MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-28 12:13:06+00:00
How is it someone's else's fault for that systemd has dependencies or that others depend on systemd?

If I use and like Firefox, and others depend on Firefox, or Firefox depend on others, then it's Firefox fault for you choosing Firefox?

I really don't understand the argument you're trying to make. You had choices before systemd, and you still have choices even though systemd is widespread, what's the problem? It isn't modular enough? Use something else then that is modular.
Show HN: PolyMCP – Expose Python/TS functions as MCP tools easily
by justvugg | 2026-01-28 12:13:22+00:00
I made PolyMCP so I could quickly turn normal functions (Python or TypeScript) into MCP tools without much extra work.
Python example:
from polymcp.polymcp_toolkit import expose_tools

def greet(name: str) -> str:
"""Say hello."""
return f"Hello, {name}!"

def add(a: int, b: int) -> int:
"""Add two numbers."""
return a + b

app = expose_tools([greet, add], title="My MCP Tools")
Run with:
uvicorn server:app --reload
MCP endpoints appear at /mcp/list_tools and /mcp/invoke/.
TypeScript example:
import { z } from 'zod';
import { tool, exposeTools } from 'polymcp';

const uppercaseTool = tool({
name: 'uppercase',
description: 'Convert text to uppercase',
inputSchema: z.object({ text: z.string() }),
function: async ({ text }) => text.toUpperCase(),
});

const app = exposeTools([uppercaseTool], { title: "Text Tools" });
app.listen(3000);
Business example (Python):
import pandas as pd
from polymcp.polymcp_toolkit import expose_tools

def calculate_commissions(sales_data: list[dict]):
df = pd.DataFrame(sales_data)
df["commission"] = df["sales_amount"] * 0.05
return df.to_dict(orient="records")

app = expose_tools([calculate_commissions], title="Business Tools")
What you get:
• Reuse existing code with minimal changes
• Compatible with MCP clients (Claude Desktop, agents, Ollama, etc.)
• HTTP and stdio and Wasm support
• Automatic validation
• Basic production features (budgets, retries, redaction, logs)
• Inspector: polymcp inspector for testing/monitoring
Install:
• Python: pip install polymcp
• TypeScript: clone repo → cd polymcp-ts → npm install → npm run build
Repo: https://github.com/poly-mcp/Polymcp

Curious what kind of function people would expose first if it was this simple. Feedback welcome.
by tomcur | 2026-01-28 12:13:47+00:00
We've started a 2D geometric constraint solver at https://github.com/endoli/fiksi doing the constraint part of this in Rust. We're using it internally and so far it works well, though it's still experimental. More constraints and especially better behavior around failure are needed. The latter will likely entail at least doing more with degree of freedom counting, though there's some of that already.

A C++-library to be aware of is SolveSpace's slvs: https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/tree/e74c2eae54fdd9....
by antonyh | 2026-01-28 12:13:54+00:00
Love/hate systemd as I might, it's been rock solid everywhere I've used it, and I've used it heavily. It has it's quirks, as does the init-scripts that came before, and launchd on OSX (not sure what the modern equivalent is for MacOS).

However, the systemd journal raw format is binary data and would much rather a plain text log. All things being equal I'd rather deal with human readable files.
by martinald | 2026-01-28 12:14:37+00:00
Of course but how do you distribute the patches? My point isnt that AI can't solve it, but if the project is abandoned then there is no way to get the patches to users.

And even if there is there is an inherent lag. Take these openssl vulns. It's going to go from openssl to (say) Ubuntu. They have to backport the fixes. This isn't trivial as it needs tested and applied to old code versions. These fixes then need applied, and there's no doubt a lot of users not on a "supported" version who won't get the fix.

Even worse something like openssl is almost certainly widely statically linked in many apps/servers. This then requires them to pull it from upstream and repackage, and users to deploy the fix.

So it's a real issue. I'd argue that the industry isn't really able to do this well currently, nevermind if suddenly 1000x the patch frequency happens.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-28 12:15:12+00:00
Many of us starting using Linux before systemd was a thing, and you get used to what you use, so when something new appears that are trying (well, in this case "tried and succeeded at") to replace a bunch of stuff, there is a natural push-back against it.

I think systemd also took a relatively non-unixy approach, where it's a big stack to adopt, rather than individual programs that work together well. Typically, we prefer the latter instead of the former, so some pushback is because of that too.
by XorNot | 2026-01-28 12:15:27+00:00
The thing is systemd really doesn't: the things people claim "shouldn't be in an init system" aren't - but there are systemd branded versions of a lot of basic facilities because you generally need something like them in a usable system.

And a lot of those utilities are just straight better then the alternatives, or at least make a decent practicality vs correctness trade off for desktop Linux.

systemd-cryptenroll for example is just straight up much easier to use for most applications of FDE, unless you're really doing network unlocking with something like Clevis.
by manmal | 2026-01-28 12:15:47+00:00
Weekend - certainly not, the scope is massive. All those CLIs - gmail, whisper, elevenlabs, whatsapp/telegram/discord/etc, obsidian, generic skills marketplace etc, it's just so many separate APIs to build against.

But Peter just said in his TBPN interview that you can likely re-build all that in 1 month. Maybe you'd need to work 14h per day like he does, and running 10 codex sessions in parallel, using 4-6 OpenAI Pro subs.
by HendrikHensen | 2026-01-28 12:16:00+00:00
Honestly, it feels like straight up plagiarism. When I saw the title, I thought I knew which website was posted because I had seen it before. When I clicked, I saw an unfamiliar website and was surprised that it was posted 3 days ago rather than a couple months ago.

The contents are so similar, that it cannot be coincidence. It really seems like the author of this blog simply plagiarized the strangestloop post without referring to it at all...
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-28 12:16:29+00:00
> hindering the spread and innovation in the Linux space

What "innovations" have been prevented or hindered by systemd? I guess you could argue "well, we can't know" but then what is the argument here really? I'm guessing there is something concrete your thinking about here, that systemd made impossible, but I'm not understanding what you're referencing, I can't recall anything like that.
by lan321 | 2026-01-28 12:16:45+00:00
This is entirely unrelated to ASML, but:

This reminds me of a company I worked for recently, that, at the yearly meeting talking about the financial situation were all depressed as if we were broke since the profit (and revenue) was slightly less than last year, which was significantly higher than any other year in history with the year prior also being a record. This was essentially when the interest rates jumped after covid and businesses had to adapt so I'm sure it would have been another record if the economy in general wasn't doing worse that year.

Of course, they want to keep people from asking for raises and bonuses, but I found it very weird to see them act worried with the profit/revenue graphs at a crazy peak still.
by wrtc_dev | 2026-01-28 12:16:46+00:00
The focus on media parsing is smart - it's one of the most attack-prone surfaces in any messaging app. Media files are essentially untrusted input from the network that need complex processing.

What's interesting is the broader trend: Signal's libsignal is Rust, Matrix's vodozemac (Olm/Megolm implementation) is Rust, and now WhatsApp is moving this direction. The industry seems to be converging on Rust for the security-critical paths while keeping the UI layer in whatever makes sense for the platform.

The differential fuzzing approach they mention is key - you can't just rewrite and hope for the best. Real-world media is full of edge cases and malformed files that users expect to "just work." Having both implementations running in parallel during the transition gives you a safety net.
by rainings | 2026-01-28 12:17:13+00:00
The world’s first Switch 2 Pro controller with TMR Glide Sticks is here.

Nintendo’s approach to the official Pro2’s glide stick was brilliant in its logic. They utilized a "Limit Structure + Silicone Rail + Inverted Hook" system. Here is what that actually means for your thumbs:

No More Grinding: By lowering the limit height, the stick shaft no longer grinds against the faceplate. That annoying plastic dust? Gone.

The Silicone Rail: They added a soft silicone ring at the base. Because the material is elastic, the contact point is minimized. The stick cap doesn’t drag; it glides.

The Inverted Buckle: The stem and cap are locked together with an internal hook design, solving the age-old issue of caps loosening over time. It is a design that turns control into a tactile pleasure.

This controller took Nintendo’s foundation and pushed the material science further. While the Nintendo Pro2 uses standard silicone, this controller upgraded the rail to LSR (Liquid Silicone Rubber). This isn’t just a fancy acronym. LSR allows for micron-level molding precision. So it achieved a contact point of just 0.01mm.

The Result: It is self-lubricating and far more durable than standard silicone. The friction isn't just low; it feels like it doesn't exist.

It uses customized the TMR (Tunnel Magnetoresistance) module to address specific efficiency gaps in the Nintendo Pro2.

The Result: Higher sampling precision with lower power consumption. Our R&D team also re-engineered the damping parameters. The resistance is lighter, 'creamier,' and ultra-smooth.
by lyu07282 | 2026-01-28 12:17:16+00:00
> The point still stands brigading is a massive problem in America.

So why is it that self proclaimed centrists consistently talk in right-wing talking points? That's my entire point, you talk in cancel culture/culture war talking points as if those are real issues and even the single most pertinent issues in America. Even though in reality they are purely artificial constructions of right-wing propaganda, spread by Fox News, Heritage Foundation and other right-wing think-tanks and media figures. When I hear those mirrored back to me by someone who claims to be a centrist, I can't contain my frustration.

It's like this political illiteracy that gets on my nerves, it's people fed propaganda they internalized as some political congruent position that reads to me as completely incomprehensible gibberish. It's like a proto-fascist is in power that is rounding people up and putting them in concentration camps and you are undecided IDEOLOGICALLY, I'm sorry but that's just lack of very basic political education and being a severe victim of neoliberal depoliticization. Read a book.
by duskdozer | 2026-01-28 12:17:18+00:00
>When's the last time you saw a Trump supporter on this site?

Many in this very thread, actually.

>The userbase here is considerably further left than a very left-wing state such as California.

Considering any fixture in American politics "very left-wing" is already an indicator of how skewed right the perspective is. The signature policy goal of the stereotypical "far-left" American politician (Bernie Sanders) is a government healthcare system already present in many countries around the world, including many less developed than the US.
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-28 12:18:17+00:00
> However, the systemd journal raw format is binary data and would much rather a plain text log

Yeah, I also wish that at least was an option, would make some things easier.

Also wished the remote log sending was easier, not sure if it's just me but was a huge hassle to setup properly, and really hard to properly validate it works as expected in all cases. Finally got it working, but it isn't as easy as the other parts of systemd/journald.
Show HN: Klynda, a portfolio tracker focused on true performance (TWR/XIRR)
by daniel_builds | 2026-01-28 12:18:51+00:00
Hi HN, I’m Daniel and I built Klynda, a portfolio tracker I started after my spreadsheet became too complex and error-prone, especially around cashflows and price updates.

Klynda focuses on true performance by using a unitized accounting approach so deposits and withdrawals don’t distort returns. It also pulls real market data for stocks, ETFs, and crypto.

Link: https://klynda.com

I’d love feedback on the core model and UX: what feels confusing, what’s missing, and what you’d want to see before trusting the numbers.

Happy to answer technical questions about how the performance calculations work.
by LooseMarmoset | 2026-01-28 12:18:56+00:00
> Unnecessary entanglements

The problems with systemd are:

* that once it was adopted, every single package started requiring it
* which meant that packages that previously could run everywhere, now could only run on systemd-based systems
* binary logs - a solution that solved nothing but created problems
* which locked out any system that wasn't linux
* which locked out any linux system that didn't want to use it
* which led to abominations like systemd-resolved
* "bUt yOu DoNt hAVe tO uSE it" - tell that to the remote attestation crowd, of which Poettering is a founding member of. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572 - soon you'll have to use systemD because nothing else *can* be used.

literally everything the systemD crowd has done leads to lockout and loss of choice. All ramrodded through by IBM/RedHat.

The systemD developers don't care about any of this, of course. They've got a long history of breaking user space and poor dev practices because they're systemD. I mean, their attitude was so bad they got one of their principal devs kicked from the kernel because they overloaded the use of the kernel boot parameter "debug", which flooded the console, and refused to modify the debug option to something compatible like "systemd.debug", broke literally every other system, and then told everybody else "hey we're not wrong, the rest of the world is wrong." And this has been their attitude since then.

Look, if people want to use systemD, that's just fine. But it is a fact that the entire development process for systemD is predicated on making Linux incompatible with anything else, which is an entire inversion of how Linux and Free Software works.

I actually like unit files. But if systemD was just an init system, it would stop there.
by vicnas | 2026-01-28 12:19:18+00:00
I built a lightweight reverse proxy that lets you host multiple services under one domain using URL paths.

What it does:
- yourdomain.com/app1/ → service1.com
- yourdomain.com/app2/ → service2.com
- Automatically rewrites URLs so JavaScript apps work

Why I made it:
I wanted to access multiple services through one domain without dealing with subdomains or complex nginx configs.

Features:
- One-click Railway deployment
- Simple environment variables for configuration
- Works with static sites, APIs, and web apps
- Live demo: https://vicnas.me

GitHub: https://github.com/Vic-Nas/flashy

Built with Django. Feedback welcome!
by flakeoil | 2026-01-28 12:20:03+00:00
You can do whatever calculations and speculations you want, but the fact is that airlines do not pay any tax on fuel and no VAT on fuel. Not sure why they should not.

Another thing with flying is that it is so easy to go long distances as it takes limited time. A trip London-Barcelona is a 1.5-2 day trip one-way by car. You think twice before doing that. An intercontinental trip London-Bangkok is impossible by car, but creates more CO2 than all energy one person uses in a year (heating, cooking, going by car to work etc). Dirt cheap and in the blink of an eye.
by otherme123 | 2026-01-28 12:20:04+00:00
> Recently I had the misfortune of doing a contract on a classic SPA project with Flask and sqlalchemy on the backend and React on the frontend, and the amount of code necessary to add a couple of fields to a form is boggling.

Same here, and the reason to do all the Flask + SQLAlchemy + React was to keep things simple, as they are simple tools but Django is a complex tool. In particular the Flask part was juggling plugins for admin, forms and templates that Django already has included. But yeah, I am sure it is easier to code and to mantain because Flask is made for simple sites :/.
by bandrami | 2026-01-28 12:20:20+00:00
Because "Stop Job Running For User 1001: (22s / 90s)" with no indication of which @$%^ing stop job it is is incredibly annoying. And the fact that "systemctl start blahd.service" exits successfully even if blahd didn't actually start because a misconfigured blahd not starting is "correct" makes me want to burn the server room down from time to time. And nondeterministic service initialization is absolutely Broken and Wrong.

It's.... fine, mostly. It solved no problems I had and introduced some minor ones I didn't, and offers significantly less visibility, but it's no longer the worst offender in those regards (hello, Wayland!) so I just write it off as another of the many ways the Linux experience has gotten worse over time.
by m000 | 2026-01-28 12:20:27+00:00
"Any job you can do is eligible" is highly inaccurate. I went through this after my PhD funding in NL ran out, which is considered a layoff. I only had to demonstrate that I made some applications to relevant jobs. No pressure whatsoever to go work in some unrelated job.

Yes, the UWV [1] unemployment benefits are not perpetual (I don't recall the exact formula used to calculate the eligibility length). But even after your unemployment benefits stop, depending on the level of your savings, you may be eligible for receiving other benefits (e.g. health insurance and rent).

Overall, it is a very pro-worker system, with the major benefit of it being not "free money" (as US readers may assume), but the decreased leverage your employer has over you.

[1] https://www.uwv.nl/nl
by ozlikethewizard | 2026-01-28 12:20:31+00:00
UK signal is so bad. Was getting 5G in remote regions of Ha Giang in northern Vietnam, lucky if I get reliable 4G in Brighton. Brighton has 5G spots that can work great, but suffer with overload, and much of the residential areas still have overloaded 4G. London is even worse but at least they can blame the buildings.
by blueflow | 2026-01-28 12:20:46+00:00
Initially i hated systemd for the change it bought and lennarts behavior, but today I'm wiser.

Today i hate systemd for its bad debugability (edit unit & daemon-reload loops), the lockups that happen whenever there is a fifo in the wrong place, and the processes that systemd spawns with no apparent related unit and without means to mask them. And the difficult to disable suspends on machines that never had any business suspending.
by fancyfredbot | 2026-01-28 12:20:52+00:00
I'm glad the EU isn't subsidising European DRAM and NAND. Those are typically very low margin business. It's unlikely the EU could have competed with China because of labour costs/rights.

Today we have a shortage in this sector and margins are good so it seems like a good idea. But it's likely a European company would have regularly lost money over the last 20 years and become an unpopular drain on EU finances.
by iamA_Austin | 2026-01-28 12:20:56+00:00
AI is like another Photoshop tool. It was there way before these new AI models emerged. But it is now more robust. I know it will get better every day. But I see for retouchers or photographers, AI can be a great addition to their existing workflow.

Ultimately the final result would be yours, if you're part of the process.

The full study is here: https://www.colorexpertsbd.com/ai-vs-human-retouchers/

(had to search)
by koito17 | 2026-01-28 12:21:12+00:00
Nice concept. One question: was the data generated by an LLM? Don't mean this in a snarky way. The Lichess entry links to a non-existent HN thread[1], and "Show HN: Lichess" does not appear in HN search results. I found a hit for a Lichess client written in Elisp[2]. At least I discovered a cool piece of software.

[1] https://andrewgy8.github.io/hnarcade/games/games/lichess

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46779861
by SilverBirch | 2026-01-28 12:21:17+00:00
Yeah that's not going to work for long. You can draw a line in 2023, and say "Every paper before this isn't AI". But in the future, you're going to have AI generated papers citing other AI slop papers that slipped through the cracks, because of the cost of doing reseach vs the cost of generating AI slop, the AI slop papers will start to outcompete the real research papers.
by consp | 2026-01-28 12:21:21+00:00
> Isn't prostitution legal in the Netherlands? A brothel can offer you a job and you have to accept?

It's in a somewhat comparable job but without regard for payment level or educational/promotional equivalence so you have to accept lower pay. The most extreme is a temp job but you have to be far gone to get there and even then there are limits.

Also, switching from a desk job to a physical job (which in this case is very physical) is not something the UWV (the goverment part which handles this) will try to bring up to a judge if you refuse as Dutch law has a "reasonability" principle and you can very easily argue that would be unreasonable.

The again, this is the UWV we are talking about. They task people with chronic fatigue syndrom to work for 20 hours a week in the fields because "their sheet says so".

The length of unemployment benefits is calculated in work years: 3 months are guaranteed, for every year worked you get 1 extra month up to 10, then 0.5 per year (changed in 2016 because the right has been in power for over 15 years).
by embedding-shape | 2026-01-28 12:21:47+00:00
> * "bUt yOu DoNt hAVe tO uSE it" - tell that to the remote attestation crowd, of which Poettering is a founding member of. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572 - soon you'll have to use systemD because nothing else can be used.

You're saying that because the person who made systemd now work on hardware attestation, all Linux distributions will eventually require remote hardware attestation, where users don't actually have the keys?

Maybe I'm naive, maybe I trust my distribution too much (Arch btw), but I don't see that happening. Probably Ubuntu and some other more commercial OSes might, but we'll still have choices in what OS/distribution to use, so just "vote with your partitions" or whatever.
by boelboel | 2026-01-28 12:23:05+00:00
Democrats are (or were) considered "right wing" on some stuff and really "left wing" on other stuff. It's really futile trying to compare the political parties with different incentives internationally and putting a single left/right wing label on them.

Democrats were also just a big tent party for a long time, with more 'real right wing' members than 'real left wing' members, maybe that's the reason for the platitude.