MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by YukiBits | 2026-01-28 16:19:27+00:00
So in other words, it is pretty much hopeless to make secure software for computers connected to the internet or outside world that lasts long enough (and takes little maintenance).
The reason being, because we cannot deal with complexity against all eventualities?
Even if we have relatively simple abstractions and tools in place?

I can see that you may point to other areas of human engineering such as bridges, buildings, vehicles.
All can fail given the right circumstances.
I am not asking for an unbreakable engineering product.
That seems to be rather impossible.

But I would still argue that the „security updates“ for engineering artifacts like bridges don’t need frequent „updates“ (i.e., maintenance, inspections).

Computers seem to be relatively more fragile unlike any analog engineering artifact in existence.
Some soldiers still need to know how to navigate with a sextant, because computer systems seem inherently fragile.

I can think of software dependencies that break constantly (e.g., Scala, Python).
Are you going to tell me that a bridge is more fragile than some Ruby package?

So in other words, how is it possible that anything having to do with computers is seemingly more prone to fail than a building, a bridge, a Cessna 172?
Yes all those classic engineering artifacts need constant maintenance, but I would argue that it is unlike (modern) software.

So my point is the fragility of software seems to require more maintenance (i.e., security updates) than any other human engineering artifact.

That seems unfortunate.
Software shall be rather something like a building (withstanding wind, earthquakes, …) and taking relatively low maintenance.

I just don’t understand why it requires frequent maintenance and „fixes“ within a given year.
Your smartphone does, your Windows 11 computer does, your Samsung TV does.
Your „smart“ vehicle does.

What is the ultimate reason that computer software cannot be like the other avenues of engineering?

Economic interests cannot be the sole culprit.
Free software like Debian needs fixes too.
by cubefox | 2026-01-28 16:19:28+00:00
It's a bit of a shame that stereoscopic 3D consoles, like the Virtual Boy (or this "Video Boy" here), are no longer a thing outside of VR. And even VR is looking bleak with Meta recently closing their game studios due to huge losses.

I guess people don't want to wear things on their faces. And autostereoscopic screens, which don't require glasses, don't work so well for stationary TVs. The Nintendo 3DS was the only successful system with (auto)stereoscopic 3D so far. Unfortunately its first hardware iteration wasn't quite there yet, and the generally low resolution was an issue.

But I think it could easily have been an optional feature of the Nintendo Switch 2, if they had built in a movable lenticular lens array and a head tracking camera, just like in the "New Nintendo 3DS" (the original 3DS used a simpler but worse system).

To get to the original 1080p resolution, they would also have needed a screen with double the horizontal resolution (3840x1080 rather than 1920x1080), since autostereoscopic screens effectively halve the usable resolution. Games that don't support 3D would just show the same image for both eyes.

It could have been an optional feature even for games that support it, with a choice between a 30FPS 3D mode and a 60 FPS 2D mode, which comes down to the same amount of rendered pixels. An ML system similar to Nvidia's DLSS might even generate the 3D effect (left and right frame) from a single rendered frame by using the depth buffer. For a smaller performance cost.

But I guess the additional hardware cost doesn't justify a cool feature like that.
by carlosjobim | 2026-01-28 16:19:35+00:00
> Does the massive wealth inequality we see today cause problems that lead to the erosion of society itself? I would say yes, definitely.

On a side note. Yes, the massive wealth inequality is eroding society. But billionaires aren't the source of this problem. They are outliers, freaks if you so will.

The real problem is the massive wealth inequality is the gigantic prices of real estate and rent, created by the monetary system being based on real estate instead of productivity. That means it is very hard for a person to claw and scratch her way to equality if they're not born with real estate or gets that benefit at an early age. For most, their irredeemable mistake in life was choosing to be born in the wrong decade.

At the same time a huge percentage of the population who has never made any effort in life and generally have no talent or any admirable qualities, get great wealth and comfort by having been born at the right time.

For every billionaire there is a a hundred thousand of the kind of person described above. Most of us have them not far away, and they have a hundred fold bigger impact on our lives than any billionaire. And at least many billionaires have at least accomplished or done - something - in their life.

> At some point, you've played capitalism through to the final level. And then you should put down the controller and go outside to listen to the birds chirping instead of frantically chasing after the growth of a number that, due to its sheer size, no longer has any concrete meaning, apart from the fact that there may be two other people whose numbers are bigger or who are hot on your heels.

Wouldn't building a rocket to go to Mars for example be such an endeavour, which is bigger than chasing the imaginary dollar number? Or the philanthropic endeavours of other famous billionaires? Or even exacting political influence in the shadows, which is probably something all known and unknown billionaires do?
by brockers | 2026-01-28 16:19:37+00:00
It seems to be, for most users who switch, that the driver is if they are primarily a consumer or creator. Unix systems have always been a preferred platform for some creators, but this effect seems to be multiplying as the focus for Windows become less and less creator friendly. Yeah, if you are a gamer and watch YouTube videos, then your path to least resistance is Windows; but if you are a software developer, web developer, music editor, video editor, et al... the ability to control, easily automate, and flexibility of your environment (not to mention the reduced system resources) become a huge advantage. There are reasons why MOST creators are moving away from Windows... and most consumers are becoming more and more comfortable with tablets and Chromebooks.
by SenHeng | 2026-01-28 16:19:41+00:00
Another thing I’ve experienced is scope creep into the average. Both Claude and ChatGPT keep making recommendations and suggestions that turns the original request into something that resembles other typical features. Sometimes that’s a good thing, because it means I’ve missed something. A lot of times, especially when I’m just riffing on ideas, it turns into something mundane and ordinary and I’ll have lost my earlier train of thought.

A quick example is trying to build a simple expenses app with it. I just want to store a list of transactions with it. I’ve already written the types and data model and just need the AI to give me the plumping. And it will always end up inserting recommendations about double entry bookkeeping.
by kllrnohj | 2026-01-28 16:19:45+00:00
> Most systems have a way to mostly override the compositor for fullscreen windows and for games

No, they don't. I don't think Wayland ever supported exclusive fullscreen, MacOS doesn't, and Windows killed it a while back as well (in a Windows 10 update like 5-ish years ago?)

Jitter is a non-issue for things you want vsync'd (like every UI), and for games the modern solution is gsync/freesync which is significantly better than tearing.
by quotemstr | 2026-01-28 16:19:54+00:00
The atomic bomb is good example of what I'm talking about. The reason we haven't had a world war in 80 years is the atomic bomb. Far from being an instrument of misery, it's given us an age of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Plus, all the anti-nuclear activism in the world hasn't come one step closer to banishing nuclear weapons from the earth.

In my personal philosophy, it is never bad to develop a new technology.
by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm | 2026-01-28 16:20:00+00:00
This is the way I see it. A lot of people can already be replaced or should be doing entirely different work to boost productivity. It is going to be a battle between people fighting for inertia and those that are looking to be ahead of the curve.

If it wasn't for an ageing society we would probably be seeing things move along faster but people have children to raise and mortgages to pay so we will see more inertia for now.
by mamonster | 2026-01-28 16:20:06+00:00
>Universities haven't caught up. Many CS programs still focus on theoretical foundations. Which means that fewer graduates train to deploy Kubernetes clusters, fine-tune large language models, or architect zero-trust security frameworks. Candidates lack the skills for industry-ready AI/cloud roles and many companies report that fresh graduates often need 6-12 months of intensive upskilling.

The whole point of your first year of work is that you get upskilled super hard. If you are hiring a fresh grad with the plan that they are a net positive before 8-12 months you are gonna have a horrible time.
by andredelima | 2026-01-28 16:20:13+00:00
I built a small execution engine for AI agents that focuses on safety and explicitness rather than capability. It provides a strict permission system, a sandbox boundary, a schema validator, and an audit logger. There is no autonomy, no hidden behavior, and no implicit capabilities.

The goal is to create a predictable, inspectable substrate for agent actions. The repository includes documentation, a threat model, a full pytest safety suite, example agents, and a minimal CLI.

Would appreciate feedback from anyone working on agent systems, security, or sandboxing.
by ManlyBread | 2026-01-28 16:20:24+00:00
According to the Steam Hardware Survey (https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...) only ~3.6% Steam users use Linux and these statistics include the Steam Deck users. SteamOS accounts for ~26% of Linux users, which in turn brings down the count to ~2.6%. For comparision, MacOS is ~2.1% of the market share at the moment. Wake me up when Linux gets to 10%.
by mindslight | 2026-01-28 16:20:26+00:00
The only thing I've found is that RMS is wrong about defining away firmware-stored-in-flash as "hardware", while getting stuck on firmware blobs loaded into coprocessors indicting whole systems. It appears to be a handwaving distinction formed from previous times - when the distinction didn't really matter, a line had to be drawn somewhere, and being able to do things like declare an entire CDROM as "free software" was a cool goal in and of itself. But these days we could use a much more vibrant definition centered around processor domains and security relationships.

For example I see zero freedom difference between my ath10k with its firmware loaded from disk by libre software, and my x520 with firmware stored in onboard flash. Neither undermines the freedom or security of my workstation user domain, and both are unfree if I get the itch to dig into modifying my network cards.
by yencabulator | 2026-01-28 16:20:48+00:00
> Unless your code is multi-threaded, to which I say, good luck!

What isn't multi-threaded these days? Kinda hard to serve HTTP without concurrency, and practically every new business needs to be on the web (or to serve multiple mobile clients; same deal).

All you need is a database and web form submission and now you have a full distributed system in your hands.
by tracker1 | 2026-01-28 16:21:17+00:00
It was a test they ran on Insiders channel to see how people reacted to them. It never mated it into GA, or for that matter the entire insiders channels... They'll feature gate things to some insiders users and A/B test them to see how the user response looks. There was a bit of an uproar at the time for those that saw them, including myself... I ditched windows altogether (except my assigned work laptop).
by dz0ny | 2026-01-28 16:21:28+00:00
I just want to mention that most apps that would be laggy on Wine just work via https://flathub.org/en/apps/ru.linux_gaming.PortProton. Install PortProton double click .exe install app and off you go.

- xTool Studio - for laser engraver
- ProppFrexx ONAIR - professional radio station
by data-ottawa | 2026-01-28 16:21:40+00:00
As a long time DS I sadly feel we filled the field with people who don’t do any actual data science or engineering. A lot of it is glorified BI users who at most pull some averages and run half baked AB tests.

I don’t think the field will go away with AI, frankly with LLMs I’ve automated that bottom 80% of queries I used to have to do for other users and now I just focus on actual hard problems.

That “build a self serve dashboard” or number fetching is now an agentic tool I built.

But the real meat of “my business specializes in X, we need models to do this well” has not yet been replaceable. I think most hard DS work is internal so isn’t in training sets (yet).
by 0x1ch | 2026-01-28 16:21:44+00:00
Been on / off Linux for the desktop since about the same time. Recurring theme across my AMD and NVIDIA gpus. Support has always sucked!

Over the years it felt like a game of whack a mole finding the right combination of driver versions, open or closed source. R9 390 owners back in the day will understand... Fast forward to now, the same problems keep occurring albeit better off then they were.
by helterskelter | 2026-01-28 16:21:45+00:00
> * Support for non-standard DPI monitors sucks, mostly because of the previous point. Wayland has fractional scaling as a sort-of workaround if you can tolerate the entire screen being blurry. Every other major OS can deal with this.

This sounds like you're using some old software. GNOME and sway have clean fractional scaling without blurring, though that hasn't always been the case (it used to be terrible).
by spacechild1 | 2026-01-28 16:21:55+00:00
> Had this person been perfectly still, he'd be still alive.

Again, I'd like to see you stay perfectly still after getting peppersprayed in the face without any reason. At no point was he threatening and attacking ICE agents. He was trying to help another woman who had just been assaulted by agents. They created the very situation that led to this tragedy.
by teekert | 2026-01-28 16:22:05+00:00
Well, it's mostly annoying if people store office docs on some samba share instead of in SharePoint/Teams. Also Teams has issues on Firefox, and sometimes also in Chromium. But overall works well enough (even with my AirPods on Linux). Things like drawing in PowerPoint in the Browser have become significantly better over the last year, before that I avoided it like the plaque. Whats missing in MS365 online is numbered captions for figures (unforgivable!), or reference management. That just really annoying if people use those features. Also, I worked in an org still on Office 2019 but mixed it with MS365, that also lead to lot of pain. It's papercuts mostly, nothing fatal.
by dijit | 2026-01-28 16:22:31+00:00
You're missing the point entirely.

The problem isn't that ads can be disabled. The problem is that a paid operating system ships with ads in the first place. Full stop. There's no universe where that's acceptable product design, and the fact that you can disable them doesn't make it less offensive.

I don't understand why you're going to bat for a trillion-dollar corporation here. Your settings work now. Great. They won't after the next feature update, this is a well-documented pattern. Windows updates routinely re-enable telemetry, Bing integration, and promotional content that users explicitly disabled. You're not configuring your OS, you're fighting it.

The TPM2 requirement is pure planned obsolescence. Millions of perfectly good machines binned because Microsoft decided hardware from 2016 is suddenly "insecure"... whilst the actual benefit is DRM enforcement and remote attestation.

It's a corporate compliance tool, not a security feature.

The Insiders build being referenced had actual web advertisements in search results. That's where this is headed. If you're comfortable defending that trajectory, carry on flipping those settings.
by ChrisArchitect | 2026-01-28 16:22:41+00:00
Just starting to skim, the New York Times article length one I can guess at: 2012 was when "Snowfall"[1] came out causing a sensation and whole shift in long format interactive articles probably going forward. And an increased battle against Facebook's video push caused by the full mainstreaming of mobile phones.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Fall
by collingreen | 2026-01-28 16:22:44+00:00
Is that what you think hitler was very famous for?

The extreme examples are an analogy that highlight the shape of the comparison with a more generally loathed / less niche example.

OpenAI is a thing with lots and lots of personal data that the consumers trust OpenAI not to abuse or lose. They chose a product name that matches a us government program that secretly and illegal breached exactly that kind of trust.

Hitler vegetarians isn't a great analogy because vegetarianism isn't related to what made hitler bad. Something closer might be Exxon or BP making a hairgel called "Oilspill" or Dupont making a nail polish called "Forever Chem".

They could have chosen anything but they chose one specifically matching a recent data stealing and abuse scandal.
by blackcatsec | 2026-01-28 16:22:45+00:00
You are conflating two different things, however.

There is a fundamental difference between the executive branch "requesting" information and the judicial branch issuing a warrant/subpoena. In the former, it is perfectly legal for Apple to say piss off. In the latter, it is absolutely not.

The US Government issues National Security Letters to every tech company operating in the United States, and it is legally mandated that companies comply with these subpoenas. So if Apple or Microsoft receive an NSL, the US Government is going to get your information. This includes anything you've uploaded to iCloud and anything in your Microsoft account/OneDrive/Bitlocker recovery keys/etc.
Show HN: I built a mesh network for Coding agent sessions called Repowire
by nomadic-coder | 2026-01-28 16:22:47+00:00
While there are some async methods for agents to communicate, essentially writing some kind of shared memory --> I couldn't find some synchronous way for agents to communicate (lies: I found some later).

I built this, and later compared it to gastown (which I forgot about when I started building it). Gastown is potentially way better than this, however Repowire doesn't have a mayor or orchestrator and instead allows agents to talk to each other directly.

Supported Claude with a lot of tmux magic (copy paste directly into claude code with tmux) and opencode with their plugin API. A lot of the business logic is coupled with naming of tmux windows and sessions (sessions = repowire circles = "vpc" for coding agents)

If folks like it, thinking of building out relay.repowire.io (now just lies) to allow multi-node comms.

The repo has a screencast
by accidentallfact | 2026-01-28 16:23:40+00:00
I think a quite unexpected (but more common sense) picture begins to emerge:

1. Language already emerged with early hominins (paranthropus and such).

2. Habilis et al developed toolmaking to a level that carrying stuff around was of critical importance.

3. H. erectus emerged from walking, and brought technology to a "civilized" level.

4. Anything post erectus evolved for civilized society.

5. The destruction of soils in eurasia about 24000 BC

6. The destruction of soils in the Americas about 9500 BC

7. Old metallurgy age.

8. Tin bronze age.

9. Recorded history.
by duffyjp | 2026-01-28 16:23:45+00:00
Thanks, yep I do have zram installed, but I'm working with mostly incompressible AI models so it really didn't help. I set it to cap at 8GB so random stuff can take advantage and I guess it helps a tiny bit, but not much.

I have a free m.2 slot and may get a cheap optane drive and use that as SWAP. I've read they're not as fast as marketed for this, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about about wearing out my SSD.
by ryukoposting | 2026-01-28 16:24:09+00:00
I just started a new job where I'm subjected to Windows 11. They gave me a behemoth of a laptop. 64GB of RAM, absolute screamer of a CPU, big GPU, the whole deal.

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.

Context menus take a noticeable amount of time to appear.

I'm getting used to a new keyboard, so I keep hitting Print Screen by accident. Half the time I can smack Esc and Snipping Tool will go away. The other half of the time, I have to mouse over and click the X to close it. There is no pattern to when Esc does/doesn't work.

If my computer goes to sleep, WSL becomes unresponsive. I have to save all my stuff and reboot to continue working.

If Windows 11 struggles this badly on a brand new laptop that I'm certain would retail for $4000+, I can only imagine how miserable it is for everyone else. All my colleagues who have been here for a bit longer got last-generation laptops. oof.

Edit... and besides, what does Windows 11 even do that KDE Plasma 5 wasn't doing a decade ago? How did it take this long to get a tabbed file browser?
by paxys | 2026-01-28 16:24:16+00:00
The simple answer is that they hire more than they fire. In a lot of cases they will fill a role immediately after they fire the last person who was in it. Average employee retention at companies like Amazon (both voluntary and forced) is ridiculously low - something like 1.5 years. PIPs, forced burnout, mass layoffs etc. are all part of the corporate strategy. The revolving door helps keep costs low because employees leave before the bulk of their stock grants have vested.
by t43562 | 2026-01-28 16:24:17+00:00
Init scripts were horrible

Here's a dinit service file for starting my bluetooth daemon:

type = process
command = /usr/lib/dinit/dbus-wait-for -s -f 4 -n org.bluez /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd
smooth-recovery = true
logfile = /var/log/dinit/bluetoothd.log
depends-on = dbus
depends-on = local.target
before = login.target
ready-notification = pipefd:4

This is about as complicated as it gets - ones I make myself might be 4 lines.

There's no dodgy bash script behind all of this - it's C++ that just works - I can stop start, list and reload services with reliability.

I love it.
by kllrnohj | 2026-01-28 16:24:35+00:00
> given that we already had a working GUI. (Maybe that was the intention.)

Neither X11 nor Wayland provide a GUI. Your GUI is provided by GTK or QT or TCL or whatever. X11 had primitive rendering instructions that allowed those GUIs to delegate drawing to a central system service, but very few things do that anymore anyway. Meaning X11 is already just a dumb compositor in practice, except it's badly designed to be a dumb compositor because that wasn't its original purpose. As such, Wayland is really just aligning the protocol to what clients actually want & do.
by 7bit | 2026-01-28 16:25:05+00:00
> idk why Arch doesn't invest in whats standard in every other major distro

Because Arch maintainers are a bunch of elitist gatekeepers that don't accept any level of knowledge that is lower than theirs. You can see that through every forum interaction generally and any discussion about the installation process specifically.

Arch is great btw. It could be greater, if all maintainers would quit.
by jamescampbell | 2026-01-28 16:25:12+00:00
This kind of reminds me of 6 minute abs vs. 7. Can't you make them 60 seconds vs. 90? lol. In all seriousness, it is in the category of Readwise for me where I do use it daily for quotes and tidbits of text that I want to remember and retain. Looks great.