MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by atoav | 2026-01-03 08:08:54+00:00
So how is anti-fascism left-wing extremism?

Fighting fascism is required of every person who wants to keep a working democracy, regardless of your fiscal policy ideas or how egoistical you want your government to represent you.

Democracy is what allows you to remove bad leaders/parties without having to fight a bloody revolution. Fascism yearns to remove that possibility. Hence anti-fascism being needed.

That being said: Which part of the talk did you find especially extremist?
by eviks | 2026-01-03 08:08:58+00:00
> I think that Linux on the desktop is ready for the masses now, not because it's advanced in a huge leap/bound.

Yeah, right, these types of shallow pieces about Linux "for the masses" have the same structure without addressing the obvious issues:

- Windows has the following 3 components that became worse.

Well, they were bad 10 years ago (the ones that existed), so you could've spent a few hours per component to replace it (Start menu), disable it (Copilot), or find a workaround (invoke process manager with a shortcut without going through the webview in ctrl-alt-del or maybe there is some non-web app the presents the same menu of a few items) or even just ingore it (what are the serious practical issues with using dumb webviews for a tiny menu?)

But the alternative would require you spending many days learning the whole new OS where many things you're used to would simply not exist.

Want to find any file anywhere instantly (including newly created)? No, impossible, there is only NTFS Everything app that does it.

Got tired of the File Explorer garbage and got used to the greatness of Opus? Well, good luck, there is not a single great file manager over there

Want to relax and play X, Y, Z games? Oops, only A, B, C have good support, will take another decade to fix that (but at least someone is working on that)

Want to use your favorite Productivity/VideoShop app? No one is even working on that, so another decade would not fix that.

So how is it reasonable (for the masses, not you!) to replace a few fixable annoyances with a bigger list of the same and an even bigger list of unfixable stuff?
by dragonwriter | 2026-01-03 08:09:42+00:00
> I feel certain that if negative numbers where around when double entry book-keeping was first done

They were; one of negative numbers first documented uses in Europe after the Classical period was by Fibonacci in the specific context of financial calculations, around the turn of the 13th Century; the first evidence of the double entry bookkeeping is also in Italy, around the turn of the 14th Century.
by lmm | 2026-01-03 08:10:12+00:00
> - I don't have a shortage of IPv4. Maybe my ISP or my VPN host do, I don't know. I have a roomy 10.0.0.0/8 to work with.

That's great until you need to connect to a work/client VPN that decided to also use 10.0.0.0/8.

> - Every host routable from anywhere on the Internet? No thanks. Maybe I've been irreparably corrupted by being behind NAT for too long but I like the idea of a gateway between my well kept garden and the jungle and my network topology being hidden.

Even on IPv4, having normal addresses for all your computers makes life so much nicer. Perhaps-trivial example, but one that matters to me: if two people live in one house and a third person lives in a different house, can they all play a network game together? IPv4 sucks at this.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 08:10:29+00:00
> There has been no congressional declaration of war, no AUMF, no nothing, right?

No. From an international-law perspective, Trump is stepping into the footprints left by Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, Khamenei and his own predecessors in D.C.

From a domestic-law perspective, this is un-Constitutional.
by slg | 2026-01-03 08:11:25+00:00
As someone old enough to have seen the US invade too many countries, I'm struck by the lack of effort put into justifying this sort of military action these days. There is going to be a lot of debate over whether this specific operation was legal and I have no idea where the courts or history will ultimately land on that decision. But the way they don't even try to convince us this is necessary anymore is a sign that wherever the line is, we let it slip too far.
by dataflow | 2026-01-03 08:11:25+00:00
> The program reads the logic from stdin and translates it into machine instructions. I can agree that there is not a lot of a freedom in what can be done, but I think it just means that the source language is not Turing complete. I don't believe that compiler needs to deal with a Turing complete language to claim the title "JIT compiler".

"Not Turing-complete" is quite the understatement.

A "compiler" is software that translates computer code from one programming language into another language. Not "any software that reads input and produces output."

The input language here is... not even a programming language to begin with. Literally all it can express is linear functions. My fixed-function calculator is more powerful than that! If this is a programming language then I guess everyone who ever typed on a calculator is a programmer too.
by nunez | 2026-01-03 08:11:43+00:00
Respectfully disagree. COVID and WFH really was a brick wall to Meetup's momentum.

WeWork bought Meetup because tons of tech Meetups used WeWork spaces to host events.

This acquisition made a lot of sense, IMO. Many companies at the time were much more employee-friendly than now and liked having their employees (who mostly worked in the office) host cool events with free food. Nearly everyone was already downtown, free pizza is free pizza, and talking about Ruby or DevOps or whatever sure as shit beat traffic. This was especially true for startups, which were in WeWork offices.

COVID lockdowns were a huge collective wet blanket atop all of that for obvious reasons.

Moreover, everyone working from home added huge inertia to what was previously a very natural chain of events. Driving downtown for events (and dealing with traffic) was/is a huge commitment, free pizza or not (which isn't really free anymore after you account for gas). Those events being in worse spaces (since event space got harder to find) didn't help.

All of this affected social Meetups too, albeit less so. You used to be able to build a calendar of the Meetups you wanted to hit in a day. If you were already at NY Tech Meetup for something, hitting up a social meetup afterwards was easy.

(WeWork sold Meetup some time back IIRC.)
by bgbntty2 | 2026-01-03 08:11:53+00:00
I've tested a few microwaves from different manufacturers with my phone a few years ago. I think I looked at some file in my router (OpenWRT), but I can't recall. I got a lot of dropped packets each time. The amount of degradation was similar for the different microwaves.

I had to put the phone close to the microwave to detect this. The degradation was obviously stronger when the phone was closer.

If your friend experiences noticeable degradation regardless of the distance within the room, it might be worrisome.

But I think it's normal to have some interference. That doesn't necessarily mean enough of the 2.4 GHz radiation escapes the microwave to be harmful to an animal, as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and so on are very weak, comparatively.

Funny thing is, after putting my phone inside a closed turned off microwave, it got Wi-Fi, although very weak. I didn't try that with all the microwaves, but with 2 or 3 of them.

I think the Faraday cage around the microwave was built to be good enough for safety, but it wasn't built with Wi-Fi interference in mind.

Disclaimer: I might be wrong, as I don't have enough background to make any bold claims.
by OgsyedIE | 2026-01-03 08:12:18+00:00
The "allies" would have mass riots and six-digit death tolls (shortly after an initial 3-6 month period of adjustment) without the supplies of LNG, fertiliser and payment clearing services the U.S. exports. America has the rest of the west by the balls, with maybe the exception of Australia and Japan. Nobody will even give the C-levels responsible for Grok arrest warrants for the many serious crimes their product carries out.
by panny | 2026-01-03 08:12:40+00:00
>As of 2025, Japan's suicide rate is reported to be 15.3 per 100,000 people, which is lower than the United States' rate of 16.1 per 100,000 people, despite the common stereotype that Japan has a high suicide rate. This marks a reversal from earlier decades when Japan consistently had higher rates than the United States.

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnpopularFacts/comments/1ke0fhb/as_...
by suspended_state | 2026-01-03 08:12:50+00:00
> The problem with that argument is that the reports don’t necessarily come from the organization for whom it’s an issue.

You can already say that for the majority of the bugs being fixed, and I think that's one of the points: tagging certain bugs as exploitable make it seem like the others aren't.
More generally, someone's minor issue might be a major one for someone else, and not just in security. It could be anything the user cares about, data, hardware, energy, time.

Perhaps the real problem is that security is just a view on the bigger picture. Security is important, I'm not saying the opposite, but if it's only an aspect of development, why focus on it in the development logs? Shouldn't it be instead discussed on its own, in separate documents, mailing lists, etc by those who are primarily concerned by it?
by sandreas | 2026-01-03 08:13:02+00:00
Absolutely - I know that but thanks for pointing that out again. There is no real "use case" for NOT storing the key into a root owned file. However, as I don't do it for myself there is no way of accidentally deleting the file, copying it quickly from my system to another drive when I accidentally left a root shell open and went to the restrooms (that never happens;) and the one single place I store the key (my head) is pretty much unreadable for everyone except me (at least for now :-) Being paranoid doesn't mean they are not after you :p

Since I reboot my notebook only about once in a month it is no real hassle to enter the key twice 12 times a year :-)
by lmm | 2026-01-03 08:13:12+00:00
> The current adoption woes are exactly because IPv6 is so different from IPv4. Everyone who tries it out learns the hard way that most of what they know from IPv4 doesn't apply.

In my experience the differences are just an excuse, and however similar you made the protocol to IPv4 the people who wanted an excuse would still manage to find one. Deploying IPv6 is really not hard, you just have to actually try.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 08:13:17+00:00
> the way they don't even try to convince us this is necessary anymore is a sign that wherever the line is, we let it slip too far

A lot of Americans don't care. They either actually don't care. Or they sort of care, but are too lazy and nihilistic to bother doing anything about it.

Like, this entire exercise is a leveraged wager by the Trump administration that this will not cost them the Senate in any of these states next year [1].

[1] https://www.270towin.com/2026-senate-election/
by dagss | 2026-01-03 08:14:46+00:00
I read this article on HN ten years ago and it has been very important to me in a career working on a special purpose accounting (for automated reconciliation of bank accounts of a payments processor).

The biggest shift from conventional accounting is the use of negative numbers instead of debit/credit.

I believe that accounting would have been a lot more accessible to professionals from science/math backgrounds if negative numbers had been used instead of debit/credit.

I think biggest challenge to introducing negative numbers in accounting now is that people don't like the look of an income account accumulating a negative balance and the expense account accumulating a positive balance. But once you bend your mind around that it makes perfect sense...expense is where the money "went" (positive), income is where the money "came from" (negative).

(The alternative sign convention would make cash on hand negative.)

That said: Credit/debit does carry an extra bit of information, because you can put negative numbers as credit/debit to convey flow going the opposite direction of the usual one. (This can also be inferred from the accounts being credit-normal or debit-normal, just wanted to note it is not 100% the same model.)

My Norwegian small business accounting system vendor (Fiken) has started to present data using +/- in addition to debit/credit columns, perhaps there is some adaption of signed numbers accounting happening..
by yrand | 2026-01-03 08:15:40+00:00
Why do you think NAT is part of a firewall? NAT and firewall are two completely separate things that can exist independently of each other.

Also overlapping ranges are an orthogonal issue that can occur with IPv6 private network range as well.

IPv6 brings not only bigger address range but also a big bag of other things that one cannot ignore, are complicated and which are often a source of problems. That's why people stick with IPv4 even at the cost of NAT, because the number of things they have to care about is much smaller.
by cmurf | 2026-01-03 08:16:21+00:00
Yep. It's the illiberal authoritarians. The people who need hierarchy, for domination and submission. This is why equality is an scary abomination to them.

All societies have such people. But civil societies prevent them from gaining significant power. Failing that, it's going to be expensive.

This society elected a known abuser. Of course this society will be abused. But also because of this society's global power, the world will also be abused.
by martin-t | 2026-01-03 08:16:25+00:00
> democracy relies on an educated electorate, but access to really excellent education is minimal globally

1) Even locally in countries where education is decent, democracy seems to be weakening, with authoritarianism rising.

2) People talk about education is a general thing but really, a lot of the stuff is biology, chemistry, memorizing book and author names in literature without deeper understanding, etc. What we're missing is education focused on logic and reasoning, both formal and the so called critical thinking - the ability to detect biases, manipulative ("rhetorical") techniques, lying etc. There's focus on "presentation skills" but nothing about "anti-presnetation skills" - detecting nicely packaged bullshit and detecting poorly presented good ideas. And what's completely missing is basic psychology and psychopathology (many politicians have blatant NPD or ASPD, yet people still vote for them).

3) There's no requirement for voting except age. Maybe voters should have to answer a few questions about math and formal logic and their vote weighted by how much they get right. Or simple questions about the party they're voting for.
by makeitdouble | 2026-01-03 08:17:39+00:00
I might be given too much credit, but given the tone of the post they're not trying to apply this to some super precise extremely competitive check.

If the goal is to assess whether a student properly understood the work they submitted or more generally if they assimilated most concepts of a course, the evaluation can have a bar low enough for let's say 90% of the student to easily pass. That would give enough of margin of error to account for small biases or misunderstandings.

I was comparing to mark sheet tests as they're subject to similar issues, like students not properly understanding the wording (and usually the questions and answer have to be worded in pretty twisted ways to properly) or straight checking the wrong lines or boxes.

To me this method, and other largely scalable methods, shouldn't be used for precise evaluations, and the teachers proposing it also seem to be aware of these limitations.
by elektrontamer | 2026-01-03 08:17:40+00:00
The thing is linux desktop is pretty damn good for a lot of people for their day to day needs. It's just the office tools and gaming. Cloud tools like google docs can handle the office side and valve can sovle gaming. But there still remains the issue of convincing people.

My mom works as a translator and all she needs is email, something to edit documents in and a browser, thats it. She was able adapt to ubuntu pretty fast even though she's not the kind of person who likes learning new tech.

There must be millions of users just like her. But people are very resistant to change and few have an annoying linux evangelist like myself in the house to push them.

We need to get them young somehow. I'm thinking around highschool.
by Gareth321 | 2026-01-03 08:17:41+00:00
I’m really glad Linux has improved so much but it’s still just not ready for prime time. A major issue is the lack of an enforced installation method. Competing distributions and installation methods means supporting Linux isn’t “supporting Linux.” It’s supporting 24 different distros and install methods. This is confusing for people who just want to download a file and double click it. I feel quite strongly that Linux won’t enter the mainstream consumer space until people can reliable double click files to install.

Further, because of Linux’s security model, kernel level anti-cheats are basically impossible. For those of us who hate cheating, I don’t play online games anymore without kernel level anti-cheats. They’re not perfect, but they’re much better than anything available on Linux.

Further, I use a Fanatec racing wheel. Most peripherals just aren’t supported on Linux. It’s chicken and egg, and hardware manufacturers aren’t going to bother until we teach critical mass. This is decades away still.
by amacneil | 2026-01-03 08:17:51+00:00
Foxglove | Onsite (San Francisco) & Remote | Full Time | https://foxglove.dev/

Foxglove is the leading observability & data platform for robotics and physical AI. Our software supports the full data lifecycle, from collection, upload, and storage, to analysis and visualization. We're assembling the most talented team in the industry to build a platform for all types of robots. Sound interesting? Join us!

Many engineering & product roles:

- Data Engineer

- Rust Engineer

- Frontend / Viz Engineer

- Product Designer

- Visual Designer

GTM roles:

- Solutions Engineer

- Account Executive

https://foxglove.dev/careers
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 08:18:59+00:00
> Never thought that whataboutism was going to be the coping mechanism

Not a coping mechanism and definitely not an excuse. Just a statement of reality. This doesn't make America special. America at least sometimes trying to uphold that system is what used to make it special. Now we're back to spheres-of-influence realpolitik.
by Veedrac | 2026-01-03 08:19:12+00:00
> The volume of space from the ground to 50,000 feet is about 200x smaller than the volume from the Karman line to the top of LEO alone (~2,000 km).

Volume is the natural way to assume space scales, but it's incorrect. Two planes can fly parallel, side by side. Two satellites cannot orbit side by side.

In the limit, if Earth had a solid ring of infinitesimal width, it would take zero volume but all orbits.
by OgsyedIE | 2026-01-03 08:19:16+00:00
He believed that within the limits of the political culture of America introducing accountability would lead to a tit-for-tat cycle of imprisonments and executions by each party against the other under the cover story of accountability, with the possibility of gradual escalation towards an end state of states mobilising armored brigades against each other to siege cities and cleanse target populations. Like the Congo, or Rhodesia. His memoirs are wacky stuff.
by bgbntty2 | 2026-01-03 08:19:40+00:00
I agree with the sandboxing and permissions points, but is that related to the OS not being rooted? This is a genuine question - I'm not trying to make a point here, but to learn.

I think Qubes qualifies from a practical point of view, as modern hardware is powerful enough for it, so it's viable to run Qubes on desktop instead of a baremetal OS. I'd even go further and say there's no excuse not to run Qubes if you're familiar with Linux and can afford a compatible desktop or laptop.

Per-app sandboxing or per-OS compartmentalization is pretty similar with regards to security. There are some security and usability trade-offs, but I like the per-OS isolation model, as it's easier for several apps to share everything within a VM - that way you isolate a whole "project" more easily, as everything inside a VM is only related to that project and you assume all the apps would need access, anyway.
by rvz | 2026-01-03 08:19:48+00:00
...and the Nobel Committee awarding the 'Nobel Peace Prize' to Maria Cornia Machado for 'democracy' and now will be used for the toppling of a leader in another country and creating another war. [0]

This is why the Nobel Peace Prize has become completely meaningless.

[0] https://just-international.org/articles/assanges-criminal-co...
by logicchains | 2026-01-03 08:19:59+00:00
Trump blamed Venezuela for stealing US oil when it nationalized US oil companies there, and for shipping drugs to America, and for creating Dominion voting machines which he believes were used to cheat in the 2020 election. Some in his administration have also blamed Venezuela for working with Iran/Hezbollah/Hamas. One or more of those could be the reason for the invasion.
by kstenerud | 2026-01-03 08:20:11+00:00
The spec says that implementations must disable NUL by default (as in, the default configuration must disallow). https://github.com/kstenerud/bonjson/blob/main/bonjson.md#nu...

Users can of course enable NUL in the rare cases where they need it, but I want safe defaults.

Actually, I'll make that section clearer.
by JumpCrisscross | 2026-01-03 08:20:34+00:00
> Perhaps Venezuela is just a reaction to the action that is already happening, namely a world-wide concerted effort to abandon the petrodollar…

The petrodollar hypothesis is obsolete. It has been since America became an oil exporter.

The way you're presenting it, it's never been the case. Petrodollars let America finance a massive military. The military gives it power. We aren't sanctioning Venezuela into submission. We're bombing it.

Also, oil has been traded in non-dollars for ages. I've personaly done it at a bank trading desk in Connecticut.
by minitech | 2026-01-03 08:20:35+00:00
Before implying SMS is preferable to an E2EE messaging app because Google “has access to everything in the phone's memory”, please exercise your critical thinking.

Okay, now we’ve established that even your dishonest spin on the relationship between companies that provide the software and communications using the software is extremely unconvincing: that’s a dishonest spin on the relationship between companies that provide the software and communications using the software. Google/Facebook has to mount an active attack, serving you malicious software, in order to get the kind of access you’re talking about, which is risky and something we’re slowly but surely getting better at defending against (attestation, transparency logs).
by rich_sasha | 2026-01-03 08:22:27+00:00
I don't think we're lacking intelligent and motivated people who want to be elected to implement their agenda - for good or bad reasons.

Rather, the electorate is not equipped to tell the good ones from the bad ones. And I don't even mean, they aren't voting the way I'd like. Trump is doing everything he said he'll do, and his popularity is so low. Why? We see this over and over again.

Otherwise, I cannot reconcile how people are genuinely voting for terrible politicians and falling for blatant populism and propaganda.