then crime's legal.
by cogman10 | 2026-01-26 13:16:38+00:00
That fragility is something you have to come to grips with if you've ever known someone that has a brain injury.

The self changes rapidly when dementia, alzheimers, a car crash, or a concussion which rocks someone's world the wrong way.

Who we are is incredibly fragile. You are just one bad infection away from being a different person.
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-26 13:16:44+00:00
>The Greenland Crisis Response from EU was surprisingly muscular tho.

Wait, what was the muscular response?

AFAIK some countries sent a handful of soldiers to Greenland for a few days, then called them back, and a couple of pension funds from Sweden and Denmark threaten to sell the US bonds they hold, plus the threat of some extra tariffs from the EU which already has the short end of the stick from Ursula's last trade deal with Trump where she folded like a deck chair to his demands. Our current trade relationship with the US leaves us worse off than during the pre-Trump era, so I don't really see how we're on top here.

Did I miss anything that shifted power balance back to us in EU and I didn't hear about?
by civodul | 2026-01-26 13:17:30+00:00
On the same topic, check out this how-to on software development with Guix from the Cookbook (author here):

https://guix.gnu.org/cookbook/en/html_node/Software-Developm...

The idea was to show that there are several "levels" to take advantage of Guix for development, where the `guix.scm` file in David Thompson's blog post is the first level.
by account42 | 2026-01-26 13:17:50+00:00
> They can (and very often do) defederate from instances that post "too much nazi content", and if you disagree with the decision, there's again no recourse (you can migrate, but you won't get your lost relationships back).

Worse, they defederate instances that don't also defederate instances that they dislike badly enough so you can't even have neutral instances where you can communicate with everyone.
by stratocumulus0 | 2026-01-26 13:18:09+00:00
One major difference is that it was extremely difficult to leave Eastern Europe. Borders with the West were fortified and even in the unlikely event of getting a visa issued, the government would make sure that your loved ones were left behind, forcing you to eventually come back.

The citizens of Iran, in turn, are free to leave the country as they wish. In fact, the official policy is that if you don't like it here, then you are are supposed to move out.
by ajsnigrutin | 2026-01-26 13:18:10+00:00
But what can you do for iran? I mean... we can type text on forums and sites like this, that no one in iran can see... and in the meantime, EU will push for another chat control, some new "think of the children" thing will happen, suddenly the "show your real-identity ID to watch at porn" will turn into "show your ID to register on reddit".

On the other hand, there are many people from EU here who need to hear it, that EU is doing the same as iran... censoring websites and more (IDs, chat control,...). Yes, maybe not at the same level, less sites are censored here, but censorship is still censorship, and the trend is going towards more control and more censorship.

United states, israel (and palestine), etc. are different. Are we bothered by what israel is doing in palestine? Yes! (some of us). Can we actually do something about it? Sure... the germans can tell their government to stop selling weapons to israel [0], we can implement sanctions, tarrifs, etc. This is something that we can do "at home", something that can make some change. We did that for russia, we did that for iran, north korea etc (at various times and various levels), but we did something. We didn't really do that (at least not at scale) for isreal. US is doing that to us (EU) with tarrifs every two weeks, but we didn't really properly respond, even under the threat of an invasion on greenland.

Yes, restricted internet in iran is bad, but we can't stop it. Sadly, changing back EU rules is similarly hard to do, which again, is something that should be fixed, by us, at home.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/war-in-gaza-germany-supplies-30-of-isr...
by ajross | 2026-01-26 13:18:23+00:00
> You make it sound like there are easy things that can be done that are somehow win win.

There are indeed easy things that can be done that make things better. There are harder things that can be done that make things better still.

Obviously everything has costs and tradeoffs. You're the one with the maximalist position that apparently no regulation of water usage in southern California is acceptable because of... something about being mean to poor people or whatnot.
by bayindirh | 2026-01-26 13:19:00+00:00
Actually, this is the best I was able to find. The prices increase almost exponentially when you try to go to higher end of anything, and I was not in a mood for digging whole city and the internet for a single bulb. A Philips' 90CRI bulb is already a great upgrade from an 80CRI bulb, so I ran with what I was able to find in a pragmatic time frame.
by trgn | 2026-01-26 13:19:21+00:00
Web mercator is fantastic map. It's well known of course, so very helpful to orient. Plus, its square and easily tile-able, which is good for performance. Shapes of countries are preserved. Plus, the lines are straight, which works great for on screen. Neat and tidy.

Who cares Greenland looks big when zoomed out. "Mercator distorts size" is one of those gis-nerd idee fixes, the first factoid they learn in class, and it overwhelms all thought.
by DrScientist | 2026-01-26 13:20:27+00:00
Especially since there is no evidence that it's the presence of juries is the cause of the backlog.

The idea that the state can deprive you of your freedom for a sentence likely to be less than 3 years without the chance to be tried before you peers, is worrying.

Note is was six months before Nov 2024, it's 12 months now and they are looking to extend to 3 years! ( or more - given the word: likely ).

Juries are not an administrative inconvenience or process inefficiency.

The current legal reform seems to be operating on the assumption that the defendent is guilty - rather thana resumption of innocence.

Better to let the guilty to go free, than imprison the innocent.
by a022311 | 2026-01-26 13:20:42+00:00
It should be noted that AppImages tend to be noticeably slower at runtime than other packaging methods and also very big for typical systems which include most libraries. They're good as a "compile once, run everywhere" approach but you're really accommodating edge cases here.

A "works in most cases" build should also be available for that that it would benefit. And if you can, why not provide specialized packages for the edge cases?

Of course, don't take my advice as-is, you should always thoroughly benchmark your software on real systems and choose the tradeoffs you're willing to make.
by willtemperley | 2026-01-26 13:20:55+00:00
That is a completely inaccurate comment. Web Mercator was built as a kludge to tile the world into a square not a rectangle.

It has errors of up to 40km near the poles, the NGA had to issue an advisory about it.

There is a whole science behind map projections and Google ignored it entirely when they created Web Mercator.
by tyleo | 2026-01-26 13:21:09+00:00
Is including AI actually bad for most games? It feels like there’s a lot of online protest around “AI slop,” but I’m not convinced that gamers as a whole care nearly as much.

I work in the industry, and there’s a palpable negative sentiment toward AI tools.

But as someone who also plays a lot of games, my experience is that most people I play with don’t really care whether a game used AI or not, as long as the game is good.

This feels less like a mass-market gamer backlash and more like an online discourse issue. The broader audience seems primarily interested in playing good games, not in how the sausage was made.
Show HN: JoyScreen – blur distractions, boost brightness, keep awake (macOS)
by yankovichv | 2026-01-26 13:21:22+00:00
Hey HN ,

I built JoyScreen, a small macOS menu bar app that combines four screen-related utilities I kept installing separately:
• Focus View: blur inactive windows (toggle hotkey, adjustable intensity)
• Brightness Boost: push brightness beyond the usual limit for bright environments
• Ambient Glow: a subtle “front light” for late-night video calls
• Keep Awake: prevent sleep during presentations / long downloads

I’d love ruthless but fair feedback .

Website: https://joyscreen.app/

U0NDGXNG — 50% off for HN, valid for about a week .