MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ingohelpinger | 2026-01-28 09:01:19+00:00
I’m skeptical about the push toward third-party hardware attestation for Linux kernels. Handing kernel trust to external companies feels like repeating mistakes we’ve already seen with iOS and Android, where security mechanisms slowly turned into control mechanisms.

Centralized trust
Hardware attestation run by third parties creates a single point of trust (and failure). If one vendor controls what’s “trusted,” Linux loses one of its core properties: decentralization. This is a fundamental shift in the threat model.

Misaligned incentives
These companies don’t just care about security. They have financial, legal, and political incentives. Over time, that usually means monetization, compliance pressure, and policy enforcement creeping into what started as a “security feature.”

Black boxes
Most attestation systems are opaque. Users can’t easily audit what’s being measured, what data is emitted, or how decisions are made. This runs counter to the open, inspectable nature of Linux security today.

Expanded attack surface
Adding external hardware, firmware, and vendor services increases complexity and creates new supply-chain and implementation risks. If the attestation authority is compromised, the blast radius is massive.

Loss of user control
Once attestation becomes required (or “strongly encouraged”), users lose the ability to fully control their own systems. Custom kernels, experimental builds, or unconventional setups risk being treated as “untrusted” by default.

Vendor lock-in
Proprietary attestation stacks make switching vendors difficult. If a company disappears, changes terms, or decides your setup is unsupported, you’re stuck. Fragmentation across vendors also becomes likely.

Privacy and tracking
Remote attestation often involves sending unique or semi-unique device signals to external services. Even if not intended for tracking, the capability is there—and history shows it eventually gets used.

Potential for abuse
Attestation enables blacklisting. Whether for business, legal, or political reasons, third parties gain the power to decide what software or hardware is acceptable. That’s a dangerous lever to hand over.

Harder incident response
If something goes wrong inside a proprietary attestation system, users and distro maintainers may have little visibility or ability to respond independently.
by epaga | 2026-01-28 09:01:45+00:00
It's almost depressing to me how much this post feels like a breath of fresh air if for nothing else than because it's clearly hand-written, not ghost-written by LLM.

No repetitive short sentences, no "Not X, just Y." patterns, and lots of opinionated statements, written confidently in the first person.

Please more of this.
by Arathorn | 2026-01-28 09:01:51+00:00
What on earth are you talking about? They do entirely different things! MLS is an E2EE protocol, whereas Matrix is effectively a conversation-syncing protocol which supports multiple E2EE mechanisms, including MLS.

Source: Guy who started Matrix, was in the room at IETF 101 when MLS was proposed and ratified it for Matrix, and has been working away on the various approaches to use MLS on Matrix.
by andychiare | 2026-01-28 09:02:44+00:00
I love Borges and his lucid hallucinations.
As this story highlights, when a representation of reality (the map) ends up mapping reality one by one, the representation becomes useless.
I see this as a warning for the progress of AI.
When AI maps human intelligence one by one, it will be useless (or perhaps we will be the ones who will be useless).
by mkl | 2026-01-28 09:02:47+00:00
I think it may be a generic word that's hard to trademark or something, as the existing scientific analysis software called Prism (https://www.graphpad.com/) doesn't seem to be trademarked; the Trademarks link at the bottom goes to this list, which doesn't include Prism: https://www.dotmatics.com/trademarks
by jackfranklyn | 2026-01-28 09:03:28+00:00
Playwright + something like Claude with computer use is probably closest to what you're describing. Though I'd push back a bit on the approach.

The flaky test problem usually comes from either race conditions (waiting for wrong things) or environmental differences. Adding AI vision on top often adds another layer of flakiness - now you're debugging "why did the model misread this button" on top of "why did the test timeout."

For mocking external services specifically - tools like MailHog (email) or mock OAuth providers tend to be more reliable than screenshot-based approaches. The determinism matters.

That said, if you genuinely need to test against production-like visual state - Playwright's screenshot comparison (toHaveScreenshot) combined with proper wait strategies has gotten pretty solid. The visual regression approach catches layout bugs that functional tests miss.
by esjeon | 2026-01-28 09:03:40+00:00
Hmph, AFAIK systemd has been struggling with TPM stuff for a while (much longer than I anticipated). It’s kinda understandable that the founder of systemd is joining this attestation business, because attestation ultimately requires far more than a stable OS platform plus an attestation module.

A reliably attestable system has to nail the entire boot chain: BIOS/firmware, bootloader, kernel/initramfs pairs, the `init` process, and the system configuration. Flip a single bit anywhere along the process, and your equipment is now a brick.

Getting all of this right requires deep system knowledge, plus a lot of hair-pulling adjustment, assuming if you still have hair left.

I think this part of Linux has been underrated. TPM is a powerful platform that is universally available, and Linux is the perfect OS to fully utilize it. The need for trust in digital realm will only increase. Who knows, it may even integrate with cryptocurrency or even social platforms. I really wish them a good luck.
by globular-toast | 2026-01-28 09:04:13+00:00
There are wooden framed houses built in the UK now, particularly in Scotland. The problem with a lot of American houses is the piss poor insulation which leads to energy usage 2-3x that of equivalent European houses. Maybe that's changing now.

A big problem with houses is we never rebuild. It's kind of crazy. We replace almost everything else eventually, including commercial buildings. Skyscrapers only last a few decades. But we expect houses to last forever. But they're only getting older. Is it possible to strip a wood building right back to the frame and start again?
by londons_explore | 2026-01-28 09:04:49+00:00
As soon as you get to ~99% accuracy, you probably don't need to go further.

If the customer is accidentally billed for an orange instead of a tangerine 1% of the time, the consumer probably won't notice or care, and as long as the errors aren't biased in favour of the shop, regulators and the taxman probably won't care either.

With that in mind, I suspect Amazon Go wasn't profitable due to poor execution not an inherently bad idea.
by burnt-resistor | 2026-01-28 09:05:20+00:00
Globally, Steven Joyce better watch out. ;)

Tactical frivolity includes but is not limited to: drums, bubbles, flowers, glitter, frog costumes, and even (non-human and non-Homan) dildos. All the weird fun stuff and people found in Portland, Santa Cruz, SF Bay to Breakers, and Buck's of Woodside.

80-90% of both US major political parties at the federal level deserve rubbery dong awards for being absolute dicks for a firm 30+ years.
by zahlman | 2026-01-28 09:06:14+00:00
> Some rando on X saying "OMG! I infiltrated a lefty signal group" doesn't mean said rando actually did infiltrate a signal group.

Cam Higby has close to 400 thousand followers and routinely gets multiple millions of views on his tweets, including almost 23 million views on his pinned "OMG! I infiltrated a lefty signal group" tweet. And this tweet is the start of a thread that provides quite a lot of (watermarked) evidence that he did, in fact, infiltrate such a group.
by microtonal | 2026-01-28 09:07:05+00:00
Actually, they are eliminating 3000 of the 4500 engineering manager positions. However, of those 3000, they are moving 1400 to an engineering position. The article also says that engineers are spending 35% of the time coordinating with their managers and that they want to cut the red tape with this move.

Of course, it's hard to tell how much is PR and how much reality. However, if there is substance to it, it would want me to work there even more, since they value engineering culture over management culture. Having more velocity is good.
by idle_zealot | 2026-01-28 09:07:51+00:00
> Now suddenly they understand the value of an armed citizenry as a final last resort against tyranny, something the right has understood for years

What? I thought it was pretty clear that I don't consider an armed citizenry to be doing us any good. The government can take the guns, I don't give a shit. It should also stop arming Police and other goons. We can all slug it out in the streets with batons ;)
by UltraSane | 2026-01-28 09:08:17+00:00
Vietnam invaded Cambodia in December 1978 primarily to stop relentless border incursions, attacks on villages, and massacres of Vietnamese civilians by the Khmer Rouge regime. This led to the end of Khmer Rouge, which was a VERY GOOD THING. China was HELPING the Khmer Rouge, so yes, it actually was rather "imperialist aggressiony". I haven't encountered a Khmer Rouge apologist in a long time.
by Ronsenshi | 2026-01-28 09:08:25+00:00
This has nothing to do about ageism. This applies to any person of any age who has ego big enough to think that their knowledge of industry is relevant after they take prolonged break and be socially inept enough to brag about how they are still "in".

I don't disagree with your point about fundamentals, but in an industry where there seems to be new JS framework any time somebody sneezes - latest tools are very much relevant too. And of course the big thing is language changes. The events I'm describing happened in the late 00s-early 10s. When language updates picked up steam: Python, JS, PHP, C++. Somebody who used C++ 98 can't claim to have up to date knowledge in C++ in 2015.

So to answer your question - people were laughing at his ego, not the fact that he didn't know some hot new framework.
by saaaaaam | 2026-01-28 09:08:49+00:00
Gotcha, thanks for explaining. It’s interesting because there are times I say “look at his document and do this” but forget to attach the doc. I’ve always had the sense Claude is better “prepped” when it anticipates he document coming. Sometimes I’ve said “in the next message I’m going to give you a document, here is what I want you to do, if there’s anything you are unclear in before we begin ask me questions”. This seems to bring better results, but I’ve not done any sort of robust test.
by modo_mario | 2026-01-28 09:08:57+00:00
>Insults aren't helping your case.

It sucks that you started with them then by calling people who disagree with you racist.

>What are the effects you're referring to here?

Drastically reduced wage bargaining power in various sectors and also for general unskilled labour typically done by students and the like.
Straight up displacement in some areas.
More strain on a housing supply that's already incredibly overvalued.
Hell I'd argue that the migration was incentivized by the canadian local governments tax dependence on housing prices going up.
by Otterly99 | 2026-01-28 09:10:06+00:00
Probably because:

- Banning things for non-adults is easier, they don't vote.
- In the eyes of the law, social media is now seen as cigarettes and alcohol. Something teenagers should not be allowed to have access to, but is fair game once you are adult.

I don't fully agree with the ban for the same reasons you cited, but knowing that social media companies (mostly facebook and youtube) have known for years that their platform have been used for spreading radicalization (source: the book "The chaos machine") and have dodged any accountability, maybe it is a good solution after all, it is hard to say...
by microtonal | 2026-01-28 09:10:23+00:00
I (native speaker) read it as cutting 3000 of the 4500 managers (keeping 1500) of the engineering arm. Of those 3000, ~1400 will move to an engineering position (probably because they are actual engineers promoted to management) and the rest is let go.

ASML wil zo’n 3000 van de 4500 banen van managers in de engineeringtak laten vervallen. De verwachting is dat ongeveer 1400 mensen een nieuwe functie als engineer kunnen gaan vervullen. „Van ongeveer 1700 mensen verwachten we afscheid te moeten nemen”, stelt financieel topman Roger Dassen in een toelichting.
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-01-28 09:10:29+00:00
I want to say "it's because they're Dutch lol" but it's signed by Cristophe (Fouquet), who is French.

1700 managers is a lot, but also, it's a huge multinational so I'm not surprised they have that many. They will be alright I'm sure - one, if there's any forced firings they will be well taken care of under Dutch labour laws, and two, ASML will look very good on a CV.
by wink | 2026-01-28 09:10:35+00:00
I get 16% deduction for having text links (no js, no embeds) to twitter and facebook, one each.

Thanks for reminding me to remove these, but "how dependent your website is on Non-EU services." is just 100% wrong here.

edit: ok, I saw someone else also posted that.

edit2: OK, another page where I have a ton of youtube embeds (but all behind some JS to show a static image before you click) gets 94% - that page is actually, 100% useless without youtube.
by 0xDEAFBEAD | 2026-01-28 09:10:46+00:00
Which guideline? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it should be fine for you to link a few "I support Trump" comments from the past week? Note that believing the Trump administration is correct on a particular issue, or that they are being unfairly criticized, is not the same as advocating that people vote for Trump. I wasn't able to find anything I would consider actual Trump support from a quick skim of recent threads. I don't believe I've ever seen it on HN.
by flohofwoe | 2026-01-28 09:11:01+00:00
Heh, I went down that same rabbid hole recently, but in addition to 'shell scripting tasks' also describe a whole C/C++ build in Deno-flavoured TS instead of wrestling with cmake syntax: https://github.com/floooh/fibs - and while at it, also allow to integrate build jobs written in Typescript into the C/C++ build.

...this is the same sort of 'works for me' philosophy as in Matklads post though, it's so heavily opinionated and personalized that I don't expect other people to pick it up, but it makes my day-to-day work a lot easier (especially since I switch multiple times between macOS, Linux and Windows on a typical day).

I'm not sure if Bun can do it too, but the one great thing about Deno is that it can directly import without requiring a 'manifest file' (e.g. package.json or deno.json), e.g. you can do something like this right in the code:

import { Bla } from 'jsr:@floooh/bla^1';

This is just perfect for this type of command line tools.
by thinkingemote | 2026-01-28 09:13:37+00:00
The news is what's new, uncommon, strange, interesting. Shiny, attractive, shocking, raging: dopamine raising and cortisol antagonising. The news doesn't describe our actual lives. But the news does sometimes contain information relevant to our lives!

I find I will hear about the relevant things from people and events around me, whether or not I follow the news. The news doesn't have any actual bearing on my life but the news does have a few stories that do have bearing.

So theres no downside of not following the news. I will hear what I need to and want to hear about from people around me or other sources.

Some think that in not consuming what they think I should consume, that this is a morally wrong thing to do. They will be personally offended, how can they ignore my story? There is a case that if we all stopped following the news then how can the other sources inform us, so there would still be a benefit to reporting...

Consider two anthropologists examining a culture. One only has remote access to every news source the culture produces for itself, the other can only talk face to face with people. Which one will understand the people more?
by IshKebab | 2026-01-28 09:14:03+00:00
> Why do you find it better than Python?

I said already - the main reason is you can import files by relative file path.

You can get close to the Deno UX with uv and a script like this:

#!/usr/bin/env -S uv run --script
#
# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.12"
# dependencies = ["httpx"]
# ///
import httpx
print(httpx.get("https://example.com"))

But you still have to deal with the venv e.g. for IDE support, linting and so on. It's just more janky than Deno.

I wish someone would make a nice modern scripting language with arbitrary precision integers, static types, file path imports, third party dependencies in single files, etc. Deno is the closest thing I've found but in spite of how good Typescript is there are still a ton of Javascript warts you can't get away from (`var`, `==`, the number format, the prototype system, janky map/reduce design, etc.)
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-01-28 09:14:08+00:00
And they can look forward too, their order book has tens of billions in there for the coming years. And that's orders, on top of that comes the maintenance and support for all the machines in operation - in 2023 they delivered 449 machines (not just their top of the line stuff), which means that there's thousands of machines in operation requiring regular maintenance etc.

ASML's bet paid off and for now at least their business is very sustainable.
by matsemann | 2026-01-28 09:14:36+00:00
I love https://www.timeanddate.com , they have surprisingly much nice content. Lots of stuff probably possible to find elsewhere, but it's a nice collection of utility.

- Use their calendars all the time for various planning or visualizations. Like before exams I used to print one out, mark each exam, and work backward which days I would study for which subject.

- The astronomy stuff is super useful. https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/ and it runs great on a phone. Aka I can be outside and use this page to know exactly what I'm looking at in the sky, or use it to plan to see what will be visible tonight.

- I have a simple timer counting down to our planned vacation. Just fun to go to the tab and daydream.

- When various holidays or red days are. Especially those that move and aren't normally marked on a calendar. Like when this and that part of Norway has their winter break.
by Slartie | 2026-01-28 09:15:48+00:00
Which is mostly the result of clever engineers that produced a machine no other company in the world can assemble, but that is absolutely crucial to businesses valued at double-digit trillions of dollars.

You don't really need an army of sales managers to sell such a product. Going lean on management and more heavy on engineering is therefore a good idea if you want to keep the lead you have.
by ingohelpinger | 2026-01-28 09:16:03+00:00
Appreciate the clarification, but this actually raises more questions than it answers.

A "robust path to revenue" plus a Linux-based OS and a strong emphasis on EU / German positioning immediately triggers some concern. We've seen this pattern before: wrap a commercially motivated control layer in the language of sovereignty, security, or European tech independence, and hope that policymakers, enterprises, and users don't look too closely at the tradeoffs.

Europe absolutely needs stronger participation in foundational tech, but that shouldn't mean recreating the same centralized trust and control models that already failed elsewhere, just with an EU flag on top. 'European sovereignty' is not inherently better if it still results in third-party gatekeepers deciding what hardware, kernels, or systems are "trusted."

Given Europe's history with regulation-heavy, vendor-driven solutions, it's fair to ask:

Who ultimately controls the trust roots?

Who decides policy when commercial or political pressure appears?

What happens when user interests diverge from business or state interests?

Linux succeeded precisely because it avoided these dynamics. Attestation mechanisms that are tightly coupled to revenue models and geopolitical branding risk undermining that success, regardless of whether the company is based in Silicon Valley or Berlin.

Hopefully this is genuinely about user-verifiable security and not another marketing-driven attempt to position control as sovereignty. Healthy skepticism seems warranted until the governance and trust model are made very explicit.
by zahlman | 2026-01-28 09:16:25+00:00
> The primary criticisms of the current ICE surge in Minnesota focus on the general aggressiveness and lack of professionalism of these agents

This doesn't seem to have been remotely as much of an issue in states where local law enforcement cooperates with ICE and where protesters generally don't physically get in the way and don't resist arrest on the relatively rare occasions of arrest. This seems, to me, unlikely to be a coincidence.
by idle_zealot | 2026-01-28 09:17:07+00:00
If she was trying to blokade the street she was doing a pretty bad job. A car goes past hers in the video where the murderer shoots her three times and calls her a "fucking bitch" while her corpse weights down the gas and her SUV goes careening down the road.

That's just normal law enforcement behavior though. I'm sure if she hadn't been short with him he would've otherwise been well-behaved and enforced our immigration laws without incident.
by sjw987 | 2026-01-28 09:17:10+00:00
I think it's important to keep reading the news occasionally.

Personally, I, as a programmer, read the news in the same way as my grandad who was a farmer. I read a printed weekly publication (in my case The Economist) on Sunday morning. Outside of Sunday morning I don't read the news at all.

I prefer printed news to media-supported news, because I think the imagery (I acknowledge The Economist still has images) and presentation of news, especially on TV detracts from the message it's trying to convey a lot of the time. After reading some of Neil Postman's books (notably Amusing Ourselves to Death), I find it strange to watch televised news whereby one minute I'm watching footage of a disaster, then the next minute I'm seeing sports news updates or an advert. Just like normal learning, I think news demands longer form content for proper understanding.

Reading the news on a low frequency basis also gives time for news stories to properly develop. Breaking news can be filled with speculation and incorrect details, which even if you keep up with, you can miss later corrections or crucial details. Not to mention the stress involved in it. Chances are if some real breaking news happens, like a natural disaster or war, I'll hear somebody else tell me.
by t43562 | 2026-01-28 09:17:49+00:00
I haven't used Devuan for a while but I use another systemd-free distro and I think all such distros have benefited from work that Devuan has done to keep the option on the table.

I think you can even get my favorite init system on Devuan now - dinit. It has a simple and useful service file format that's trivial to use and it can monitor and restart processes and users can use it for starting up their daemons etc - BUT it doesn't take over the world and the log file formats are all text.
by Cthulhu_ | 2026-01-28 09:17:51+00:00
Possibly, but there's no-compete clauses (which are hard to enforce), plus these are mostly managers, not engineers, definitely not engineers that have the deeper knowledge of the systems.

But even the knowledge on its own is enough - after all, a lot of that is in published scientific papers already. ASML works because they combined everything. China can't just build a copy of their EUV machines without also having a copy of their suppliers.