MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by joe_mamba | 2026-01-28 20:36:22+00:00
Few issues with that.

For one, PCs still make it there via ewaste shipments that then get repaired and sold for cheap, so you can have decent variety of old stuff.

And secondly, even a "3rd gen in a poor condition at best (or some shit tier Celeron N-thousand something with a soldered 4GB RAM)" as you call it, is better for learning marketable skills and making stuff, than whatever you can do on your phone, since office jobs will ask for skills with using a PC, not how skilled you are using a phone.

But hey, if you think you can pass through engineering school with only a phone and no computer, then all power to you.
by kbolino | 2026-01-28 20:36:50+00:00
I gotta say, as the guy who brought up DSC, that last Reddit post especially had me doubting. That is not what DSC artifacts look like. DSC subsamples the chroma, which causes distinct color bleeding issues. That is luma bloom, which doesn't happen with DSC.

So I took my Mac Mini, hooked up to a 4K monitor, verified there were no DSC artifacts at native resolution, set it to "2560x1440" and sure enough the same artifacts appeared for me too, but still no telltale signs of DSC. So yeah, I gotta say, this is on Apple. Between this and dropping subpixel antialiasing support for text, it's pretty clear that their only properly supported configuration is 2x scaling on high-DPI displays.
by godelski | 2026-01-28 20:37:26+00:00
You're right to bring up the limits, but I think you're missing what I'm saying. I'm not trying to say that everyone can and should switch. But I am saying that the costs are probably less than one might think.

The costs of switching can only be answered at the individual level. No one can answer for you. But people can state their experiences and help you understand the costs and benefits.

Let's make sure we can accurately understand the costs and benefits and differentiate from imaginary ones.

I also said that you can take a stand without switching to Linux. Maybe the costs are too high for you right now. But maybe the costs of meeting up with your friends to play Dota rather than League is easy. At the end of the day the costs are due to the network effects. You can reduce those costs slowly and make it easier for others to jump ship without you needing to, which makes it easier for you to jump ship in the future if things change. The same is true for social media. Maybe you can't break from Instagram as you have too many contacts where that's your only way to communicate with them. But you can still encourage others to text you, Signal message you, or whatever. This still reduces the power of that network.

Here's the thing: the less sticky platforms are the better it is for everyone. I'm not going to tell you that you aren't going to have to put in more effort, but I will criticize you if you think that effort is insurmountable. I will also say that this is also part of our social duty. If something like using Signal instead of Instagram to communicate with your friend because they want to is "too hard" for you, then I envy the life you have where such trivial actions are your biggest concerns. If trying new games with friends who want to try new games is "too much" for you, then I think you should question if you're an addict.

I'm not saying you have to switch. I'm not saying you have to play certain games and not others. But you do have to be open to changing things and recognize that if you don't then you're creating a doomed self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're unwilling to have the slightest inconveniences then the enshitification and dystopia is on you. If you are unwilling to have the slightest inconveniences then you have no right to complain as you are the one preventing that change. But also, if you don't have any of those concerns of enshitification and tech dystopia then you have every right to stand your ground and not be inconvenienced. But I want to make the conditions clear. We live in a society. The society has a duty to you and you have a duty to the society. You don't just get to take and give nothing back.
by WorldMaker | 2026-01-28 20:38:05+00:00
Yeah, some of it can be solved as a simple naming convention thing. `_scripts/*.ts` for scripts that are "reproduceable" and/or production-ready and `_scripts/scratch/*.ts` or `_scripts/${username}/*.ts` for scripts that are piecemeal or work-in-progress or user-specific or otherwise "throwaway". Or a graduation process such as where things in `_scripts/` are considered "throwaway" until added to and documented in a larger production task runner like adding them to the "tasks" section of a deno.json file. (They graduate from being shebang run to `deno task taskname` run. They get basic documentation in the `deno task` list and various IDE integrations of such.)

The major thing to be concerned about there is leaking things like hard-coded secrets and that's where something like .env files can come in handy and knowing your tools to make use of them. Deno (as the running example) makes using .env files easy enough by adding the `--env` flag to your `deno run` shebang/task-line and then using `Deno.env` like any other environment variable. (Then don't forget to .gitignore your .env files.)
4MB JavaScript runtime for IoT and edge devices
by altinmert | 2026-01-28 20:38:43+00:00
Hey HN,

I've been building Kiren, a lightweight JavaScript runtime targeting IoT and edge devices.

The problem: Node.js (~100MB), Deno (~100MB), and Bun (~90MB) are too large for constrained
environments like Raspberry Pi Zero, routers, or embedded gateways.

Kiren is ~4MB. Single binary. No dependencies.

What it has:
- HTTP server & client (fetch)
- WebSocket with rooms
- SQLite built-in
- Express-compatible API
- ES Module support
- Bundle to standalone executable

Just added: Edge runtime (Cloudflare Workers-style API, self-hosted)

Tech stack: Zig + QuickJS

It's not trying to replace Node.js for web apps. The focus is devices where every MB matters.

Would love feedback from anyone working on IoT/embedded. What APIs would be most useful?

GitHub: https://github.com/kirencore/kiren
by Imustaskforhelp | 2026-01-28 20:39:10+00:00
I am in High school & in my school for some reason CS isn't taught but I still taught one of my friends CS from my tuition you can say.

I looked at his book and wanted to teach him python. You can say its senior high school and what I taught him was what keywords mean in python and operators mean in python etc.

A lot of it was just semantic. Could be the fact that it was first chapter and he came to me when his exam was just some few days later.

I swear but the hardest thing I observed in that book was probably some SQL from what I heard or maybe some minor Java or the fact that it had file access within python or atleast that's what I observed.

The OP's comments are clearly weird and feel like something which should be ignored.

This project is really really cool imo. (Heck I was trying out literally the same thing too but over golang out of curiosity but really didn't land anywhere and the fact that the creator of this was able to still is pretty impressive even if they used LLM or not!, on which I haven't felt any clarification but I just wanted to point how both are really really cool!)
by tayo42 | 2026-01-28 20:39:20+00:00
The test pass because your patching print_even so the 2nd filter is never called.

Which I guess, idk maybe think through the testing more and your code more before jumping to conclusions about how things are?

Testing is one tool you have, and it can test the internal like this. Obviously there's a use for it if its in the Python stdlib

This is in mockito

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39452438/mockito-how-to-...

this is in google testing library for cpp

https://google.github.io/googletest/gmock_for_dummies.html

> Specify your expectations on them (How many times will a method be called? With what arguments? What should it do? etc.).

If you never heard of this, I guess you learned something new? Im not a tutor though. I would read the docs more and experiment. Maybe chatgpt can help you with how tests can be written.
by anonymousiam | 2026-01-28 20:39:32+00:00
Years ago, I used to get marketing spam emails from Bank of America. In their email, they did not offer a way to opt out from those types of email, so I invalidated the unique email address that I had created just for them. A few months later, I got a snail mail letter like the one Dan got, telling me that emails were being rejected and that I needed to correct my email address. I went through the same sort of nonsensical dialog with them, and they simply would not let me opt out from their marketing emails, so I left it disabled for a few years. Eventually they offered "email preferences", so I re-enabled it.

My wife continues to get spam snail mail from Citi, and they offer no way to opt out. If it was my account, I would switch banks.

Back to the main topic: I think it's pretty stupid of the HSBC IT folks to assume that an email was not read because the tracking pixels were never accessed. Lots of email clients these days do not load images by default.
by thewebguyd | 2026-01-28 20:39:51+00:00
> This might have a suppressive force on wages

And that's the general problem. People don't care about the overall economy when wages are going down and cost of living is going up. Even myself, I couldn't care less about the overall health of the economy. I care about being able to subsist mine and my family's life style, put food on the table, someday own a home, not live paycheck to paycheck because all the jobs are paying below a living wage, etc.

I'm extremely fortunate to make the salary that I do, but I know plenty of others not so fortunate, in other fields that don't pay nearly as well as tech does, and probably never will. The answer can't be "go into tech" nor should it be "let's suppress wages so labor isn't so expensive for our domestic companies." And obviously offshoring isn't great either.

We can still import talent without suppressing wages, by not abusing the program and actually only importing for roles that truly, beyond all reasonable doubt, could not be filled by a domestic worker.
by izacus | 2026-01-28 20:40:12+00:00
Can you be specific which countries are you talking about?

Because you seem to be in a word fight with very vague arguments and with someone else with very vague arguments and it's not even clear you're talking about same things.

So can you be clear on:

- Which counties you're talking about?
- Why are those countries important to think about in this case?
- Why doesn't this feature help people from regions that can afford a mid-to-top range smartphone?
by ticulatedspline | 2026-01-28 20:40:12+00:00
eh. the graphic isn't awful. That SNES is a bit melty but chances are I woulden't have even noticed given the level of scrutiny i would have given it. Frankly I've seen worse photoshop jobs. Had they used a better model you probably couldn't tell, and in 2 years you def won't be able to tell. Less mad about using AI but a bit disappointing they didn't at least clean that up, that's pretty lazy.

then again it's a splash for an sale that's going to be up for like a week.

I don't shop at GOG because they're a paragon of human-first graphic design. Given their current tenuous finances if they wanna save a bunch of money not hiring someone to do these splash screens, whatever. go for it.
by einpoklum | 2026-01-28 20:40:33+00:00
> everyone seemingly writing their own browser lately

Can you name/link to a few examples? I know about Ladybird:

https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/

but haven't noticed other initiatives.

> might be what ends up breaking their browser monopoly.

This post is a toy project, not a full-fledged browser engine, which is a large beast (even when you _don't_ do everything from scratch)
by k310 | 2026-01-28 20:41:19+00:00
Finite and Infinite Games, by James Carse [0][1]

First Chapter: There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

Final chapter: There is but one infinite game.

Enjoy the rest.

[0] https://jamescarse.com/books/finite-and-infinite-games/

[1] https://archive.org/download/james-p-carse-finite-and-infini...
by fragmede | 2026-01-28 20:41:41+00:00
I've spent a long career getting good at Linux. Real good. But I'm only human. Over the decades, the number of how-tos, wiki pages, Linux distros, Linux kernel source, other programs documentation and source; all of that which I've ingested and used in practice and gotten good at, doesn't hold a candle to AI having been trained on every single last one of them. The solution to your apt/Vivaldi problem is easy: install Claude code, and paste in the error. Hit ctrl-o to gain insight on how it fixes it.

You used to be able to charge a decent hourly consulting rate to do some Linux, but because Claude code is so good at it, there's no market for that anymore.

(for one, your URI is wrong, resulting in Apt looking for apt will look for:
.../deb/dists/stable/dists/stable/Release )
by dijit | 2026-01-28 20:41:55+00:00
So, uh.

I kinda don't want to share this because:

A) it's a bad idea

B) it means it will be less unique

and

C) I got teased for it a long time ago by my other nerd friends.

But the US DOD has huge blocks of prefixes that it doesn't do anything with, presumably they use it for internal routing so every device they have could publicly route without NAT..

One of those prefixes is 7.0.0.0/8.

My home network uses that. I have never had an issue with S2S VPNs.

However, there have been a few bits of software (pfsense for example) which have RFC1918 hardcoded in some areas and treat it like a public network and overwriting it means doing the entire network setup manually without the helping hand of the system to build-out a working boilerplate.
by eichin | 2026-01-28 20:41:58+00:00
To combine with the "but did he build a cpu" thread, back-in-the-day the term project for MIT 6.004 was "build a CPU with TTL", with a very open-ended "performance race" extra credit project at the end. (At least one of the highest scorers went on build a network performance hardware company and sold it to Broadcom :-)

(If the "build a CPU" part doesn't impress, it was common to build an entire compiler toolchain to go with it; also it was long enough ago that a web browser really was a weekend project :-)
by johnnyanmac | 2026-01-28 20:42:00+00:00
What industry has put actual resistance to these in these times? Plenty of Hollywood has wool over their eyes (though a few are starting to speak out), Sports bent the knee for a full year (especially FIFA), law firms capitulated, hospitals aren't gonna lose their massive profit margins over the health care stuff.

No industry is coming out of this with a clean bill of health. You as an individual can only choose to not work with the most evil ones.
by John23832 | 2026-01-28 20:42:44+00:00
> TBH the "ZIRP overhiring" seems like the most likely real reason. I could never understand how all these companies could hire so many people for so much money, only to have them work on later-to-be-cannes open source projects.

The same way they hire so many people for so much money to work on AI projects and build datacenter which haven't produced actual revenue for any customers (corporate or otherwise). I'd rather light money on fire to employ people tbh.

I say this as someone who has the 200 dollar Claude sub.
by miki123211 | 2026-01-28 20:43:38+00:00
> Do you trust facebook (excuse me, meta) to not snoop on your messages

No, but I trust some nosy German guy at TU Whatever to spend hours poking at the assembly, find that hidden flag and proudly present it at 40C3.

With enough eyeballs, all source is open (and AI will give us far more eyeballs than we have any idea what to do with).

Sure, you can have different builds distributed to different people, but the NSA can also just do that with Signal, Signal being open source makes it that much easier. FDroid mitigates this somewhat, but it's not like the NSA can't get a fake TLS certificate for their domain and MITM your communications.
by ekidd | 2026-01-28 20:43:39+00:00
Having actually run some of the software produced by nearly "dark software factories," a lot of that software is completely shit.

Yegge's Beads is a genuinely good design, for example, but it's flakier and more broken the Unix vendor Motif implementations in 1993, and it eats itself more often than Windows 98 would blue screen.

I can actually run a bunch of orchestrated agents, and get code which isn't complete shit. But it's an extremely skill-intensive process, because I'm acting as product manager, lead engineer, and the backstop for the holes in the cognition of a bunch of different Claudes.

So far, the people promising completely dark software factories are either high on their own supply, or grifting to sell books (or occasionally crypto). Or so I judge from using the programs they ship.
by zozbot234 | 2026-01-28 20:43:45+00:00
If you're running vastly different processes in different ALU lanes, the single master "program" that comprises them all is effectively an interpreter. And then it's hard to have the exact same control flow lead to vastly different effects in different processes, especially once you account for branches. This works well for inference batches since those are essentially about straight-line processing, but not much else.
by vel0city | 2026-01-28 20:43:50+00:00
People are arguing the actions of ICE officers is warranted because they're being obstructed and harassed, blowing whistles is obstruction and harassment, their actions include shooting murdering people in the streets.

QED.

I don't know how else to read it. Inform me.

If anything the actions ICE is taking is even worse, Pretti didn't even have a terrorist assault whistle.
by mc32 | 2026-01-28 20:44:41+00:00
There is a good case for vetted legal immigration (there is need and they fill that unmet need), no question; however, that should not be at the expense of the local population, regardless of country. In other words, the locals should not suffer a depressed job market because of immigration. The whole reason for a state to exist is to first and foremost look after the wellbeing of its citizens that elect the bodies of government.
by dismalaf | 2026-01-28 20:44:41+00:00
I switched to Linux circa 2010 when I needed a word processor but didn't want to go to the store to buy Office (was pretty young and poor at the time). After some Googling I found LibreOffice and Ubuntu. I had used Suse Linux years earlier when I was a kid but it definitely wasn't ready for use (2003) so I was also curious about Ubuntu and the current state at the time. I installed Ubuntu, used LibreOffice for the thing I needed, and never looked back. Linux was a breath of fresh air and it did all the things I needed. I went to university using only Linux (2012-2016), opened businesses, did all sorts of things, all 100% on Linux. Nice to see everyone else finally catching up.

Also has always been interesting seeing people whine about Linux the whole time I've been using it problem-free, across 4 PCs and 16 years.
by curt15 | 2026-01-28 20:45:53+00:00
>if I want e2e attestation of the software stack on my own devices, isn't this a good thing for me?

The building blocks are already there for a sufficiently motivated user to build their own verified OS image. Google has been doing that with ChromeOS for years. The danger I see is that once there is a low-friction, turnkey solution for locking down general purpose systems, then the battle for control over users' devices reduces to control over the keys. That is much easier for well-heeled interests to dominate than outlawing Linux outright.

The status quo is a large population of unverified but fully user-configurable systems. While the ideal end state is a large population of verified and fully user-configurable systems, it is more likely that the tools for achieving that outcome will be co-opted by corporate and political interests to bend the population toward verified and un-configurable systems. IMO that outcome would be far worse than the status quo.
by godelski | 2026-01-28 20:45:55+00:00
Maybe more interesting is that if you switch to looking at just America Linux jumps to 5.25% (unknown 7.4%) (Similar numbers for all of NA), and for Europe it is 4.32% (9.75% unknown).

Again, not huge numbers but also not insignificant. But they are quickly growing and taking share from Microsoft. If we look back at (Dec) 2021 the numbers are 1.8% and 2.2% respectively. Those gains are meaningful.
by ricksunny | 2026-01-28 20:45:59+00:00
I'm a fan of CHM. That said there collections have (understandably) a rather Silicon-Valley-legacy-centric view of, erm, computer history. You'll find little mention, for example, of these tantalizing early mentions of alternative computer architectures (with pictures!) in NSA's predecessor OP-20-G, as posed alongside the then-nascent von Neumann architecture (also covered).

https://www.governmentattic.org/8docs/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002...
by hdhdhsjsbdh | 2026-01-28 20:46:14+00:00
The US seems culturally ill-equipped to deal with this reality. We have encouraged several generations of people to channel all of their talents into maximizing their individual income, regardless of externalities or impact to their community. There is low trust and minimal social reward for giving back. We idolize the loudest, most ignorant voices only because they are wealthy and famous. In my own work with the next generation of tech workers, this seems obvious. The younger generations see it as a zero sum game. You only win by making as much money as possible, and the ends justify the means.
by beeflet | 2026-01-28 20:47:00+00:00
Firstly, ICE agents are making six figures. So in this context it is. You pay for loyalty and secrecy, that is how the government works and how the mafia works.

Secondly, it must scale. If the list of perceived enemies is great, you must have great scale to execute violence. If it is small, you must have great scale to execute surveillance. If your surveillance is violent, such as shaking people down for their computers and passwords, then you need scale to attack both large and small enemies.

This is why mass surveillance (and prevention thereof) is a meaningful hurdle. The alternatives are physically challenging.

The application of the XKCD comic is misleading. It is like saying, why lock your doors at night when a burglar can just bust down your door or pick your lock or break in through a window. The purpose of a locked door or encrypted computer or any form defense is to force your enemy to engage in more expensive and limited measures in attacking you.