MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by verisimi | 2026-01-03 07:18:53+00:00
Yes, nowhere has a 'democracy', this is a sales or branding term.

What we have is 'representative democracy' where people choose someone to represent them.

So, hundreds, thousands or even millions choose one person to represent them for 4-5 years. That person decides those people's best interests on what to do for the thousands of decisions that come up.

The representative however does not need to do any of the things they said they would. They can not be held accountable for saying one thing but doing the other (ie lying), except at the end of their term, when they can be voted out. (Giving another the chance to do the same.) They only have to catch the people's aspirations, not deliver on them.

And even on those 'decisions' that the representative does get a chance to opine and vote on, the representative is hamstrung - bills contain so much that no one would agree with. Even if there were well-meaning representatives, they are unable to do anything with bills written by lobbyists in the pay of the companies that the bill is meant to 'restrain' - representatives cannot agree only with the good and leave the bad.
by bob1029 | 2026-01-03 07:19:49+00:00
Windows activation has been a game of CTF for me since the early 2000s. I've got more than enough resources to pay for a Win11 license many times over. But I refuse to. Part is something approximating "I've already paid the windows tax 30+ times" but it's more than this. The UX regression from the XP era is shocking when you put things side by side.

I happily paid $500 for a perpetual VS2026 license just a few days ago, but I'll continue to use things like massgrave for windows no matter how big my cash pile grows. I know it's the same company, but it's really not about the money. It's about sending some kind of a message regarding software quality.

If you could give me an experience identical to VS on Linux I would move in an instant. But it simply doesn't exist. It's frankly not even close after all these years. VSCode is like the IDE "we have at home". Linux is a great target for many things now (e.g., steam deck), but using it as my daily driver development platform is still a non-starter.

I know it's possible to make anything work on Linux, but that's not a very compelling argument for me anymore. It's got to work well. The experience can't suck ass. Even the steam deck was a herky jerky OOBE with WiFi/networking woes and 5-6 reboots to get it going. That's with Gabe Newell ~in charge using billions of dollars to make it go smoothly. I don't have access to those kinds of resources so I figure why even try. I've already thrown ~5k hours into the Linux hole over my lifetime. I don't think it's an investment that has paid off very well for me. Linus himself has acknowledged that the win32 ABI is the most stable and well designed he's ever seen. Why wouldn't I follow his advice?
by moultano | 2026-01-03 07:20:18+00:00
A related idea that I'd like to see more people do. If you have 10-20 tweets on a subject, plug the holes and turn them into an essay on the real internet. My first step in writing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452763 was to copy a bunch of tweets into a doc.

Micro blogging is a great way to brainstorm and iterate on your thoughts over time, but eventually you have enough material to graduate from micro blogging to blogging, and more people should do it.
by qsera | 2026-01-03 07:20:49+00:00
I got how c++ vectors work. Rust `Vec`s work similarly IIRC. But the problem in C++ is that it allowed you to make a `Vec` from a raw pointer.

Anywany, IMHO rust has thrown the baby out with bath water. To make such errors (ie bad design) categorically impossible, it also made a huge class of valid programs also impossible. And in-turn to patch that, it gave yet another bunch of stuff (IIRC `Rc`, `RefCell`) that people are supposed to learn (they have horrible interfaces IMHO) by which some of the programs could be implemented.

I think someone else should give it another shot. May be they can come up with a better solution than this "borrow checker"..
by raffraffraff | 2026-01-03 07:21:33+00:00
I don't understand this. I no longer identify with this new "left wing" because of this type of dishonesty. It's such a simple own-goal.

News is news. Not opinions. Just report what is known. If there's contradictory information from two sides, report both and then shut up. Let the viewers form their own opinions.

But no, we can't have people forming their own opinions. So the new thing is selective reporting. The left will say "the right started this war of lies". "Yeah, well your neighbor started shitting in his lawn, are you gonna do that now?"

Not reporting on the revolt in Iran "because you're a left wing media outlet"??? What the fuck? Same here in Ireland, same in the UK.

The left doesn't realise it's an ideology. It claims that it's "reality" and all other ways of thinking are ideologies. I've actually heard people say this. "The left are science based". Lol.
by ncallaway | 2026-01-03 07:21:43+00:00
As a westerner, who believes in the rules based order, I would give anything for our leadership which is launching this illegal war to be sent to the Hague.

Our leadership are war criminals, and should be treated as such.

Some, specifically, are war criminals who have committed crimes that carry the death penalty, and should be arrested, tried, and (if found guilty) executed.
by ffsm8 | 2026-01-03 07:22:29+00:00
Yes, I think everyone, including the author of the article will agree that you've quoted the one sentence thats about playback. I agreed on that from the beginning as well. After all, after you've modified it, you will want to check if it looks as desired. You want a video player for that, ideally one that doesn't ignore things for improved compatibility.

The point was that the rest of the article wasn't and if you unironically can't tell that, then you should seriously train your reading comprehension.
by linguae | 2026-01-03 07:23:18+00:00
Good points, though I have some other thoughts (note that this is coming from an American; I don’t know the situation in other democratic countries):

1. More people have access to a university education today than in previous generations. Granted, not everybody goes to college, and I’m concerned about the relatively low standards of today’s high schools outside of highly-ranked ones that serve as feeders to elite universities.

2. I wholeheartedly agree. Moreover, I feel modern American culture as a whole, and not just politics, is very short-term driven compared to previous generations, though this is a perception and I have no data to back this up. I feel so many businesses, for example, are hyper-focused on achieving the next quarter’s targets. To put it in computer science terms, sometimes a greedy approach isn’t optimal.

3. I sympathize, but this is not the first time America has dealt with a reckless media landscape. I remember reading in high school about “yellow journalism” and its role in instigating the Spanish-American War.

4. I wonder if modern presidential primary elections helped contribute to polarization as opposed to the old, pre-George McGovern methods of choosing presidential nominees? The Democratic and Republican parties used to be less uniform ideologically, and party bosses often picked compromise candidates to try to appeal to different factions of each party. The pre-Civil Rights Democratic Party was an alliance of Northern pro-union, moderate-to-liberal politicians and Southern conservatives. The Republican Party had Northeastern moderates (like Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.) and conservatives from other parts of the country (like Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater). On one hand primaries are arguably more democratic, but on the other hand they’ve fueled polarization.

5. I’ll have to think about this some more.
by faust201 | 2026-01-03 07:26:02+00:00
My guess is that they are focused only on to cashcow -> enterprise, office, (and all Copilot BS). Sadly very few of IT people I know of move to Linux or macOS for this specific reason. Just like XP users tolerated the tons of systray, toolbar crap - most are tolerating AI shit. To be fair to even knowledgeable people, most are happy to live their live on Smartphone (+ maybe tablet). Most get a corporate laptop from work.

Or gamers that are already used to Windows. So inertia.
by bilbo0s | 2026-01-03 07:26:40+00:00
My jarring awakening to the importance of genetic and cultural Japanese-ness in Japan was when that girl won the Miss Japan pageant. She was seen as not-Japanese as she was white. Which I hadn't thought would be a problem. (Maybe it was foolish of me, but to be fair they had actually already had a black Miss Japan. So why wouldn't they accept a white one?) Anyway, it culminated in that girl giving up the crown but it taught me an important lesson after several conversations with friends.

Japanese-ness is not some backward notion from a time that the world has advanced beyond. They take Japanese-ness extremely seriously. One ignores it to their own detriment. As that particular Miss Japan contestant found out.

And as, I suspect, many foreign residents of Japan will find out in the coming years. It's unfortunate.

But culture above everything I guess?
by klipklop | 2026-01-03 07:27:16+00:00
Literally this. For the most part this part of the industry is a fraud. They just run scanning tools and hand out pdf reports. Eventually some dev or ops team will say the reasons why they currently can’t comply and the cycle will start again in 6 months.

They literally do nothing and don’t even have to help integrate the security fixes. They just give reports. A sweet gig if you can get it. People rarely want to cut “security.”
by stevekemp | 2026-01-03 07:28:20+00:00
There's a property website which covers my local area, and every few weeks I'll do a search for the city-center, and sort by highest-price.

It's fun to look at the kinda house you could buy if you had €5 million in the bank. Even though I'd never have that much, and even if I did I wouldn't spend it on such a thing.

That's a habit I picked up when I lived in the UK and I played their national lottery once every month or so.

(/r/SpottedonRightmove/ is also a fun sub if you like this kinda thing; "right move" is a UK estate agents chain.)
by panny | 2026-01-03 07:28:36+00:00
I'm in Japan now. Whatever Japan is doing, they should continue doing it. Life is much better here than in the US. By a country mile. I could elaborate for hours on this small statement. Everything in the US is worse than in Japan, except perhaps the cheese selection at the grocery store. The US does a great job on cheese, I can give our team that one. Everything else, Japan wins. It's not even a contest.

Crime rate: Japan is better.

Divorce rate: Japan is better.

Suicide rate: Japan is better.

GINI score: Japan is better.

Life expectancy: Japan is better.

Obesity rate: Japan is best in the world.

I could go on and on and on. If democracy isn't working out in Japan, that tells me democracy sucks, not Japan.
by stinkbeetle | 2026-01-03 07:29:54+00:00
Presumably also the ones who invaded Iraq and occupied Afghanistan, carried out extrajudicial executions, droned weddings, deposed Libya's leader and laid ruin to the country, trafficked arms and money to cartels in South America and ISIS / "JV team" terrorist groups to destroy the Levant Or was that "rules based order"?

I think you've been had with the whole "rules based order thing". You can keep winding the clock back and it's the same thing. Iraq 1, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, Somalia. When exactly would you say this alleged "rules based order" was great?
Ask HN: Would this tool work? Payform
by DinakarS | 2026-01-03 07:31:11+00:00
Problem: Business processes are overcomplicated and painful to manage: intake forms, proposals, invoices, payments, follow-ups, etc.
Free form submissions attracts spam.

Solution: The goal isn’t to replace these tools. It is to streamline the whole flow into one clear path.

Payform is a conversational commerce tool that helps businesses collect customer information and take payment at the end of the flow.

A conversation leads to a paid conversion.

A free form attracts spam at scale. A payment at the end reduces spam almost entirely.

Flow: • Intake questions • Options / add-ons • Price • Checkout • Receipt • Notify the business owner

It’s only a concept for now.

I am looking for feedback:
1. What would make you switch from “form + invoice” tools?
2. What are the must-have integrations or features?
3. Is the messaging clear and easy to understand?

I find it makes sense for services, events, deposits, bookings, etc.
by anon291 | 2026-01-03 07:31:13+00:00
The issue is we look upon the government for solutions. In reality, the answer always lies in us.

What people don't get about 'Anglo-American' democracy is that the various political governmental bodies ARE NOT the governing mechanism of society

If you're not president of some local board or organization, then YOU are the problem. America is a nation of presidents. Until we each do that, the country will always be missing something. Outside observers clearly noted this early on in this country's history. People completely misplace their trust today depending on the government.

This is why transplanting American legal systems to foreign cultures doesn't work. The work to be done is not governmental but rather interior to each individual in society
by no-name-here | 2026-01-03 07:31:22+00:00
1. At least packaging and clothes have more clearly defined utility.
2. There are notable movements to reduce wasteful clothes/packaging. I’ve previously heard people point to the amount of plastic used for commercial shipping, although personally it seems likely that companies use such packaging to avoid even costlier possible product damage? I’m all for reducing waste in each possible area. I guess it’s a similar discussion to the banning of plastic bags/utensils – does that cause people to think more about plastic use in other areas, or does it cause more people to be wasteful in other areas now that they don’t have their plastic forks, etc.
by db48x | 2026-01-03 07:31:32+00:00
> Well, an ostensible advantage of IPv6 is publicly routable addresses. I know how to configure my internal IPv4 network with host table entries and so on. If I move to IPv6 then my "internal" network address space is at the whim of my ISP.

This is not quite correct. You have two simple options for avoiding this: DNS and SLAAC. By giving all of your hosts dns names you don’t have to care about the individual addresses much. If they change just update the dns zone.

The second is to configure a Unique Local Address for each host using SLAAC. Have your router announce a prefix inside of fd00::/7 so that every one of your computers ends up with a private address as well as the public one. This is like using a reserved private address in IPv4, such as 10.0.0.0/8, except that there are a lot more possible networks. There is only one 10.0.0.0/8, but the convention with IPv6 ULAs is to generate 40 random bits and use them to make a /40. Add 16 more bits for a subnet id to create a /64 that your router will advertise as a prefix. This is probably overkill for most of us, but it does enable us to merge networks without causing address collisions. You can keep using them no matter what happens. Even changing ISP won't change these addresses.

Of course the third option is to buy IP transit service instead of internet access service. You can then go to your local RIR and ask them to assign you your own address block. Announcing that address block using BGP gives you a permanent block of routable addresses that follows you from ISP to ISP. But most people find that to be a bit of a hassle compared to consumer–grade internet service.
by E39M5S62 | 2026-01-03 07:31:37+00:00
Quick note on #2 - there aren't really any issues with storing your encryption root passphrase in a file. If the file is owned by root, with no read permissions for any account, only root can access it. Since it's stored on an encrypted dataset, and your initramfs is as well, it's unreadable when the machine is off. Lastly, if anybody _does_ have a root shell on your machine, they can change the encryption passphrase without needing to know the current value.

In short, I'm not sure there are any real issues with having it on disk but unreadable by anybody but root.
by AlotOfReading | 2026-01-03 07:31:38+00:00
I work in automotive for OEMs and I've seen this at many factories. They still need to switch, because their technical issues are a supply chain risk for me. I don't want to hear that a batch is bad because they did abominable things to the software they were given. That's happened. I don't want to find out that they had a system die or get hacked and now things are shut down until some eBay seller mails replacements. Seen that. So on and so forth.

I ran out of patience years ago for the inevitable results of letting an unaccountable third party own decision-making on your critical systems. I'd much rather have that argument when the CEOs aren't breathing down our necks.
by coffinbirth | 2026-01-03 07:32:01+00:00
It sadly never happened for the perpetrators of the Iraq/Ukraine/Libya/Afghan/Syria/Yugoslav/... wars. Remember Collateral Murder? And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Also, no one really cared about all the veterans back home, many of whom suffered and still suffer from PTSD. The U.S. truly is the biggest sh*thole on earth.
by thesumofall | 2026-01-03 07:32:10+00:00
> Most crucially, democracy relies on an educated electorate, but access to really excellent education is minimal globally. This exposes democracies to disinformation and populism

Not so sure about that. Some of today’s autocratic leaders are incredibly smart and educated people and still took the wrong turn. If education doesn’t work for these leaders why should it work for the electorate?

Hence, I’m leaning more towards your last point that it’s maybe more about values and morals? A common understanding of what is „good?“ You can certainly sharpen these through education but there seems to be more at play. Our world also seems to have moved beyond some of the simplistic moral frameworks of the past… Maybe the current times of turbulence are the precursor to the development of new moral frameworks?
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-03 07:32:33+00:00
> Don't you need an AUMF for this, at least in theory?

That depends on which theory, and whose narrative of the facts relevant to the theory you accept.

For theories, there are three important ones to consider:

(1) The War Powers Act is Constitutional and its terms govern Presidential use of force without a separate Congressional authorization,
(2) The War Powers Act is an unconstitutional limit on the President's inherent authority and the President's powers to prosecute war abroad, without a Congressional declaration, are broader than the War Powers Act would suggest, and
(3) The War Powers Act is an unconstitutional delegation of reserved Congressional powers to the Executive, and has no effect, leaving the President's powers to prosecute war abroad without a Congressional authorization narrower than the War Powers Act would suggest.

As to relevant factual narratives, there are at least two salient alternatives:
(1) The Government of Venezuela, through the vehicle of the Tren de Agua gang which, in fact, is an instrumentality of the state, has conducted and is conducting, since sometime before March 14, 2025, an invasion of the United States as described in President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and therefore the US is, and has been for some time, engaged in a defensive war against that attack by Venezuela,
(2) The invasion described in #1 is a fantasy, has not occurred, and the US is not engaged in a defensive war against a Venezuelan invasion.
by avidiax | 2026-01-03 07:33:20+00:00
We don't need to manufacture consent anymore. The days of protest ending a war that the US is engaged in are long gone, if they were ever here.

Even the ballot box isn't enough. We don't have an anti-war party in the US.

Our news media are largely captive to the military, with the embedded reporter system.

Congress has abdicated broad war powers to the president, and the courts won't intervene.

The global community can't do anything to the US. Sanctions are very unlikely.
by jjk166 | 2026-01-03 07:34:32+00:00
But export led growth isn't zero sum. Sure someone needs to import your products, but they are importing them because it is in their own best interest to do so. You grow by having access to a market for your goods and services, they grow by having better access to a resource than they did before. Of course these strategies can be poorly executed and may wind up leaving one party worse off, but win win situations are most certainly possible.
by fruitworks | 2026-01-03 07:35:43+00:00
1. People come here for discussions with real people. The other night I was at a party and we had a great time playing chess and board games. It would be weird if someone started using stockfish, even if it is a better player. Everything stockfish does, it already knows. It doesn't learn or explore the game-space.

2. The response is still too wordy, generic, and boring. So LLMs are not really better players, at least for now.

3. With LLMs, you can produce a ton of text much faster than it can be read. Whereas the dynamic is reversed for ordinary writing. By writing this by hand, I am doing you a favor by spending more time on this comment than you will. But by reading your LLM output I am doing you a favor by spending more time reading than you did generating.

You could probably get away with using an LLM here by copying the response and then cutting down 90% of it. But at that point it would be better to just restate the points yourself in your own words.
by alex1138 | 2026-01-03 07:36:10+00:00
Speaking personally, Reels are just annoying (not that I admire TikTok either, aligned as it probably is with the CCP)

Snapchat features are blood money, they also result in less people using Snapchat

Nobody says Zuck doesn't earn a lot of money but a lot of it is likely fraudulent and he's just not a very good person
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 07:36:11+00:00
> all those westerners who, not so long ago, were talking about "rules based order" pretend nothing is happening or to justify it

MAGA is a rejection of the international rules-based order. Trump joins Putin and Xi in explicitly rejecting it. To the extent anyone in America is calling for a return to that order, they're doing it while criticising Trump.