MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by Gormo | 2026-01-05 16:16:17+00:00
I've been gaming primarily on Linux for almost 15 years, and buying from GOG as my first choice, and have never encountered a single instance of what you're describing. I don't have a single Linux game on my GOG account that "no longer works", and I have dozens of Linux games there.

In fact the only time I recall a Linux-native game not working out of the box was when I got the game 'The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief' on Steam, and that was due to some wonky configuration implemented by the game devs.

Do you have any specific examples of this problem?
by kayo_20211030 | 2026-01-05 16:16:23+00:00
Yeah. Probably. Depending on what you want to achieve.

I don't love my email client, but I don't really hate it either. It's in the kinda-just-is category. Also, it's a hard problem, more a lot of hard problems with "corners"; but, a super learning experience if you do it. Dealing with goofy protocols, networks, etc. will probably stand you in good stead whatever the outcome.

Go ahead. But, don't expect much apart from good personal growth.
by coredog64 | 2026-01-05 16:16:40+00:00
Union employees have negotiated healthcare into long-term contracts, making it hard for those employers to switch. (Feel free to read up on so-called "Cadillac plans" during the original ACA negotiations for more details). The size of this market makes employers exiting a non-starter IMO. Any org that wants to exit will see a huge resistance to this change even if they can showcase all the common benefits.
by wryoak | 2026-01-05 16:16:52+00:00
The west = the western hemisphere, the new world, the Americas, from the Northwest Territories to Patagonia

But why trouble yourself to distinguish anyway? 30% of the Irish are obese, 28% of the UK, nearly a quarter of Belgians and Germans. If over a fifth of your population is sick, does it really bolster your national ego so much that some other place is sicker?
by toss1 | 2026-01-05 16:16:57+00:00
>>recall that central LA currently lacks the large stock of high-rise apartments that you see in cities like New York and Chicago.

The author entirely overlooks that NYC and Chicago are not in earthquake-prone areas and LA is right next to a major geologic fault system. Yes, skyscrapers can be safely built to withstand earthquakes, but it tends to be at least expensive, which is counter to solving affordability issues.

>>I favor a steeply progressive consumption tax.

This is generally pointing in the right direction, but a progressive transaction tax on every transaction, including finance and investments would be far better. Easier to track, harder to evade, far less intrusive into peoples' lives required by income tax. and the rate and difference between rates would be so low that structuring deals to 'optimize' taxation brackets would be pointless.

Just the volume of Equities + TRACE fixed income/structured + munis + real estate is over $200Trillion. A mere 3% tax on those would put the $6T US budget in large surplus. Add $1.7 Quadrillion of ovrerall payments and a 0.3% tax on transactions (yes, $3 per $1000) would also put the US budget in surplus. Make it progressive by setting tax rate tables based on transaction size, e.g., transaction <$10=0.01, <$100=0.1%, <$10k=0.2%, <$100k=0.3%, <$1MM=0.4%, =>$1MM=0.5% (plus big penalties for 'structuring' transactions to lower brackets).

Not impressed with the article
by Willamin | 2026-01-05 16:17:05+00:00
I also do my best to stick to a "one strike and they're out" personal policy.

But I also have apps that push marketing through notifications _and_ are urgent on a reoccurring basis (usually delivery or rideshare apps). For those, I'd love if there was a system notification setting (per app) for "allow notifications from this all for the next X hours" _and_ a simple UX to make that happen.
by jillesvangurp | 2026-01-05 16:17:19+00:00
The 2-3%/year economic growth that has been common since the 1980s. People getting rich is nothing new. You can go back 50 years, 100 years, 150 years, etc. and find the same kind of debates.

The difference is that people work less than ever and obesity is now a sign of poverty rather than wealth. Depression era US had people actually starving. The relative wealth of the middle class in the sixties and seventies is something you might rightfully mourn a little. But even then, there was a lot of poverty.
by nishilpatel | 2026-01-05 16:17:48+00:00
I agree with the core point: the more pure and deterministic a system is, the easier it is to reason about and test. Reducers + property-based testing push correctness into design, not brittle test cases.

One nuance though: property-based testing shines when the domain is already well-modeled. A lot of real QA pain comes where purity breaks down—distributed systems, async flows, partial failures, UI↔backend boundaries. At that point, the hard part isn’t generating tests, it’s reconstructing context.

On LLMs: I don’t think they should be trusted as correctness oracles either. Their real value isn’t guessing answers, but helping surface assumptions, generate counter-examples, and expose gaps in our mental model.

So the future of QA isn’t humans vs LLMs. It’s better system design + explicit invariants + tools that help engineers doubt their own certainty faster. Most serious bugs come from being sure we understood the system when we didn’t.
by ghaff | 2026-01-05 16:18:07+00:00
Even expensive brands are usually made overseas. I looked at a couple of random pieces of expensive Patagonia outerwear in my closet. One was made in Vietnam. The other in Bangladesh.

Sure, you can get custom/semi-custom dress clothing made in the US. Probably other things (at an eye-watering premium). Which may be OK if you buy very little clothing. But mostly forget about going into a store and picking things off the rack.
by Gormo | 2026-01-05 16:18:25+00:00
> What does the installer matter for DRM-free software?

Requiring a network-connected proprietary client to install the software is itself a form of DRM.

> For software with other forms of DRM built-in anyway, who cares if the installer has it?

Again, GOG does not distribute games that include DRM, whether in the installer or in the game itself.
by otterley | 2026-01-05 16:18:30+00:00
In the U.S., current law holds that for a law enforcement officer to stop and request identification, the officer needs at least some sort of articulable basis for doing so (Terry stop). The key word here, though, is “stop.” Electronic surveillance of a public space, though, involves stopping nobody. It’s not clear to me that passive identification involves either a “search” or “seizure” within the traditional meaning of the 4th Amendment. We’ll see what the courts think, though.
by bluGill | 2026-01-05 16:18:48+00:00
Laundromats exist, but there are 100 million according to my web search which puts his estimate in the right area even if he is off by 30 million.

Most Americans would not call a washing machine a luxury good. Even in much poorer Mexico there are a lot of families living on $100/week that have a washing machine - they are an affordably luxury to many poor people.
by Pxtl | 2026-01-05 16:18:53+00:00
css is bad.

1) Why is it using an NIH format instead of using XML or INI or something?

2) Why does it use symbols instead of words for selectors? HTML calls them "id" and "class", why does CSS call them "#" and "."? Yes you learn that quickly, but terseness isn't really defensible when the verbosity already exists in the other file that you download and edit more frequently.

3) It's too global. This is good for consistent styling but bad for modularity.

4) It's too much of a moving target. Best practice for html+css+js changes constantly.

5) The long history of stuff like "centre a div vertically" shows how it fails the "easy things easy and hard things possible" test.

6) Pseudo-classes are ugly and weird and were a way-too-late NIH thing.

I mean there are good reasons for it to suck. Anything that has grown organically since 1996 with no coherent versioning or deprecation strategy is going to be a hot mess. But it is what it is.
Show HN: Hawkeye – A CLI tool that watches logs and uses AI to explain issues
by hipjim | 2026-01-05 16:19:14+00:00
Hey HN,

I built a small CLI tool to help with something that's been bugging me for a while – watching logs and trying to figure out what went wrong.

Hawkeye watches logs from files, stdin, or Docker containers. It uses simple pattern matching (regex for things like "error","exception", "404", etc.) to detect potential issues, then batches them and sends to an LLM for analysis only when something looks suspicious. The idea was to keep API costs low while still getting useful insights.

Basic usage:

heye watch docker:my-container
heye watch /var/log/app.log
kubectl logs -f pod-name | heye watch -

When it detects issues, it gives you a summary, possible root cause, and suggested actions. You can also ask questions about your logs with `heye ask "any database connection issues?"`.
It's pretty simple and probably rough around the edges. I've been using it to monitor my current project and it's saved me some debugging time. Wanted to share in case it's useful for anyone else.

Thanks for taking a look!
by pepperball | 2026-01-05 16:19:16+00:00
> Can't we just make the billionaires buy everyone a robot from China instead? Oh wait, their money will be useless in a post-scarcity society and they will just be like any regular Joe. Wait a minute. That seems like a massive conflict of interest. Hmmm.

Dude it’s all good. Just snort another line and fall in the techno-delusion.
by jasonjmcghee | 2026-01-05 16:19:25+00:00
JetBrains is well thought out in terms of capabilities.

There are some core features that work so much better out of the box than with the best plugins in others.

Local History (or even for a selection) with search, stacked clipboard, recent locations, how good search is in general (text, symbols, actions etc), how in-modal buffers work, debugging experience, version control merging experience, etc etc

Old now fixed complaints:

- making plugins used to be awful

- used to have no lsp support

(Was pleasantly surprised when I built ron-lsp [1] plugin)

Long standing complaints:

- it's heavy and slow

- has weird failure modes

All that being said, still my main IDE, with neovim (well configured) used frequently.

---

[1]: https://github.com/jasonjmcghee/ron-lsp/tree/main/jetbrains-...
by thefaux | 2026-01-05 16:19:36+00:00
Honestly, I found this piece depressing. Life is too short and precious to waste on crappy software.

So often the question ai related pieces ask is "can ai do X?" when by far the more important question is "should ai do X?" As written, the piece reads as though the author has learned helplessness around c++ and their answer is to adopt a technology that leaves them even more helpless, which they indeed lament. I'd challenge the author to actually reflect on why the are so attached to this legacy software and why they cannot abandon it if it is causing this level of angst.
by qualifck | 2026-01-05 16:20:10+00:00
That's half the problem though. I can see benchmarks. I can see number go up on some chart or that the AI scores higher on some niche math or programming test, but those results don't seem to actually connect much to meaningful improvements in daily usage of the software when those updates hit the public.

That's where the skepticism comes in, because one side of the discussion is hyping up exponential growth and the other is seeing something that looks more logarithmic instead.

I realize anecdotes aren't as useful as numbers for this kind of analysis, but there's such a wide gap between what people are observing in practice and what the tests and metrics are showing it's hard not to wonder about those numbers.
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-05 16:20:12+00:00
The problem is that nothing really stops people from going up the ladder. You mention leeching off technological progress but the reason some are concerned is because they will simply conquer the whole supply chain.

Take an example of tesla vs byd. Heck, The electric MI car I saw looked so good and nice, its wild

Most of the money I feel like America's still has lots of influence is probably from well established tech corporations or similar but even those get challenged by leaner companies but also that all of them have bought into the hype of AI

America's economy is on such a weak line in my opinion because the only thing which stops all hell from breaking loose is that stocks are doing good just because of the AI bubble.

When the AI bubble bursts, I have a predication that all hell might loose free (I sincerely hope that I am not right though)

Ironic that the thing which would in the end hurt america is the company selling hype who is trying to doublespeak itself into showing something but being completely different when you realize the downstream effects of the AI bubble crashing
by fleahunter | 2026-01-05 16:20:44+00:00
Interesting point about the fluid dynamics! I’ve always been fascinated by how we can use math and physics to create visuals that feel so alive. A couple years back, I tried to replicate smoke effects in a game and ended up getting lost in fluid simulations—it’s wild how a few equations can lead to such organic results.

But I wonder if there's a way to combine both approaches? Like using smooth gradients for the base texture while applying some small-scale turbulent dynamics on top. It could add a nice touch of realism without going full-on simulation, which can get heavy on performance.

Also, have you found any tools or libraries that make working with these simulations more accessible? Sometimes it feels like there’s a barrier to entry with the math, but once you get it, the creative possibilities are endless!
Show HN: Generate photography prompts from a product image (for Gemini)
by yanjiechg | 2026-01-05 16:21:02+00:00
I built a tool that takes a product image and generates photography prompts for placing the same subject into new visual contexts (studio, lifestyle, nature, UGC).

Instead of reverse-engineering or describing the original image, the prompts are meant to be used together with the original image in Gemini. This way the generated result preserves the exact product while re-imagining only the surrounding scene.

Key distinction:

Most image-to-prompt tools try to recreate or describe the input image.
This tool assumes the original image is always provided to the model, and focuses only on generating scene and context prompts so the subject stays identical.

Why Gemini:

Gemini allows combining an input image with a textual prompt, which makes this workflow reliable for keeping the same product while changing environments.

Typical uses include quickly exploring lifestyle or studio photography concepts for products without doing a full photoshoot.

Link: https://imagetransformprompt.com/
by self_awareness | 2026-01-05 16:21:10+00:00
Definitely a lost art.

It's not all about WinAPI, it's about the approach.

Today's approach is "let me use electron for GUI and python backend for my bitcoin monitoring app because it's convenient for me". This results in bundling 1 GB of code for a trivial project which is a pain to use.

And the "legacy" approach is "let me use masm32 and winapi because it will be enough".
by yieldcrv | 2026-01-05 16:21:19+00:00
yeah the somewhat post-instant gratification world is interesting

A lot of my Gen Z friends do it in a couple ways, like with analog and now old digital cameras, some abstaining from social media almost to a religious level of deterrence where posting a story on a holiday is the rebellion

makes me, a millenial, feel like all of my social friends pretending to be influencers are doing something outdated, and everyone that's otherwise unregulated on their social media consumption are the same as chain smokers or opium addicts before the Opium Wars (dopamine wise, I'm aware of the exact similarity)

I'm interested and intruiged
by fuhsnn | 2026-01-05 16:21:47+00:00
- Non-capturing isn't that much simpler to implement for the front-end, because they still need to distinguish between a file-scope name or a shadowing local in parent function. And once you have the code to do that distinction, it's not that far away from implementing captures.

- From implementor point of view I just don't like the idea of a new category of function qualifiers, so I used "_Wideof(int(void))" over "int(void) _Wide", and "int fn({...}, void)" over "int fn(void) _Closure/_Capture(...)".

- During prototype scope of the inner function, parameters may have VM type that reference from parent's local scope, so the capturing (or not) effectively start at prototype scope, earlier than C++'s model. My syntax has capture clause right before parameters so it is somewhat manage-able in one pass; for function qualifier syntax the parser probably need to either delay semantic checking the VMs or skip ahead to find _Closure/_Capture before processing the parameters.

- Both N3654-example6 and N3694-4.4.6 implicitly create capture context on stack then provide reference to it (N3654 with &_Closure(), N3694 with inner function's name). My version is lower level in that only the type of capture context (_Ctxof(fn)) is implicitly created, users then call a helper (modeled after va_start) to initialize the context object. I believe it also reduces surprises from by-value captures, since users clearly see where they initialize a context object relative to local variable changes.

- Sans syntax, N3654's "specified argument" is pretty close to my implementation, just need to change the source of context pointer from r10 to the argument in function prologue.

- I implemented wide function pointers as generalized "function pointers with context pointer pushed in r10", so it's also possible to make wide pointers from regular functions, they'll just be called with an extra nullptr in r10. I think it's more flexible this way.

What I did was mostly "the compiler will need these anyways" so should be adaptable to whatever WG14 settled on, or if I ever want to implement C++11 lambda.
by nishilpatel | 2026-01-05 16:21:49+00:00
QA as we know it will shrink. Thinking will not.

AI will kill flaky UI scripts, and “click-and-verify” roles. That’s overdue. What won’t disappear is the need to understand how systems actually behave under stress, failure, and ambiguity.

The future of QA is upstream:
• defining invariants, not writing scenarios
• modeling state and failure modes, not chasing bugs
• debugging distributed, async, messy real-world systems

AI will generate tests faster than humans ever can. But it won’t know what matters or what assumption is wrong. That judgment still belongs to engineers.

If you’re in QA and want to stay relevant: stop being a test executor. Become the person who explains why the system broke, not just how to reproduce it.
by scotty79 | 2026-01-05 16:21:50+00:00
> The prompt of my most-missed card (39 misses in 2025) is: Merrily We Roll Along (the musical) is based on a 1934 play by what two people

> [...] But, ChatGPT and Gemini both tell me that these effects are not statistically significant, despite having pretty large sample sizes.

Imagine he instead learned how to calculate staristical significance instead so he didn't have to believe AI guesswork.
by hnlmorg | 2026-01-05 16:21:52+00:00
I’ve said many times before that I think Finder is the worst default file manager of any popular desktop environment.

I get it’s supposed to be easy to use but so much functionality is hidden behind non-obvious shortcuts. The end result is you either need to memorise a dozen secret handshakes just to perform basic operations, or you give up and revert to 70s technology in the command line.
by elliot07 | 2026-01-05 16:21:54+00:00
Honestly, may be an unpopular opinion but I disagree with the ideal path. This may be on-paper the correct path for this sim, but in my experience this will lead you to bad career + team outcomes. There's better options based on my experience:

1. If the junior dev is really that critical for a large project for some bizarre reason (fix that next time), tell Gary he's critical to that and say you can realloc ppl to cover or do this task under a 1hr time limit if it's urgent (if exceeds then kill the task).
2. Say to Gary next time let me know directly rather than dm someone on the team so you can route it to the right person (buys trust, covers team).
3. Renewal of BigCo is important to the biz. You should have some room to accommodate requests like these without being a stone to adhoc requests. It will not buy you or your team favour at all. Remember, this is a startup!
by DamnInteresting | 2026-01-05 16:22:18+00:00
I personally enjoy changes of scenery, but my parents struggle to relearn how to use their computer every time there is a major OS update that revamps the UI. It's seldom better, it's just change for change's sake, resulting in a lot of time lost to relearning. Sticking to the old OS is only viable as long as security updates continue.

I wish that OS developers would provide the option to retain the bulk of the old UI when a new one comes out, implementing the UI like a swappable "theme." People who prefer consistency could keep most of their old UI, and those who prefer the newer UI can have it.
by pingananth | 2026-01-05 16:22:44+00:00
Oof. Thanks for flagging! It looks like the HN traffic spike (or a config error on my end) tripped the payment gateway safety.

I've temporarily disabled payments to be safe. You can drop your email on the waitlist https://forms.gle/HyPpz77T6yARoZVn7 and I'll send a discount code once I fix the plumbing. Sorry about that and thanks for notifying!
by ffsm8 | 2026-01-05 16:23:15+00:00
Nonsense, it's just cheaper to pay someone without any rights 50c/h then to automate it

If that industry was still in the area, they'd be automating the shit outta it. It's just not worth it right now considering there are always literal wage slaves in some place they can ship in for their sweatshops

Also, even locally produced premium clothing uses materials sourced from literal slave labour. There is no consumer decision anywhere, because the immorally sourced materials are just too cheap... And if you're willing to pay a premium for your morals, someone in the middle will just take it and fulfill the order with the cheap stuff.
Show HN: Memex, a CLI and TUI to Search Claude Code and Codex CLI Transcripts
by nicoritschel | 2026-01-05 16:23:38+00:00
I often want to bring over context from another conversation. I built a tool that allows Claude Code and Codex CLI to pull up context from another chat session.

It indexes your chats with tantivy for fast bm-25 search. I also added a TUI to help you easily look up historical transcripts & even resume them.

I also built in a prompt improver skill that can help you find things that are missing from your CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md based on historical frustration & joy.
Ask HN: Why was my post flagged?
by neil_naveen | 2026-01-05 16:23:53+00:00
This was my previous post, and it was flagged. I don't understand why. If someone could point out what was wrong, that would be very helpful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46500394

Link to actual post: https://bomfather.dev/comics/7
by modeless | 2026-01-05 16:23:59+00:00
Android (at least on Pixel) recently added a notification spam detection system, under the name "Notification Organizer". Unfortunately they don't let you block the spam, only deprioritize it. So it won't make noise, but you still have to manually dismiss it from the notification drawer. The PMs almost had the right idea...

Luckily on Android you can use Tasker and the AutoNotification plugin to block specific notifications that bug you. And I guess this app is now another alternative. I don't know how iOS people live without the ability to do this. My wife, who uses iOS, is constantly complaining about annoying notifications and there's nothing I can do to help her.