MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by vladvasiliu | 2026-01-28 17:34:13+00:00
> UI framework balkanization has always been, and remains a hideous mess.

Amen.

But, which OS doesn't have this problem? I'm currently running windows on a work laptop and even freaking first-party apps have a different look and behave differently from one another. Teams can't even be assed to use standard windows notifications! And don't get me started on electron apps, of which most apps are nowadays, each coming with their own look and feel.

Also, have you tried switching from light to dark mode, say at night? The task manager changes only partially. The explorer copy info window doesn't even have a dark mode! On outlook the window controls don't change colour, so you end up with black on black or white on white. You can't possibly hold up windows as a model of uniform UI.

So while I agree that this situation is terrible, I wouldn't pin it on the linux ecosystem(s).

> Every other major OS can deal with [high dpi].

Don't know about mac os, but on Windows it's a shitshow. We use some very high DPI displays at work which I have to run at 200%, every other screen I use is 100%. Even the freaking start menu is blurry! It only works well if I boot the machine with the high-dpi display attached. If I plug it in after a while (think going to work with the laptop asleep), the thing's blurry! Some taskbar icons don't adapt, so I sometimes have tiny icons, or huge cropped ones if I unplug the external monitor. Plasma doesn't do this.

IME KDE/Plasma 6 works perfectly with mixed DPI (but I admit I haven't tried "fractional" scales). The only app which doesn't play ball 100% is IntelliJ (scaling works, it's sharp, but the mouse cursor is the wrong size).

> Audio filtering is a pain to set up.

What do you mean? I've been using easyeffects for more than five years now to apply either a parametric EQ to my speakers or a convolver to my headphones. Works perfectly for all the apps, or I can choose which apps it should alter. The PEQ adds a bit of a latency, but applications seem to be aware of it, so if I play videos (even youtube on firefox with gpu decoding!) it stays in sync. It detects the output and loads presets accordingly. I also don't have to reboot when I connect some new audio device, like BT headphones (well, technically, on Windows I don't anymore, either, since for some reason it can't connect to either of my headphones at all). I would love to have something similar on windows, but the best I found isn't as polished. It also doesn't support dark mode, so it burns my eyes at night.
by chimprich | 2026-01-28 17:34:21+00:00
There's plenty of tasks that can take hours that don't save their progress. E.g. running a simulation, training an AI model, rendering video. Or, these days, leaving agentic AI models running in a loop implementing tasks.

Even if the state is recoverable, it doesn't mean that it's simple to recover.

I would be infuriated if my OS decided to shut itself down without permission.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-28 17:34:22+00:00
> Now I've got to slowly type in my phone number for Prime

Haven't the (big) supermarkets in the US adopted the whole "scan and go" thing that lots of countries in Europe have had for a long time? (maybe more than a decade at this point I think)

When I go to the supermarket, right after the entrance, I pick up a scanner, then as I pick stuff, I scan them and pack them. Then when I'm done, you scan a code, give back the scanner, take your stuff and leave. Kind of assumed this was done in the US first and then spread here, but maybe it started here? Not sure.
by brightball | 2026-01-28 17:34:25+00:00
I think that counts as assault and the individual should have been charged and that's exactly the point about the precedent.

Compare it to the situation in Minnesota. Protester bites of the finger of an agent. Is that protesting? Groups of people follow agents around blowing whistles while they're trying to do their job. Can protesters show up at an someone else's workplace and start blowing whistles at everyone? Diners? Medical offices?

https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/officer-will-lose-fin...

Now a situation has been created where everyone involved in those Signal chats could be...charged with conspiracy. The door is opened for that argument to be made and until the charge was thrown onto those women after the abortion protest, nothing like that had been done more.

FACE Act and Assault charges, plus damages were absolutely warranted. Conspiracy charges were political punishment.
by nadis | 2026-01-28 17:34:53+00:00
This is fascinating, thanks for sharing! I also appreciated the "when would you need this" section at the end.

> "When Would You Need This?
- Client hands you a Figma Make prototype but not the design file
- You want to audit AI-generated code before deployment
- You need to migrate away from Figma Make to a different stack
- You want to extract design tokens for your design system
- Pure curiosity about how Figma structures its data"
by b1temy | 2026-01-28 17:35:15+00:00
Similar story here.

Started a new job about a year and a half ago and got a powerful laptop with a really top of the line CPU and GPU, 64 GB of RAM (Now upgraded to 96GB, needed for my work, even with these specs compile times are longer than I'd like...), and it was a terrible experience, coming from someone who's used to Linux having used it for a bit (started in 2013 with Ubuntu with a dual boot. Moved all-in to Arch in 2016, distro-hopped or played with different desktop enviroments/wms after that (Recently switched to niri), but all of which are leagues ahead of Windows 11 IMO. Only occasionally ran Windows on a spare device or a VM on the rare occasion I needed to, eg for work / school.)

Tons of issues, slow in some operations, weird bugs (in the explorer like you, or with my Bluetooth headphones, or other issues), and even occasional blue screens! It's not just my setup too, my coworkers have similar issues. Plus, it just isn't a nice environment to use.

At first, I tried to set up a nicer environment (as much as IT would allow). I installed PowerToys for QOL improvements, GlazeWM to emulate a tiling window manager setup, I tried debloating as much as I can, I installed Wezterm for my terminal (Why is Windows Terminal so hyped up? It seems like an extremely basic terminal emulator to me...), oh-my-posh theming for my shell, and several other things.

But every convenience program I added just noticeably slowed down my laptop, to the point I just gave up some of the niceties and lived with it. Why is such basic functionality able to be run so smoothly on a much weaker device on Linux, but struggle on Windows on a much more powerful device? I can only think of one reason...
by ModernMech | 2026-01-28 17:35:40+00:00
That’s productivity fetish. Not everything is about being productive, research is about finding new things. No one knows how to do this reliably at scale, so the best we’ve come up with is having lots of people working on a range of topics, and hoping a few are fruitful. This idea we can just retweet the unsuccessful researches to private sector doesn’t work, because we don’t know how to not do unproductive research.

Measuring fundamental research by industry productivity standards is how we’ve gotten “publish or perish” culture and “salami slice publishing”. We have to allow space for projects to just fail in research and not have that be the end of someone because they weren’t “productive” enough.
by dyauspitr | 2026-01-28 17:35:52+00:00
A grainy image of your palm from a surveillance camera capture is not going to expose biometric data. Your hand needs to be close enough to make out the detail required. Then tying that to your identity is very hard and takes manhours, not something you can replicate at scale. You’re giving them your palm print/vein scan tied to your identity on a plate. It’s very irresponsible.
by cogman10 | 2026-01-28 17:35:56+00:00
It's kind of funny because when I first got into linux it was practically the opposite story. Back in the day of KDE 2 or 3 and Gnome 2, KDE was the slow one to bring in features while Gnome felt like the wild wild west.

Now it seems like Gnome has gone down a practically walled garden path which I don't love. Last I tried it, I wanted to launch an app focused and in full screen on startup. The gnome response for that was basically "You're not allowed to do that".
by jcgl | 2026-01-28 17:36:04+00:00
> Pulseaudio also completely denies existence of people trying to do music on Linux, there is no real way to make latency on it be good.

I don't care much about PA at this point tbh and don't know much about the inner workings; it always worked just fine for me. But from what I read from people more "in the know" at the time, I'd heard that a lot of the (very real) user-facing problems with PA were ultimately caused by driver and other low-level problems. Those were hacky, had poor assumptions, etc. PA ultimately exposed those failures, and largely got better over time because those problems got fixed upstream of PA.

My takeaway from what I read was basically that PA had to stumble and walk so that pipewire could run.

> For example systemd have no real method to tell it "turn off all apps after 5 minutes regardless of what silly package maintainers think". Now what happens if you have a server on UPS that have say 5 minutes of battery and one of the apps have some problem and doesn't want to close?

Add a TimeoutStopSec= to /etc/systemd/system/service.d/my-killing-dropin.conf more or less, I think? These are documented in the systemd.service and systemd.unit manpages respectively.

> Same problem also surfaced if you have say app with a bug that prevented it from closing from sigterm and you wanted to reboot a machine. Completely stuck

See the --force option on the halt, poweroff, and reboot subcommands of systemctl. The kill subcommand if you want to target that specific service.

> so I pasted the thing he decided to ignore in original ticket, and got ignored. Not even "pull requests welcome" (which I'd be fine with, I just wanted confirmation that the feature like that won't be rejected if I start writing it).

I'm certainly sympathetic to this pain point. I'd take Lennart at his word that he's not opposed. Generally speaking, from following the systemd project somewhat, it's a very busy project and it's hard for all issues to get serviced. But they're very open to PRs, generally speaking.

> Or the issue that resolvconf replacement in systemd will just roll a dice on DNS ordering, but hey, Mr. Lennart doesn't use openvpn so it's not real issue ( https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/27543 )

Quickly taking a peek here (and speaking as a relatively superficial user of resolved myself), isn't the proposed solution to define interface ordering?

> it will ask on all links in parallel if there's no better routing info available. In your case there is none (i.e. no ~. listed among your network interfaces), hence it will be asked on all interfaces at the same time.
by SilverElfin | 2026-01-28 17:36:15+00:00
H1B workers cost more on average than permanent residents. That’s just based on salary. Once you account for the fees and legal costs and risks of the immigration process, H1B workers are way more expensive. Also, these visas can be transferred between companies.

There’s no such thing as an indentured servitude class here - this is just part of the giant racist misinformation machine of the right, to make it seem like shutting it down would somehow be doing those employees a favor. In reality it’ll hurt the entire country.
by mihailstoian | 2026-01-28 17:36:27+00:00
If you're referring to estimating join sizes, i.e., the stuff you have to estimate before you actually build the query plan, we're _almost_ there (but not yet). Do check out the following papers that show that you can obtain provable bounds on your join sizes. Basically, given a SQL query, they'll tell you how many tuples (max and min, respectively) the query will return.

1. LpBound: join size upper bounds. It still doesn't have full SQL coverage, e.g., string predicates, window functions, subqueries etc., but as with all cool stuff, it takes time to build it.

2. xBound: join size lower bounds. We showed how to do it at least for multi-way joins on the same join key, e.g., many subexpressions of the JOB benchmark have this shape. Still open how to do the rest - I'd say even harder than for upper bounds! (NB: I'm an author.)

[1] LpBound: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.05912

[2] xBound: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13117
by Ravi1122 | 2026-01-28 17:36:39+00:00
I built a command-first agent framework where:

if it’s not a command, it’s not allowed

if it’s not listed, it does not exist

ambiguity → abort

No guessing. No fallback. No hidden tools.

This is for people who want agents to behave like deterministic systems, not improvisational assistants.

GitHub: <https://github.com/qiuy-collab/PCAF-Personal-Command-Based-A...>
Show HN: Noether – ML framework to train physical engineering models
by markush_ | 2026-01-28 17:37:00+00:00
I am a software engineer at Emmi AI and we just released the open source framework we are using to train large-scale surrogate ML models.

Our aim was to lower the entry-barrier for Engineering AI, to get the power of modern deep learning into classical engineering.

Engineering and simulation data such as what is used for example in Computational Fluid Dynamics is of high-cardinality. Single examples can be up point clouds with multiple millions of points, requiring distinct approaches to models architectures and data loading that aren't served well by other frameworks. Noether comes with optimized architectures and components that make it easier to train models on simulation data.

We also provide a tutorial that runs you through all the steps involved in training a surrogate model: https://github.com/Emmi-AI/noether/blob/main/tutorial/README...
by PlatoIsADisease | 2026-01-28 17:37:37+00:00
>Linux still has it's fair share of bugs

>Linux, for all it's issues

You are confusing debian-family with Linux. Debian family is designed to be outdated upon release. When they say "Stable" it doesn't mean 'Stable like a table'. It means version fixed. You get outdated software that has bugs baked into it.

Fedora is modern and those bugs are fixed already.

Reminder Fedora is not Arch. Don't confuse the two.
by simgoh | 2026-01-28 17:37:41+00:00
I agree. I also think that not everyone (I couldn't say if this is generational, I see this among peers sometimes too) has the same appetite for problem solving. People hit a problem or a wall and say "So I tried X and now I see Y. I dont know what to do" and then they just sit there. The reason that LMGTFY and RTFM come off as "elitist" is because people are frustrated by others' willingness to just "stop trying" whenever they hit a road block.
by magicalhippo | 2026-01-28 17:37:52+00:00
No, that does not make sense, because it goes against the systemd documentation.

Targets[1]: Target units do not offer any additional functionality on top of the generic functionality provided by units. They merely group units, allowing a single target name to be used in Wants= and Requires= settings to establish a dependency on a set of units defined by the target, and in Before= and After= settings to establish ordering.

boot-complete.target[2]: Order units that shall only run when the boot process is considered successful after the target unit and pull in the target from it, also with Requires=.

Note use of "only run" with a reference to Requires=.

time-sync.target[3]: This target provides stricter clock accuracy guarantees than time-set.target (see above), but likely requires network communication and thus introduces unpredictable delays. Services that require clock accuracy and where network communication delays are acceptable should use this target.

Especially note the last sentence there.

The documentation clearly indicates that targets can fail, and that services that needs the target to be successful, should use Requires= to specify that.

If the above is not true, the Requires= and Targets documentation should be rewritten to explicitly say that targets might fulfill Requires= regardless of state. Also, the documentation for time-sync.target should explicitly remove the last sentence and instead state there is no functional difference between Requires=time-sync.target and Wants=time-sync.target, it is best-effort only.

[1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...

[2]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...

[3]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...
by saberience | 2026-01-28 17:38:18+00:00
ChatGPT, please summarise this long essay by Stephen Wolfram into a couple of pithy sentences:

TLDR: AI won’t “end work” so much as endlessly move the goalposts, because the universe itself is too computationally messy to automate completely. The real risk isn’t mass unemployment—it’s that we’ll have infinite machine intelligence and still argue about what’s worth doing.
by brockers | 2026-01-28 17:38:38+00:00
It might be just my perception, but it seems like every single time anthropologist make statements to the effect that complex human development didn't start until XX they are proven wrong. It wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't for the fact that those "estimates" are generally used as proof to dismiss alternative timelines for human progression. I'm certainly not trying to say the planet had Atlantis with flying cars 300,000 years ago; but it certainly seems plausible that there were large/complex societies beginning long before the advent of our current written history... an idea that is regularly dismissed as foolish.
by reddalo | 2026-01-28 17:38:45+00:00
Speaking of "Content Creation", I'd also like to add the Affinity Suite. I don't particularly like it after being bought by Canva, but it works almost flawlessly on Linux.

You can even download a ready-to-run AppImage (no need to tinker with Wine settings) from here: https://github.com/ryzendew/Linux-Affinity-Installer/release...

I just wish Affinity would release a native port, but in the meantime, this works really good.
by fc417fc802 | 2026-01-28 17:38:58+00:00
I think all of that comes down to being a matter of what precisely you're attesting? So I'm not actually clear what we're talking about here.

Given secure boot and a TPM you can remotely attest, using your own keys, that the system booted up to a known good state. What exactly that means though depends entirely on what you configured the image to contain.

> it won’t protect from malicious updates to configuration files

It will if you include the verified correct state of the relevant config file in a merkel tree.

> It won’t let me run arbitrary binaries (putting a nail to any local development), or if it will - it would be a temporary security theater (as attackers would reuse the same processes to sign their malware).

Shouldn't it permit running arbitrary binaries that you have signed? That places the root of trust with the build environment.

Now if you attempt to compile binaries and then sign them on the production system yeah that would open you up to attack (if we assume a process has been compromised at runtime). But wasn't that already the case? Ideally the production system should never be used to sign anything. (Some combination of SGX, TPM, and SEV might be an exception to that but I don't know enough to say.)

> Attestation is for protecting against actors with local hardware access. I have FDE and door locks for that already.

If you remotely boot a box sitting in a rack on the other side of the world how can you be sure it hasn't been compromised? However you go about confirming it, isn't that what attestation is?
by ErroneousBosh | 2026-01-28 17:39:00+00:00
> My next PC upgrade will probably be getting rid of my Nvidia 1660 super and getting something AMD for less headaches.

Then you'll have AMD headaches. NVidia is the only accelerated graphics card fully supported on Linux.

You only get acceleration in AMD if you use their binary-only drivers and they only support cards for about a year.
by DrBazza | 2026-01-28 17:39:14+00:00
> Windows 11's file browser lags when opening directories with more than 100-ish files. Windows 11's file browser takes a few seconds to open at all.

There's a guy that has written their own version of explorer that's so fast in comparison to the built-in, that you'd think they were cheating somehow because of everyone's experience with explorer.

And someone has written an IDE for C++ that opens while Visual Studio is on its splash screen.

And another that has written a debugger with the same performance.

And a video doing the rounds of Word ('97?) on spinning rust opening in just under 2 seconds.

Basically, everything MS is doing is degrading performance. Opportunities for regular devs to go back to performant software, and MS is unlikely to fix theirs in the foreseeable future.
by mekdoonggi | 2026-01-28 17:39:16+00:00
I'm hopeful that the pressures on the administration prevent a massacre in Minneapolis, but it's a possibility. The propaganda repeaters are working overtime, but surely the electorate in the US is being moved by the media coming out of Minneapolis.

I feel that this issue is engulfing the administration, and they have no ability to take any accountability.

I hope that it's been made plain to everyone with the ability to reason that MAGA are fascists and bootlicking cowards to a man, and that progressives are teargas eating revolutionaries.
by arjie | 2026-01-28 17:39:32+00:00
Oh the alternative isn't taking a credit card out of my wallet and all that. It's scanning my Amazon Prime QR code and then tapping my watch after selecting the credit card. But it isn't "hard" per-se, just mildly inconvenient, and yes it doesn't take much inconvenience for me to volunteer my biometrics. Clearly that isn't sufficiently common a position or they wouldn't be removing it so your surprise is likely quite common as well.
by calmbonsai | 2026-01-28 17:39:39+00:00
I once had sushi (at a group table) with the man at a JavaOne.

They say "don't meet your heroes", but he was exactly as gracious, humble, funny, and knowledgeable as you would expect.

This was just after the first "Embedded Java" specs came out and we all had grand fun recognizing the over-engineering and dead-on-arrival of that architecture.
by rayiner | 2026-01-28 17:39:50+00:00
I think you're correct that independents are broadly non-liberal, but I don't think it's accurate to say that they're in "lockstep" with anyone. Largely because the modern GOP is quite factionalized: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjso..... See Figure 2.

Harvard-Harris does great issue polling that breaks down views on issues by political affiliation. Check out page 23 of the following: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/HHP...

Independents clearly are aligned with Trump on many issues. For example, 63% support eliminating racial preferences in hiring and awarding government contracts, 65% favor closing the border, and 63% align with Trump on various gender-identity issues.

On the other hand, independents also in-conflict with the establishment GOP on a number of other issues. 86% favor measures to lower Medicare drug prices, while only 36% support adding work requirements to Medicaid. (Harvard-Harris doesn't poll on abortion, but independents tend to be genuinely between the parties on that issue.)

I think in the social circles of people who are still dating, whether someone is liberal or conservative is defined in terms of views on immigration or gender, rather than medicaid work requirements. So independents present as overwhelmingly conservative in that context. But that doesn't mean that independents are "lockstep aligned with the Republican Party" on tax cuts or other issues like that.