MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by chamomeal | 2026-01-14 17:39:01+00:00
I feel like our whacky world is only made possible by fossil fuels. Like why is it profitable to

- build these vapes and sell them for a few dollars?
- tear down an entire house, rebuild a new one from scratch, and sell it?
- ship things all the way across the entire freakin ocean instead of manufacturing them locally?
- mine cryptocurrency?

To me the answer is always fossil fuels. We stumbled on an energy source so dense (at first, seemingly) infinite that it just wildly increased the amount of energy we can use. For most of human history our greatest constraint was energy, then that constraint was just blown the fuck off.

I feel like our whole society is riding a high of cheap energy. We attribute so much progress to things like science and democracy and great thinkers and revolutionaries. But how much of it was really just fossil fuels and nitrogen fixing??
by fwip | 2026-01-14 17:39:15+00:00
Quick aside - you can also do the inverse, excusing whatever bad because "x good thing still happened." That framing probably feels more obviously incorrect to you, because of your outlook.

One metric is just by if people still want to hang out with you. Sure, you made a mistake and hurt their feelings before. But they're still your friends, and still talk to you because they, on balance, predict that interacting you will be good for them. Said less cynically - they genuinely like you. Or - if the "you" is too difficult to accept (as it often is with mental health issues), you can see it in relationships of people around you.

Human beings are messy, and relationships (of all types) even more so. We all have brought both joy and sadness to those important to us. Trying to avoid harm above all else, will necessarily also reduce the joy you bring to others - you become withdrawn, isolated, cautious in all interactions.

Separately - hurting another person is not always a sign of a moral sin. Accidents and misunderstandings happen, no person can predict every result of their actions, and also - sometimes two people are genuinely in conflict, and there won't be a happy end to it.
by antomal | 2026-01-14 17:39:38+00:00
Thanks for the question! For Job Control, I’m currently implementing a custom management system to handle foreground and background process groups.

Regarding signal propagation, I’m leaning towards a direct integration with libc to maintain that 'native' feel you mentioned, specifically for managing tcsetpgrp and ensuring the terminal is correctly assigned to the active process group.

One feature I’m particularly proud of is what I call 'Pinning': it allows the user to pin a specific process and recall it instantly. This is part of my effort to make GRSH feel more interactive than a standard POSIX shell.

As for async signal handling, I'm currently refining the core loop to ensure that complex pipelines don't leave zombie processes or mismanaged groups on the FreeBSD kernel. It's a work in progress, and feedback on the current implementation in the repo is more than welcome!
by parineum | 2026-01-14 17:40:09+00:00
> We had a strong 38 year old candidate in 2020 but the South collectively still doesn't like gay people enough to have him win the primary.

That 38 year old, along with the rest of the center left candidates, all dropped out to ensure the 70 year old candidate could beat the other 70 year old candidate. "The South" had nothing to do with it.
by susam | 2026-01-14 17:40:36+00:00
Yes, it would. If someone follows the links to https://github.com/hnpwd/hnpwd.github.io and decides to create PRs, they are very welcome. But if that is too much friction, I'd rather have the links posted here than not shared at all. In that case, hopefully I or someone else will make the code changes to add the website to the directory.
by mywittyname | 2026-01-14 17:41:47+00:00
They are escalating regardless.

I'm convinced the whole point of pulling a phone out to film a murder is because they having a long-term strategy for slowly boiling the frog and it's gamified for agents. I'm certain that dude got a bonus, an award, and is up for promotion for walking the administration up the next rung of the tyranny ladder.

"achievement unlocked"
by nullstyle | 2026-01-14 17:41:48+00:00
yes, it very much is. plenty of school age children go hungry, and the school district I used to work for had a major program to make sure poor kids and "Children in transition" (i.e. homeless) were fed at least a good breakfast and lunch.

Given the direction of public school funding, and the sentiment of MAGA shitheels, I expect the problem to worsen.
by butterisgood | 2026-01-14 17:42:11+00:00
I understand the downvoting, but recent events of the last year in the United States have reminded me that if you want people to mourn you after you're gone — not acting certain ways is a good way to get there.

I cannot recall the cartoon, but there was a revelation of "why a character was such a bad actor" (a jerk). And the reply was ironically one of care — "I don't want anyone to miss me after I'm gone".

As if to relieve the pain of loss they wanted others to feel relief.

I wish I could recall the cartoon and the author.
by mikestew | 2026-01-14 17:42:26+00:00
No, not nice. Previously, if we exceeded the 50Gb cap, there was the option to continue on at high-speed for $1/Gb. And that's the same price per Gb as the base plan of 50Gb/month for $50. Now, it's either upgrade to unlimited, or enjoy Netflix at 500Kbps. I want the old plan back.
by dathinab | 2026-01-14 17:42:47+00:00
this might cause major financial damage to "traditional local markets"(1) and similar in Berlin and Brandenburg close to it (depending on what kind of potatoes this are, like quality, taste, how the cook (hard, soft), etc.)

(1): Kinda a bit like local farmer markets, but also very different.

the problem isn't the giving away stuff for free part

but the scale of it

I mean giving free stuff to people in need is always grate, irrelevant of scale.

Giving it to people which can easily afford it on small scale is just fine too.

Giving it to people which can easily afford it on gigantic scale and it's only slightly hurting the bottom line of some huge cooperation, then who cares.

But giving away a product people might have bought from smaller local businesses in very larger amounts (more then what such small 1-2 person businesses sell in multiple month), that is where your "charitable" action might cost people their job and you might do far more harm then good.

now Germans are picky about their potato and the chance that 4k Tons of free potato are the kind of potato you find in "local traditional markets" is pretty slim. So this might all just be very hypothetical.
by nonethewiser | 2026-01-14 17:42:51+00:00
I dont think it's a replacement for that but it's definitely provides some of it. Whereas senior+ level people were required before.

I think that's sort of a theme with LLMs. It's not that it's better than "the real thing" (in this case a senior+ software engineer) or that its without flaws... but it's a fucking service. Having just a semblance of an advanced software engineer in your pocket is a game changer. It doesn't need to be perfect or better than the real thing to fundamentally change things.
by gregsadetsky | 2026-01-14 17:42:53+00:00
I had a “hit” post on bsky [0] (90 likes, big numbers for me) asking whether people would want an unlimited mobile plan throttled at 256kbps for $2/month. Seems like yes?

There’s lots to say about how useable it is (I often get throttled when traveling and it’s really not that bad + it helps curb any desire to scroll videos!)

But mainly I want to ask - I looked into it for a minute and it seems like you couldn’t start an mvno because carriers wouldn’t let you cannibalize them?

You can get very cheap IoT plans but if you tried reselling IoT as esims for consumers, the carriers would kill it?

So yeah - Starlink to mobile is actually the only viable way that routes around this problem?

(((email in profile if you’re cuckoo enough like me and want to start a self service’d throttled mvno)))

[0] https://bsky.app/profile/greg.technology/post/3mbmwsytnyc23
by cryptonector | 2026-01-14 17:42:54+00:00
Guns only help somewhat nebulously against tyranny. You need societal consensus to get to society using guns against the government, and there is no such consensus regarding ICE, which is why you're not going to see guns used against ICE. Many many people who hate ICE are armed to the teeth, and they are not using those guns because they know that currently that would lose them thee battle and the war.

But in general the better armed states in the U.S. had less restrictive covid rules. So perhaps there is a link between how armed the population is and how well it resists restrictions it doesn't like.
A Proposal to Modernize Xorg as a Protocol-Only Graphics Layer
by powerwordtree | 2026-01-14 17:43:18+00:00
The Linux desktop has spent more than a decade transitioning toward a new graphics stack. Wayland brings many advantages, especially for mobile-style security and simplicity. But in this process, we are quietly losing something valuable: the distributed, protocol‑driven, transport‑agnostic ideas that once made the Linux graphics model unique.

This is not nostalgia. These capabilities matter for remote work, automation, multi‑machine workflows, thin clients, cloud desktops, and future distributed systems. They are not “legacy features”; they are architectural strengths that may become important again.

The problem is not Wayland itself, but the fact that it was never designed to support these use cases. Its philosophy is intentionally local, single‑user, and compositor‑centric. That is perfectly valid for mobile devices, but it leaves a gap for desktop and distributed environments.

Xorg, on the other hand, suffers from an aging implementation, not an outdated philosophy. Its core ideas—protocol‑based rendering, remote execution, composability, and transport independence—remain relevant. What we lack is a modern, minimal, protocol‑only successor that preserves these strengths without carrying Xorg’s historical baggage.

Such a project would not need to replicate Xorg’s entire feature set. It would not need server‑side rendering, fonts, input methods, window management, or security policy. It would simply define a clean, modern protocol and a stable abstraction layer. Existing compositors could implement it. Existing drivers would not need to change. Mesa would not need major redesign. The engineering effort is far smaller than rewriting a full graphics stack.

This is not a call to replace Wayland. It is a call to acknowledge that the Linux desktop may need more than one graphics model. A protocol‑first, implementation‑agnostic layer could coexist with Wayland, complement it, and preserve capabilities that would otherwise disappear.

If no one starts this work, the industry will naturally converge on mobile‑style graphics architectures, and the distributed capabilities of the past may be forgotten for a long time. But if someone begins a modern protocol‑only successor to Xorg, the community may finally have a path that balances simplicity with the flexibility the desktop once had—and may need again.
by jillesvangurp | 2026-01-14 17:43:24+00:00
A few points here.

- Junior developers become senior relatively quick. Most senior developers get their senior title just a few short years into their careers. Typically in their late twenties or early thirties. Not judging but that seems to have been the state of affairs in software engineering for quite some time. I was a "senior" by age 30. I've learned a lot since then ;-).

- AI is increasing the demand for software because software just got cheaper to make so people want more, not less. The best software still gets made by senior people (with or without AI). That's why seniors are in demand. That should have an effect on their compensation. Which would be very welcome given the last few years of freelance rates dropping.

- Software creation is a team sport. Having a team mainly consisting of old and grumpy middle aged software engineers isn't necessarily the best thing (been there done that). It might be better to have a mix of young old and experienced/inexperienced. There's plenty of room for juniors in the industry.

- Juniors come in many forms. Some people have a lot to learn. Some people create valuable startups straight out of college.

- Software companies that are not constantly investing in their staff will have to deal with replacing their older staff as they move on, retire, or disappear for other reasons. A constant in flow of juniors that you can then train up and turn into valuable team members still works just like it always has.

- Juniors are a lot cheaper to hire than seniors. If there's a shortage of seniors, hire juniors instead and then train them up. That's what many companies were doing anyway. If anything a lot of silicon valley companies seem to have been preferring to hire juniors almost exclusively for quite some time.

- As long as the amount of programmers keeps on growing (and there are no signs of that slowing down that I know of), there will be more juniors than seniors. I'm not sure if the amount still doubles every five years but that seems to have been true for a long time.
by fzwang | 2026-01-14 17:43:30+00:00
Sorry to hear that you're going through this. I work with other students/recent grads going through the same thing. A few suggestions:

1) To echo some of the other comments here, getting a regular routine will help you get into better habits. Good sleep, regular exercise, and limited social media etc will help with your mood.

2) The setbacks are situational, not dispositional. It really is a shit job market and you likely don't know how to properly signal yet (ie. sell yourself to others). And to make things even worse, brute force ATS grinding is now even less effective since everyone can now game the systems and generate a plausibly good-looking coherent resume using AI.

3) IMO, one mistake I see often is that students think jobs are the only way to gain experience. This is not true. You really have to be constantly learning new things on your own. Your university education is not enough. This means working on projects specifically for learning purposes. I'd suggest you alternate between learning-mode and applying-mode, where you spend 2-3 months just working on shipping a complete project, then focusing on applying to jobs for another 2-3 months, get feedback and rinse and repeat. You can use the learn-mode time to adapt to feedback. I think this will yield better results than applying over and over again hoping for different results.

Anyways, feel free to reach out. As others have said, you're beating yourself up too much. You'll figure it out and find a way through these setbacks. The important thing atm is not to spiral into a vicious cycle. I applaud you even airing this on HN, as it's much much better than sulking alone.
by mindslight | 2026-01-14 17:43:55+00:00
The only thing I don't like about your essays, friend, is that they take a while to digest. Coupled with the desire to respond thoughtfully, this means it's now one^Wtwo^Wthree days later. The previous time you wrote me one of these I responded (late) and then you never did [0].

As for this one, overall I find it compelling but I'm left with two main questions: First, is it a good idea to call it white supremacy culture. And second, is it really more useful to wrap the topic up under one label rather than calling out each individual specific dynamic that makes it up (eg hypocrisy, othering, dishonesty, lack of analysis/forethought, and so on)

I can agree that it seems to be centered on some imagined archetype of a white, rural, "real American". I can also see that it descends from slavery, and white supremacy in general. But it still feels needlessly divisive.

Furthermore, defenders of it would also point out aspects of white European culture that are industrious and have made our society very wealthy (despite non-uniformly). I'm not looking to make those arguments, as they're adjacent to or even directly in support of the fascism, but I do think they do contain some truth that needs to be acknowledged in any synthesis.

And then balling it all up in one "WS culture" label rather than focusing on the individual dynamics. I get it, having a straightforward touchstone that explains all of these behaviors rather than trying to wack-a-mole with the surface manifestations. Every time a fascist has bitten onto my argument that Breonna Taylor is a second amendment issue, I've always been greeted with some excuse of why 2A isn't applicable - so it's not like directly pointing out the hypocrisy is productive. And reading your essay did feel like it "fit" in that it was talking about a whole iceberg rather than the few parts poking out of the water. It was certainly felt much nicer and positive-sum to be reading this than arguing with the umpteenth fascist booster falling back on "but it's legal" arguments to justify the murder of Renee.

Still, I worry about alienating too many people by confronting the topic head on too hard. Maybe this worry is moot at the point we're at though, and we really do need a hard line in the sand and full-on frontal assault to stop what is now being done to our country. I don't know.

(also, define "ISAs" ? It feels like it's going to be obvious but I'm drawing a blank)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403842 . You had missed the mark on where I was coming from, making most of it inapplicable, but there was one thing in particular that perhaps had some fleeting insight that I wanted you to elaborate on more.
by amiga386 | 2026-01-14 17:44:16+00:00
Existing tax. Proposed new calculation for the "value" of business property, disproportionately affecting pubs.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e57dexly1o

> In her November Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back business rate discounts that have been in force since the pandemic from 75% to 40% - and announced that there would be no discount at all from April. That, combined with big upward adjustments to rateable values of pub premises, left landlords with the prospect of much higher rates bills.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_rates_in_England

> Properties are assessed in a rating list with a rateable value, a valuation of their annual rental value on a fixed valuation date using assumptions fixed by statute. Rating lists are created and maintained by the Valuation Office Agency, a UK government executive agency.
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF | 2026-01-14 17:44:43+00:00
> the target is a contractor leaking documents

Having documents leaked to you isn't a crime; retaining such leaked documents isn't a crime; the journalist is not law-bound to heed the classification status of the documents even when deciding to publish them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._United_S...); there isn't a warranted reason to infringe the journalist's fourth amendment right to secure property.
by elric | 2026-01-14 17:44:43+00:00
When I lived in the UK in the early-mid 00s, I was really confused by how much of a digital backwater it was. Opening a bank account required several months of utility bills (on paper!) with my name as "proof of address". Taxes were paper only. Paper payslips. No concept of interacting with the government in any digital way. No concept of government ID other than a full size passport, which made the many silly age checks in pubs and stores rather laughable.

I'm sure things have gotten better, but I'll never forget how backwards it all seemed coming from puny Belgium.
by mikestew | 2026-01-14 17:44:57+00:00
I want the old plan back. If we went over the 50Gb/month, there was the option of continuing on at $1/Gb, which is the same price per Gb as the base plan. IOW, they didn't punish you for going over. Now if we go over, it's either put up with slow speed data, or upgrade to unlimited.
by talkingtab | 2026-01-14 17:45:01+00:00
This resonates for me.

I do not want my technology tied to some person I consider of despicable character. Would I buy a cell phone, even at a good deal from Putin? No. Corporations have increasingly become political. Thanks, United vs FEC! So we see them taking a knee to gain commercial advantage. And as in this case harm to our democracy.

In my opinion, no discussion about Starlink is complete without considering whether the money you pay will be used to profit people or causes you do not want.

If you need this, then great. But I have other choices, just as I would not touch a tesla even if you gave it to me. I just am not that desperate.
by bpt3 | 2026-01-14 17:45:20+00:00
1. It sounds like you're just describing a larger "basket of goods"? That data is available, but also valuable, and I'm not sure why the basket of goods tracked by the CPI or NPR would be inadequate.

2. This specific exercise is designed to be relatable to individuals (in general, and specifically ones such as the people interviewed in the article who claimed that their grocery bill went up about 50%, which is implausible to put it politely) so that they can understand the actual level of inflation rather than the one they imagined in their head.
by delichon | 2026-01-14 17:45:24+00:00
As a residential customer Starlink gave me the unlimited slow speed with a free mini for $60/year, as a tease to promote the full speed at $300/year. But it does everything I need it to, so I'm not incentivized to upgrade. I can listen to YouTube audio, make voip calls, download map tiles or talk with a chatbot without limitations. It's a large quality of life improvement for me because in my rural area there is no cellular connection during most of my driving.
by iamcalledrob | 2026-01-14 17:45:32+00:00
It's not an either-or.

Price and energy independence are both important. Renewables are an important way to both (1) drive long-term cost down and (2) reduce reliance on foreign states.

I wouldn't say Labour have failed here. In fact, efforts like this are steps towards lowering prices. Let's see what the long-term trend is. Prices aren't going to plummet overnight.
by QuantumNomad_ | 2026-01-14 17:45:45+00:00
My mobile data plan is like this. It’s funny because when I’m “out of data” my provider sends an SMS suggesting I upgrade to more gigabytes, but then it still continues to work. And yes I checked my bills to make sure that they are not charging me for any usage excess of what’s included in the plan. It’s not even particularly slow. I can still browse the web, send and receive WhatsApp messages, images and videos, watch videos on TikTok etc.

My current plan is 2GB with rollover. Last month I used 2.5GB, and somehow this month has 2GB included + 2GB rollover = 4 GB available which by itself is also weird. Maybe most of the 2.5 GB I used last month was rollover from the month before that or something.

In total I have used 4.6 GB of mobile data so far this month, which is more than the 4 GB (2+2) I have available for this month and it’s still working.
by rpozarickij | 2026-01-14 17:45:47+00:00
The Reuters article doesn't mention it, but apparently Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) [0] designed [1] this airport.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaha_Hadid_Architects

[1] https://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/bishoftu-internation...
by boston_clone | 2026-01-14 17:46:00+00:00
Words also have multiple meanings, and change over time. Type "define prototypical" in your browser's search bar, and you'll probably see something like this:

> Prototypical refers to something that is typical or representative of a particular group or type

For the last thirty or more years, the word hacker has absolutely had anti-authoritarian or otherwise rebellious connotations.
by darth_avocado | 2026-01-14 17:46:01+00:00
I’ve had a gripe with “basket of goods” approach. Does a household really care that much if the game of clue is 10% cheaper in 2025?

There needs to be an index that reflects what people really need and the closest I’ve found is the ALICE index: https://www.unitedforalice.org/essentials-index