MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by neogodless | 2026-01-28 19:02:27+00:00
Yeah, I was using Linux Mint at the time. Which is based on Ubuntu... So that's often where I'd look for help.

Though any kind of documentation is like Linux, scattered and inconsistent. And I'm "OK" with that, as in I think the way that Linux came to be and is maintained, and provides user choice is also the reason why it's not "user-friendly" in every scenario. You can choose your distribution, and a lot of other things. And then look in a wide variety of places for bug reports, user questions, etc. You'll get a variety of answers from "it just works for me" to "change your distribution that you chose" to "even though some guides say to use Lutris, it's easier to just put it in Steam's external program launcher and choose Proton version x.yz."

Even then, not everything will work because it wasn't written to work (for Linux). It was written to work for Windows, and then some smart people rolled up their sleeves and found ways to make a great many things work for Linux, and it's all amazing. And I find using Linux (mostly) quite pleasant. But when things don't work... there's going to be friction. It will take user effort to find a solution, or a solution might not be found.

And for me personally, being someone who really likes to poke and customize and do things my way, Linux is a blessing and a curse, because I can guarantee I'll hit "weird edge cases" like trying to use the online multiplayer part of a game instead of just single player, or try to use my laptop's brightness controls, but they don't work, or I'll want fractional scaling to work, but it won't. And maybe there's a fix out there, or maybe not. Fixes like "it works for me" or "change your distribution", though, are non-fixes. They just frustrate people. If changing my distribution fixes an issue, how many new issues does it create for me?
by NewsaHackO | 2026-01-28 19:02:34+00:00
I think tech companies are realizing that the biggest "mistake" they have ever made was giving so much freedom to the desktop user. They hate that we can look into, modify, and delete files, hate that we can add custom-made software, and hate that we can identify and turn off tracking/telemetry. They realized this with the mobile platform and locked everything down, but by that time it was already too late.
by Applejinx | 2026-01-28 19:02:40+00:00
I already do this, in the form of survivor machines made to do initial coding on a retro platform so the result will translate across all possible platforms. Got to, as I'm an Apple coder primarily, so if I want to target older machines I can only do it through a survivor machine: support is always pruned out of Xcode and it would be insane to try and patch it to keep everything in scope.
by zahllos | 2026-01-28 19:03:07+00:00
The windows assessment and deployment kit is what you need, with the windows pe add-on: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactu...

You should be aware there's a 3 day limit to uptime, then PE reboots. You can work around that: https://lsoft.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360011128377-I-n...

The other thing to tell you is that this is not a live version of windows with all the features of the full desktop. It is the windows that runs the windows installer application, so enough windows to do that and no more.

I would personally recommend linux instead.
by CamouflagedKiwi | 2026-01-28 19:03:08+00:00
I remember reading an article many years ago about product management being like being a parent, and there being a latter point where you need to let the product go and admit it's done. Windows is clearly there, and Microsoft are doing a terrible job of it. Yes, it's less relevant than it's ever been, but it's still vastly widely deployed, earns money, and delivers other cash cows (like Office) - all they have to do is do the basic stuff to keep it going and not mess it up, but somehow that is not what's happening. Wild.
by AJ007 | 2026-01-28 19:03:11+00:00
There is a good parallel here with Myspace and Facebook. Myspace added an ad network & was hammered by spammers around the same time Facebook was opening up user registration to everyone. Facebook had no ads. Myspace was dead.

This time Linux has very good game support to the point where some games have a higher FPS on Linux. It will be so expensive for Microsoft to attempt to turn this ship around, and it will likely still fail.

This is happening at the same time AI agents have gotten really good, so users will just use local AI agents to configure and troubleshoot the rough stuff about Linux. And then they will customize it so much they will never be able to go back to Windows.

Ubuntu is just fine for 99% of non tech users. Windows has so many anti-patterns, tricks, and OneDrive rugpulls now that Ubuntu is actually much safer and simpler for non-techies to use (I can also make the case it beats iOS in that department too.)
by BrandoElFollito | 2026-01-28 19:03:23+00:00
See, when the shoe bomber or the guys doing chemistry 101 in the toilets of the plane were discovered, they put a ban on liquids and almost shoes.

I was hoping nobody comes out with an explosive you can build with cotton (and a nuclear reactor, but that would be a detail for the "security compliance" people who will come up with new restrictions). We would need to fly naked and this would be annoying.

I sure like to fly a safe plane. The problem is that I am sure the people who actually want to do something bad will use, like you mentioned, alternative solutions - and I will not even have the nail file they took from me when trying to to defend the plane during the hijacking.
Show HN: StudyBuddy – an AI study assistant that just crossed 1k users
by zaizz | 2026-01-28 19:03:46+00:00
Hi HN,

I built StudyBuddy, an AI-powered study assistant for students, and it recently crossed 1,000 users.

The goal is to reduce the chaos of studying by combining planning, revision, and AI help into one place.

Recent additions:

Live web search inside the AI chatbot (real-time info)

Integrated study planner dashboard

Managed study sessions for focused work (Premium)

There’s also a small ₹99/month (~$1.20) premium plan, mainly to cover infrastructure costs.

I’d really appreciate:

Feedback on the product direction

Ideas on what would make this genuinely useful

Criticism on UX, features, or pricing

Thanks for reading, and happy to answer any questions.
by zahlman | 2026-01-28 19:03:52+00:00
You assume the consequent with your language; a dead person is not necessarily a "brick on the accelerator"; and human reaction time is a thing. Officers are expected to make decisions in the moment that are reasonable given the totality of circumstances up to that point, without the benefit of hindsight. The decision to shoot was clearly made before the SUV could at all be said to be "getting away"; if you're a trained LEO (or even just someone with a firearm and specific self-defense training) you are going to fire multiple shots.

Regardless of Good's intent (which is irrelevant to the self-defense case), at the moment the vehicle was put into drive, it was clearly pointed straight at the officer (after straightening out from the first point of the two-point turn) and only began turning later. And she was being counseled to "drive, baby, drive", which does not exactly suggest being careful. The fact that this posed a serious threat meeting the standard for self-defense is pretty easy to argue, especially given that he actually was struck by the vehicle.

The left front wheel of the SUV can be seen (in the video from behind) to spin in place for a moment on an icy road; it's unclear exactly what the officer perceived in that moment, but it could very easily be argued that the officer reasonably believed he could prevent the car from moving forward by shooting, and by the time it was moving forward it was too late. Again, human reaction time is a thing.
by ploxiln | 2026-01-28 19:04:04+00:00
Windows 11 officially requires TPM 2.0, secure-boot enabled, and an AMD Zen+ (Ryzen 2xxx) or later or an Intel Core Gen 8 or later.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/10/windows-11-the-ars-t...

> ... the best rationale for the processor requirement is that these chips (mostly) support something called “mode-based execution control,” or MBEC. MBEC provides hardware acceleration for an optional memory integrity feature in Windows (also known as hypervisor-protected code integrity, or HVCI) that can be enabled on any Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC but can come with hefty performance penalties for older processors without MBEC support.

> Another theory: older processors are more likely to be running in old systems that haven’t had their firmware updated to mitigate major hardware-level vulnerabilities that have been discovered in the last few years, like Spectre and Meltdown
by datsci_est_2015 | 2026-01-28 19:04:07+00:00
This is Gish-gallop.

Your final point essentially relies on us to believe that because we see evidence of ICE protesters doing things that range from mildly annoying to obstructive, ICE have carte blanche to execute citizens in the street should they be clever enough to manufacture the opportunity for themselves (like walking in front of a parked vehicle of a cooperative, but startled woman).

Your individual points about the technicalities of the actions of ICE being legal or illegal are imo immaterial to the above.

I’ve also seen lots of videos of extremely concerning behavior by ICE agents, like you have seen of protestors. The catch is one group of people are federal agents who can kill you without consequences, and the other group is a wide range of American citizens of varying degrees of intelligence, mental health, and passion that can’t be grouped together into a monolith to prove some point about whether they’re allowed to be executed in the streets.
by mikexen8 | 2026-01-28 19:04:26+00:00
Selftale is a next-generation creative platform that combines the magic of generative AI with the real-world possibilities of print-on-demand. With just a few words, users can generate unique AI images and effortlessly print them on a wide range of products—posters, apparel, accessories, and more. But we didn’t stop there.

We also built Selftale as a social space—a place where users can share their creations, explore what others are making, and discover trending styles, prompts, and visuals. Think of it as a creative playground meets marketplace.
by danaris | 2026-01-28 19:04:30+00:00
The big tech AI barons absolutely claim that their LLMs can replace educators, judges, lawyers, and personal trainers. I've seen some vague claims about childcare robots, but for whatever reasons anything that's not pure software appears to be currently outside their field of vision. They're unlikely to make any claims about social workers because there's not enough money in it.

No; the services that seem most intractably human, at least given the current state of things, are very much those in personal care roles—nurses, elder care workers, similar sorts of on-the-ground, in-person medical/emotional care—and trades, like plumbing, construction, electrical work, handcrafts, etc.

Until we start seeing high-quality general-purpose robots (whether they're humanoid or not), those seem likely to be the jobs safest from direct attempts to replace them with LLMs. That doesn't mean they'll be safe from the overall economic fallout, of course, nor that the attempts to replace knowledge work of all types will actually succeed in a meaningful way.
by YVoyiatzis | 2026-01-28 19:04:48+00:00
That is exactly why I ditched Microsoft for Mac thirty years ago. I’ve never looked back or regretted leaving MSFT during my "formative" years; in fact, I’m glad I did. That said, it’s great to see Linux stay the course and build a real alternative for PC users.

I’ve always wanted to try running Linux on one of my Macs, but I never seem to find the time to actually explore it. One of these days...
by hessammehr | 2026-01-28 19:04:55+00:00
Just noticed that this has made it to the front page, so just had a quick look through to see if there are any broken links, etc. (as I have a habit of forgetting them) and added the missing OnShape link to the LED strip diffuser.

Also recommend checking out the live Marimo notebook linked down at the bottom. Incredible what you can do with Pyodide + Marimo these days. I only wish there was a webassembly version of jax to make it easier to share random numpyro experiments.
by mcswell | 2026-01-28 19:05:20+00:00
> if you can demonstrate comprehension in the absence of this structure,
> I think you can make the case that it is optional and therefore may not
> rely on it.

One kind of example demonstrating the importance of structure is wh-movement (the appearance of a word like 'who' or 'what' at the beginning of a sentence, when the argument it is asking about would be somewhere deeper inside the structure). For instance "Who did John say that Mary had a fight with __?" (I've represented the position of the argument with the __.) It's been known since the 60s that there are lots of constraints on wh-movement, e.g. *"Who did John say he knew the person who had a fight with __?" (vs. the non-wh-movement sentence "John said he knew the person who had a fight with Bill.")
by drecked | 2026-01-28 19:05:24+00:00
This is mistaken in a few way.

1. In 3rd world countries everyone has a phone, usually android, no matter how poor the are. Irrespective of whether or not it has desktop capabilities. So any phone purchase is already part of their baseline expenses.

2. Any desktop/laptop purchase, even if it is $1, is an extra $1.

3. The screens/keyboards/mouse again will not likely be purchased by individuals themselves. They will have “Internet cafes”, libraries, schools, etc where those screens will be provided.
by gweinberg | 2026-01-28 19:05:25+00:00
True, but HSBC thinks you read the email, because somebody fetched the tracking pixel, right? The irony is that HSBC and others who use this kind of thing probably aren't in the least interested in when or how many times you open the email. Whoever came up with this idea (probably) really did think it was (just) a pretty good way of figuring out if they have your correct email.
by no_wizard | 2026-01-28 19:05:35+00:00
There are two sides to this that I see:

First, I'd expect the trajectory of any new technology that purports to be the next big revolution in computing to follow a distribution pattern of that similar to the expansive use of desktop computing and productivity increases, such as the 1995-2005 period[0]. There has not been any indication of such an increase since 2022[1] or 2023[2]. Even the most generous estimation, which Anthropic itself estimated in 2025 the following

>Extrapolating these estimates out suggests current-generation AI models could increase US labor productivity growth by 1.8% annually over the next decade[3]

Which not only assumes the best case scenarios, but would fail to eclipse the height of the computer adoption in productivity gains over a similar period, 1995-2005 with around 2-2.5% annual gain.

Second is cost. The actual cost of these tools is multiples more expensive than it was to adopt computing en masse, especially since 1995. So any increase in productivity they are having is not driving overall costs down relative to the gains, in large part because you aren't seeing any substantial YoY productivity growth after adopting these AI tools. Computing had a different trend, as not only did it get cheaper over time, the relative cost was outweighed by the YoY increase of productivity.

[0]: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/110th-congress-2007-...

[1]: First year where mass market LLM tools started to show up, particularly in the software field (in fact, GitHub Copilot launched in 2021, for instance)

[2]: First year where ChatGPT 4 showed up and really blew up the awareness of LLMs

[3]: https://www.anthropic.com/research/estimating-productivity-g...
by emacdona | 2026-01-28 19:05:42+00:00
> On the other hand I am also a realist and I don't think that Linux will take over the Desktop, but it will certainly have its biggest growth year ever in 2026.

I _love_ Linux, but I agree with this as well. I don't think Linux will ever be easy enough that I could recommend it to an elderly neighbor. I hope to be proven wrong, though.

What frustrates me about this particular moment is that at the same time Windows is getting worse, I feel that OS X is _also_ getting worse. This _is_ an opportunity for Apple to put a big dent in Windows market share.
by teddyh | 2026-01-28 19:05:48+00:00
That is false. If all you want is all subdomains and IP addresses, you can query each enumerated name for A records; you get any NS records (or CNAME records) on that name for free in the answer, and can follow those. ANY queries are not needed, and their removal does not help you in the slightest.

Is that your only argument?
by tonyww | 2026-01-28 19:06:09+00:00
Importance ranking is just a heuristic pass that scores/prioritizes elements (size, visibility, role, state) so the snapshot stays small and focused. It’s deterministic, not ML.

The verification layer absolutely still exists without it — assertions, predicates, retries, and artifacts all work locally. The API-backed ranking just improves pruning quality on very dense pages, but it’s not required for correctness.

You can set use_api = False in the SnapshotOptions to avoid using the api
by Gibbon1 | 2026-01-28 19:06:12+00:00
> Shouldn't we all want H1B rather than offshoring?

That's my opinion.

However there are issues with who's sucking the tit. If you bring in a bunch of people from outside instead of hiring locals that's not a win for the locals. On the other hand whats the difference for someone in San Francisco if Apple hires a guy from India vs New Jersey? Not much.

And H1B visa's can be low grade indentured servitude.
by joshstrange | 2026-01-28 19:06:50+00:00
Cook is a coward and has little to no morals. That has been laid bare for all to see. I will celebrate the day he is no longer the head of Apple. I don't care if he is doing it to shield the company, there has to be a line somewhere and from my perspective we passed it a few hundred miles back.

He will go down as a fascist supporting coward who sold his soul for 30 pieces of silver.
by jandrese | 2026-01-28 19:07:30+00:00
Turns out this is a difficult problem with no one good solution. Subjecting labor to a race to the bottom is probably the most efficient individual system from a capitalist standpoint, but it destroys itself just as much as your customers can no longer afford to buy most of the products made. The selfish strategy ruins the entire system if everybody does it.

Capitalism and Communism have opposite problems. Communism attempts to manage the markets from a top down approach, making it relatively easy to handle systemic problems but almost impossible to optimize for efficiency because there is far too much information that doesn't make it to the top. Capitalism by contrast pushes the decisions down to where the information is, allowing for excellent efficiency but leaving it blind to systemic problems.

So the best solution is some kind of meet in the middle approach that is complex and ugly and fosters continual arguments over where lines should be drawn.
by crazygringo | 2026-01-28 19:07:45+00:00
If that's the level of text size you require, you should be using sites on a large tablet, not a phone. A phone screen isn't large enough for your vision period. This is like expecting a website to be usable on an Apple Watch display. Be reasonable here.

At some point you just have to accept that your vision accommodations need to be met with a combination of hardware and software, not just software alone.
by mrguyorama | 2026-01-28 19:08:18+00:00
A fundamentally flawed way to make an argument?

Yeah I know what analogies are.

Why does my bank need to know whether the machine in my hands that is accessing their internet APIs was attested by some uninvolved third party or not?

You know we used to hand people pieces of paper with letters and numbers on them to do payments right? For some reason, calling up my bank on the phone never required complicated security arrangements.

TD Bank never needed to come inspect my phone lines to ensure nobody was listening in.

Instead of securing their systems and working on making it harder to have your accounts taken over (which by the way is a fruitful avenue of computer security with plenty of low hanging fruit) and punishing me for their failures, they want to be able to coerce me to only run certain software on my equipment to receive banking services.

This wasn't necessary for banking for literally thousands of years.

Why now? What justification is there?

A third party attesting my device can only be used to compel me to only use certain devices from certain third parties. The bank is not at all going to care whether I attest to it or not, they are going to care that Google or Microsoft will attest my device.

And for what? To what end? To prevent what alleged harm?

In what specific way does an attested device state make interacting with a publicly facing interface more secure?

It WILL be used to prevent you from being able to run certain code that benefits you at corporation's expense, like ad blockers.

Linux is supposed to be an open community. Who even asked for this?
by tadfisher | 2026-01-28 19:08:20+00:00
On the face of it, this is not true; net interest margin is still the main profit driver, followed by fees. But besides that, retail deposit customers are a conversion funnel for more lucrative financial products such as credit cards and personal loans.

And besides that, banks need capital reserves in the form of customer deposits; if too much money flows out then they will have to either acquire customers or pause their real moneymaking activity (loans).

Your account doesn't make them significant money. Retail banking in general makes boatloads of money, and deposits are central to this now that we're out of zero-interest-rate-land.
by cosmic_cheese | 2026-01-28 19:08:26+00:00
Those and other big distros are better in that regard, but they're still not perfect. Depending on one's machine and needs, there can still be pain.

One recent example I experienced is jumping through hoops to get virtualization enabled in Fedora… it takes several steps that are not obvious at all. I understand not having it enabled by default since many won't need it, but there's no reason that can't just be a single CLI command that does it all.
by oblio | 2026-01-28 19:09:38+00:00
Before LLMs it was incredibly tedious or expensive or both to get legal guidance for stuff like taxes, where I live. Now I can orient myself much better before I ask an actual tax expert pointed questions, saving a lot of time and money.

The list of things they can provide is endless.

They're not a creator, they're an accelerator.

And time matters. My interests are myriad but my capacity to pass the entry bar manually is low because I can only invest so much time.
by estimator7292 | 2026-01-28 19:09:43+00:00
No, it's not about users picking a camp, it's about developers.

It's been a long, long time since I've seen an application utterly fail to load because it's a GTK/QT/etc framework running under a totally different DE.

Gnome apps look ugly as hell under KDE[0], but they still work. As a user, you don't need to know or care in any way. It'll run on your machine.

[0]I don't know if they're ugly because of incompatibility or if that's just How Gnome Is. I suspect the latter