MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by ben_w | 2026-01-28 16:11:27+00:00
There's a lot of coverage, but:

(1) everything, including tech, disappears fast;

(2) there's a big world out there, people like me in Europe are slighly more worried about how boldly the same US citizens (yes, even on HN) who are fine with ICE killing those US citizens, are also explicitly supportive of Trump using military muscle to conquor allied territory;

(3) yes, there is a "please focus on tech, not politics unless those politics are relevant to the tech" policy, it's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
by Aperocky | 2026-01-28 16:11:33+00:00
macOS has been quite popular in the United States for a long time now (and I suspect it's not so popular in other region not due to product, but price), showing that things can exist without those "features".

I'm not even sure what macOS have for its own since I basically open either the browser or the terminal. I am vaguely aware that Finder exist when I accidentally open it maybe twice a month.
by wat10000 | 2026-01-28 16:11:36+00:00
Legal prohibitions are, but legal powers are different.

It's illegal for an insurrectionist to be President, and it's illegal for federal agents to shoot a subdued man ten times in the back, but that clearly doesn't stop it from happening.

On the other hand, consider an attempt to dictate to states how they should manage their voter rolls. Trump has tried this without success. The problem isn't that it's illegal to do this, although it obviously is. It didn't work because that power doesn't exist in the first place. He can declare that states must do this or that, but his words have no more effect than if I had said them.

Of course there are ways around this. He could cut off funding, send in goons to try to arrest officials, or send in the tanks. But this is much more difficult and makes it much more likely that he'll fail.

Imagine the situation if we didn't have a law that allowed the President to declare a national emergency and set tariffs at will. Right now, Trump can say "100% tariffs on Elbonia" and that automatically happens. Without that law, he could still say that, but it wouldn't do anything. The people who would actually enforce and collect those tariffs just wouldn't do it. We saw this happen with other tax changes like no taxes on tips. Trump couldn't just declare it and make it happen, he had to actually negotiate with Congress, and they could have blocked it if they wanted to.

Rules that say "You can't do X" are easily ignored. But structures that make it so that control is not granted in the first place are a lot harder to overcome. Not impossible, certainly, but much more difficult, and that's very much worthwhile.
by ajross | 2026-01-28 16:11:44+00:00
> I installed CachyOS, a performance-focused Arch-based distribution

Ooph. It's frustrating to see the community starting (again) to get purchase in public mind share at exactly the moment when it's least prepared to accept new users.

The Linux desktop right now is a wreck. EVERYONE has their own distro, EVERYONE has their own opinions and customizations, and so everyone is being pulled in like 72 different directions when they show up with search terms for "How do I install Linux?"

For a while, 15-ish years ago, the answer was "Just Install Ubuntu". And that was great! No one was shocked. Those of us with nerd proclivities and strong opinions knew how to install what we wanted instead. But everyone else just pulled from Canonical, a reasonably big and reasonably funded organization with the bandwidth to handle that kind of support.

Now? CachyOS. Yikes.
by radicalethics | 2026-01-28 16:11:59+00:00
I feel like this is the most natural layoff I've seen in twenty years (that is not the same as saying I feel good about it). Truly, most software companies need to cut their entire roster and re-draft quite frankly. You will need less people and have entirely new goals. This is beyond "economic" reality, AI has made it intuitive to restructure and reorient. Not doing so will just mean you will be blind-sided by any company that leaned down and re-envisioned their entire product.

So many products turned into feature mill factories. If things can get more concentrated and directed, then I think this will be better for all in terms of finding their true purpose in life.
by Levitating | 2026-01-28 16:12:11+00:00
> One of the principal reasons why I love Arch is being able to have a say in some of these base matters

Exactly, Arch allows you to do many bleeding edge things. An installer would never keep up are give you that freedom.

> I remember when Ubuntu supported root on zfs but the installer didn't it was rather involved to get the install going.

That's why many installers allow you to drop a shell when it's time to partition.

> I would have to look up the correct incantation to get the wifi connected on a newer PC

To be honest that would largely be helped if archiso would start using NetworkManager
by butvacuum | 2026-01-28 16:12:18+00:00
1) its way harder than you'd expect as many compounds are safe in low concentrations and have other uses. Take TATP- triacetone-triperoxide. yes, the peroxide and acetone(nailpolish remover) in most people's bathrooms should never be mixed.

2) might want to look up how often firearms make it onboard in carry on bagage accidentally. This isn't the typical snarky use of that phrase- it's just so insanely common people don't want to beleive it.
by throw7 | 2026-01-28 16:12:21+00:00
I switched my parents to linux during the gnome 2 days and have given them a consistent environment ever since (kept them on mate).

It is true, they could not do this themselves and sometimes my mom can test my patience, but this is the way if you can do it. (Hint: get a remote desktop with shared view working first :).

Really, the stronghold for windows is their office suite (other family require Word/Excel for work), enterprise domain integration (work to home pc familiarity), and, to a weaker extent, gaming. Gaming is why I still keep an install of windows on my pc.
by SAI_Peregrinus | 2026-01-28 16:13:03+00:00
OCB can be a bit faster than GCM, the only reason GCM took over is because OCB was patented. That patent has now lapsed, but since everyone uses GCM the performance advantage of OCB isn't likely worth switching for. Especially since GCM has hardware acceleration, and IIRC OCB can't benefit from that so it may actually decrease performance on modern CPUs.
by traceroute66 | 2026-01-28 16:13:04+00:00
> As a paying customer I'm concerned about the company's focus being blurred when there are 3.8k open issues on their Github repo and my company has been tracking some particular issues for years without progress.

I feel exactly the same way.

So many open issues, the majority thoroughly deserving of a resolution.

I would rather they get their house in order on the core product first before rushing out shiny new things .... because the shiny new alpha/beta things will only exponentially increase the number of open issues.
by WarmWash | 2026-01-28 16:13:55+00:00
I'm sure if cell phones were free, the majority would be free users too.

But beside that, OpenAI is pricing ads at $60/1000 views. That is 3x what Meta charges, which is around $20/1000. Meta pulls about $20/user/month in ad revenue. Triple that and we land at....$60/mo.
by sponaugle | 2026-01-28 16:14:17+00:00
"it lost its value".

It has not lost its value yet, but the future will shift that value. All of the past experience you have is an asset for you to move with that shift. The problem will not be you losing value, it will be you not following where the value goes.

It might be a bit more difficult to love where the shift goes, but that is no different than loving being a artist which often shares a bed with loving being poor. What will make you happier?
by ChrisArchitect | 2026-01-28 16:14:20+00:00
Earlier:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754411

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46754101

Related:

Pentagon buys device via undercover operation suspected link to Havana Syndrome

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46608913
by oldandboring | 2026-01-28 16:14:30+00:00
When I come into a new project and I find all this... "stuff" in use, often what I later find is actually happening with a lot of it is:

- nobody remembers why they're using it

- a lot of it is pinned to old versions or the original configuration because the overhead of maintaining so much tooling is too much for the team and not worth the risk of breaking something

- new team members have a hard time getting the "complete picture" of how the software is built and how it deploys and where to look if something goes wrong.
by quickthrowman | 2026-01-28 16:14:46+00:00
> That doesn't include vandalism, it doesn't include blocking roads, looting, or assaulting people. What's obvious to me is that a certain class of protestors are intentionally provoking a response from the government by breaking the law.

If protestors are doing this sort of thing to ICE agents, then ICE has probable cause to arrest them while they’re doing it. I don’t support people interfering or obstructing ICE, but standing 20 feet away and filming or blowing a whistle is not obstruction.

What I’ve seen is ICE agents losing their shit and shoving people because they can’t emotionally handle being observed and yelled at, both of which are legal. I would not be able to handle that either, I’d lose my shit too, but I’m not an ICE agent.

I’m sure there are protestors crossing the line too, they arrested a bunch of people for breaking windows at a hotel the other night. I just don’t see the need to add conspiracy charges if they can just directly charge them with obstruction when it happens.
by coffeebeqn | 2026-01-28 16:15:01+00:00
There are many really good ones these days that will have a much better experience than windows. I’ve used Ubuntu, Pop, Mint and Fedora workstation in the last 5 years and all worked great. Personally Mint Cinnamon had the least issues so I tend to run that on my machines now.

Once SteamOS becomes generally available I’ll switch to that. It’s incredibly polished on Steam Deck
by ottoflux | 2026-01-28 16:15:04+00:00
Oh wow. That's wide open then, just about any of them. I run Mint on older mac hardware (happily cruising along on an 11" MacBook Air), I'm a sucker for Ubuntu's default look and feel a lot of the time - and they have a pretty large user community (as do all the major distros), and love Fedora too.

One note - a lot of the distros are Debian based (Mint/Ubuntu/etc.) vs. Red Hat (Fedora, Asahi - M1/2 Apple hardware Fedora, etc.) vs. Arch Linux.

If you're just getting started it's probably easier to get into the Debian world, but I'd advise you to dip your toes in other distros too unless you just deeply fall in love with your first pick.

(I have my 80 year old neighbor happily running Mint on their old computer to save them from having to buy a new Windows machine.)
by blackcatsec | 2026-01-28 16:15:10+00:00
I honestly don't understand the hatred that Microsoft gets for most of the work they're doing in Windows. As I've stated before, most 'problems' people ultimately have are either configuration issues or hardware issues. And I still stand by this even as I've had issues over the years here or there.

I think the most recent 'production' Windows issue I've had was OneDrive failing to recognize it was syncing my data even though it was syncing. The status symbols for the files and folders wasn't showing up. But that's about it.

My gaming desktop is stable, my PC is rock solid, I run VMs on it (game servers, dev/test environments), and overall just absolutely 0 problems with Windows or my OS at all.

I do, however, have hardware issues semi often. One of my monitors doesn't turn off its backlight, for example. I've had Razer devices just flat out quit on me over the years (multiple Razer mice, at least a couple of Nagas, etc.).

I contend that most people would do better with Windows if they just didn't mess with it (don't run any of those tools proclaiming to "debloat" your OS), and make sure you read the hardware compatibility list of your systems REALLY hard. Incompatible RAM can cause significant problems, a lot of which is completely avoidable if you just read the RAM QVL.

The only thing that I wish vendors would do more is work closer with Microsoft to provide BIOS updates over Windows Update. But, most of these motherboard IHVs are absolutely terrible about doing BIOS updates anyway and require specific mechanisms to keep going correctly. This is in contrast to the Enterprise/Business devices released by HP or Dell which have a usually solid BIOS update track. And again, the only issue I've ever had there was incompatible RAM.
by intermerda | 2026-01-28 16:15:13+00:00
> What concentration camp?

https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...

https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-detentions-immigrant-...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/27/us-witnessed-many-i...

https://refugeerights.org/news-resources/trump-administratio...

> They're sending people home.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/blog/third-country-deportations-a...

> Do I have a right to just show up and stay indefinitely in any country on earth just because I don't like my home country?

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/nx-s1-5366178/trump-deport-ja...

> Obama supported deporting people all day long, especially criminals, but now believing the existence of borders supposedly makes one "MAGA."

Ignorance, wilful lying, no respect for due process, support for illegal state-sponsored terrorism, lack of empathy are some of the things that makes one MAGA. Not belief in the existence of borders.
by tastyfreeze | 2026-01-28 16:15:31+00:00
There are examples of 2A being used against tyrants in the US. Just not the federal level. The higher up you are rebelling against the more people you need to support you. The point of 2A is that you don't need to continue to suffer under tyrants because they have guns and you don't. If you decide it is 2A time before everybody else you are just an idiot. Actual rebellion requires support of the people and planning.

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee is one example of 2A rights being used against government successfully. The Fat Electrician has a great video about it.

https://youtu.be/tdIK3JFIWNI?si=AalvJNhY7597HRsq
by alephnerd | 2026-01-28 16:15:36+00:00
A large portion of employees on immigration visas were offered the ability to keep their job if they transferred to Amazon's India offices assuming a team was co-located there as well.

The Indian government has been encouraging the H1B rule change as well as it helps kick off a reverse brain drain [0][1] right when India was launching it's own version of the Thousand Talents [2] program.

[0] - https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/us-loss-will-be-indi...

[1] - https://vrfbharat.org/how-will-the-h1-b-visa-restriction-ena...

[2] - https://theprint.in/india/education/reversing-brain-drain-mo...
by vharuck | 2026-01-28 16:16:08+00:00
The point of the Executive branch is to decide how to execute the law using limited resources. The AG doesn't have enough money, manpower, or time to find and deport every immigrant who's illegally staying here. In the past, AGs used their discretion to target dangerous immigrants and low-hanging fruit.

The protestors are against the way this administration chooses to carry out the law. They're also against the illegal or unconstitutional acts performed by immigration officers, such as warrantless entry and harassment of protestors.
by TFYS | 2026-01-28 16:16:14+00:00
> A well behaved market is much more efficient than a government

I wouldn't be so sure about this. A lot of what markets do is unnecessary overhead needed to make markets work. Maintaining enough competition means having to pay the costs of having multiple organizations doing the same thing. Each must have their own strategy, HR, marketing, etc. A lot of work is unnecessarily repeated. A lot of behavior that is forced by competition, like advertising / patent and copyright systems / hiding research instead of sharing it is very wasteful. Profits going to the owners is also an overhead cost that might not be needed in other types of economic arrangements. All these costs need to be paid at every level of the production chain.

We should also consider the goals of each type of organization. The goal of a business operating in a market is to maximize profit for the owners of the business. It's efficient at that. The goals of a government can be much more varied. They can't really be easily compared.
by tuetuopay | 2026-01-28 16:16:21+00:00
Well, you could build centers that are not prisons. Not resorts or holiday camps, but start with not crushing the balls of the people in there.

How we handle it in Europe is not perfect either, as immigrants tend to be put in hotels and costly amenities, but at least it's a humane way to do it. Plus, be better at sending them back if they are a problem (I won't use the term "deportation" because it's a word heavy with meaning since WW2).
by Macha | 2026-01-28 16:16:37+00:00
> Having very frequent updates to bleeding edge software versions, often requiring manual intervention is not "stable". An arch upgrade may, without warning, replace your config files and update software to versions incompatible with the previous.

12 in the last year if you used all the software (I don’t many people are running dovecot and zabbix), so probably actually like 3 for most users: https://archlinux.org/

That’s not too dissimilar from what you’d get running stable releases of Ubuntu or Windows. And of course plenty of windows software will auto upgrade itself in potentially undesired ways, windows users just don’t blame the OS for that
by heliumtera | 2026-01-28 16:17:01+00:00
I don't think Mr Pottering was brought by accident, maybe his decade of contribution making sure systemd services can be manipulated by a supervisor (in the case of wsl and ms) is a valuable asset.
Systemd don't even need to change much to become the devil itself, it just have to upstream merge changes already consolidated in the past 5 years or so...
But logically it's safe because for this to become a problem systemd would have to be adopted by the majority of distributions and its maintainers would have to concede to the pressure of big corps and such...oh, wait
by rpncreator | 2026-01-28 16:17:22+00:00
There are around 12 Amazon Go / Amazon Fresh in the metro Chicago area. Unless all employees are part-time employees (and assuming around 10-ish employees per store), I seriously wonder how they got around Illinois WARN requirements [1] requiring 60 days advance notice of the closures.

[1] https://labor.illinois.gov/laws-rules/conmed/warn.html
by drtgh | 2026-01-28 16:17:26+00:00
storage from $40 to $100, memory 16GB DDR4 from $67 to $190, 32GB DDR4 from $72 to $263, in the last six months. I other currencies the amount it from higher to much higher.

Average low-end technology at prices of extra mega top tier technology.

You are saying people will buy, and smile without resistance saving months to pay those abusive prices for low-end tech, even knowing this is because four or five companies are hoarding the market. Take for sure people is really tired/sick of this.

China, are you reading this? You should study this along the months. Then you can make your own conclusions.
Kite – Stripe checkout with automatic PPP pricing by country
by DennisLH | 2026-01-28 16:17:47+00:00
Hi HN,
I’m building Kite, a lean checkout layer for selling digital goods globally without coupons or regional pricing tables.
The problem I kept hitting as a creator:
global customers constantly ask for discounts, but existing tools either lock you into a marketplace or make PPP pricing manual and leaky.
How it works
Buyer’s country is detected at the edge (Vercel GeoIP)
A PPP multiplier (World Bank data) is applied atomically at checkout
The final price is locked server-side (no client overrides)
Stack
Next.js 15 (App Router + Server Actions)
Supabase (Auth, Postgres, private buckets)
Stripe Connect (Direct Charges – seller stays merchant of record)
Delivery & security
Digital files live in private Supabase buckets.
After a successful Stripe webhook, we issue a 60s signed download URL, which avoids hotlinking and bandwidth abuse.
Business model
5% flat fee per transaction.
No marketplace, no customer data lock-in — sellers use their own Stripe accounts.
I’d love feedback on:
Whether PPP-based pricing feels intuitive or surprising as a buyer
The UX tradeoffs of an embeddable checkout vs hosted pages
I’m still unsure how aggressive the PPP multipliers should be without hurting perceived value.
Website: https://www.usekite.dev
PPP demo: https://www.usekite.dev/ppp-calculator
by seneca | 2026-01-28 16:17:54+00:00
> How's the $100K H1B fee that was announced to distract from the Trump Gold Card announcement [0] going? The HN hive mind said it would bring back the jobs and those of us who warned [1][2] it would incentivize offshoring were hounded.

Yep, offshoring needs to be heavily penalized as well.
by Stevencoles89 | 2026-01-28 16:18:01+00:00
Visual clutter can be a distraction in a minimalist home workspace. A black gaming chair offers a professional, monochromatic aesthetic that blends into a study while providing the ergonomic benefits of high-performance seating. The premium leather-like finish is not only durable but also reflects a sophisticated choice for those who frequently attend video consultations or virtual meetings.
by IG_Semmelweiss | 2026-01-28 16:18:16+00:00
I installed Windows Update Blocker (AKA "WUB") and i've stopped the nonsense shutdowns late at night.

That helped stopping the aggravation, but lets see how long I last. I do feel my next computer will be a Linux OS ... but i'm not a programmer and I wince at having to do all the wine installs fresh...
by duffyjp | 2026-01-28 16:18:29+00:00
Thank you for your service. :D Windows 2000 will always be my favorite version. I got a free copy as a university student and it was just awesome. XP was the era where things changed for the sake of change. In Windows 2000 you could learn where absolutely everything was and it was always there for you.

I still have my install CD, though it has suffered from bit-rot and can't be read properly. :(
by morserer | 2026-01-28 16:18:42+00:00
Bitwig was developed by ex-Ableton devs, and the layout is incredibly similar. It's a very easy transition compared to coming from a DAW like FL or Logic.

It's also a really attractive offering once you hear about it. It's intuitive, cross-platform, half the price of Ableton for a 3-device lifetime license without geofencing, and the software contains a modular software synth atop which most of the preset instruments are built that is so versatile that its value alone exceeds the price tag of the entire daw.

Big fan. Share your thoughts if you give it a whirl.
by tayo42 | 2026-01-28 16:19:07+00:00
You would use something like this

https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.mock.html#unittes...

Then you would make the mock filter with patch and test the `func` function

psuedo python code would be

@patch(builtins.filter)
def test_func_filter_calls(mock_filter):
mock_filter.return_value = [2,4,6]
func()
mock_filter.assert_called_once_with([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10])
by erithax | 2026-01-28 16:19:22+00:00
> We believe that this is the largest rollout globally of any library written in Rust.

I think that crown currently goes to https://github.com/googlefonts/fontations which is included in Chromium, not sure if it's on all platforms yet.
Moreover, the translative dependencies of Fontations (click through https://crates.io/crates/fontations/0.3.0/dependencies) should have an even (slightly) larger install-base.

EDIT: from the quote you can also gather that they don't use https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal