skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
5. The Wayland list is damning as it reads like serious architectural errors were made for something that was meant to learn from X; and

Not really - remember that Wayland is mostly just doing things the way every other OS (ios, mac, android, windows) does them - passing around raster buffers to user-processes.

Most of the complaints have to do with the politics behind Gnome+GTK, KDE+Qt, and FreeDesktop. It was always ridiculous to have all of these settings stored in and managed by X11 - no other OS manages user shortcut and keyboard settings this way. When you take away X11, presumably you'd want to take away the bad separation-of-concerns as well, right? So it doesn't make sense for Wayland to be managing these things, right?

But then someone else needs to pick up the ball. The fact that everyone is writing their own compositor is just another symptom of the ridiculous project-fragmentation that has always afflicted desktop linux. They could have cooperated and made a common compositor, but everyone had to build their own.
The battle of censorship seems to have increased. As censorship platforms like Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Tik Tok continue to increase their censorship and institute algorithmic tweaks they are now met by countervailing censorship from other countries. It seems the other countries want parity with the capabilities of the US government.

Since the Snowden revelations and others it seems that other countries have actually been slow to move and catch up to parity.

China is the only country so far that has created a parallel non-US internet world.

I wonder when other countries will try to get parity with the US government. I assume the smaller countries will not have enough scale to just their own ecosystem but India is a potential candidate.

I wonder if the brazen open censorship of the Hunter Biden story on platforms like Twitter and Facebook (they even bragged about it) has spurred other countries to be wary of these platforms.

I remember leaders from Germany and Mexico decry the removal of the US President from Twitter (and Facebook).

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/11/germanys-merkel-hits-out-at-...

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/mexico-leader...
An answer to most of these might be to fix and extend ALSA rather than wallpapering over it and treating it like abandonware.
I will not stand for this rhubarb heresy!
Funny you should ask that. Because in 1986, the hilarious answer the BBC came up with was 2 Videodiscs, which were obsolete almost as soon as they were introduced:

https://atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html

The latest way to preserve the content from those disks, since nobody can read them any more, is on the internet, so perhaps the OP is on to something - perhaps the internet will survive 500 years in some form, given its obvious utility.
Can you name Chinese products (made in China by and for Chinese companies -- not American or European companies) that you consider to be of high quality? Same for South America.

And what American products have "constantly" disappointed you?
the blockchain will still be permanent offline and on repositories
Regardless of your perspective of the world and a presumption of people's motivations, that doesn't take away from the fact that the Software Freedom Conservancy is alleging they violated AGPL, which is entirely what the article is about. And violations, especially high profile ones, should absolutely be challenged regardless of political orientation.
Great game, although it does suffer from some of the same obtuse puzzle solutions that plagued other adventure games of the time. I went through it with a guide, and I still have no idea why I did some of the things in the order that I did in order to get the "best" ending.

Anyone who buys the game on Steam or GOG will get the short story as a downloadable bonus, so that's pretty cool.

EDIT: This passage suggests that Harlan's original script for the famous Star Trek episode is somehow lost to the annals of history:

> As good as the produced version of the episode is, Ellison insisted until his death that the undoctored script he first submitted was far, far better — and it must be acknowledged that at least some of the people who worked on Star Trek agreed with him. In a contemporaneous memo, producer Bob Justman lamented that, following several rounds of editing and rewriting, “there is hardly anything left of the beauty and mystery that was inherent in the screenplay as Harlan originally wrote it.”

It's not. It has long been published and available for people to read:

https://www.amazon.com/Harlan-Ellisons-City-Edge-Forever/dp/...

It was even adapted into a graphic novel that followed the original screenplay:

https://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-City-Edge-Forever/dp/163140...

Having read both, and watched the episode, I can confidently say that the original script was miles better than what we got.
Screen tearing is like keming - once you see it, you see it everywhere.
According to this page https://finance.zacks.com/first-company-offered-new-york-sto... the first five stocks listed included the Bank of New York which still exists as BNY Mellon. It doesn't indicate what the other four stocks were, but presumably they no longer exist (The NYSE page on Wikipedia lists other traded securities as shares in The First Bank of the United States (defunct in 1821) and the Bank of North America (which became a private institution (it was previously the de facto central bank of the nascent U.S.) in 1785 before merging with Commercial Trust Company in 1923. Its successor institutions were eventually acquired by Wells Fargo so presumably if you'd bought shares in 1785 and held on to them for the next 236 years you'd now be holding shares in Wells Fargo). As far as I can tell all other trading was in government bonds.
Each point he made is really weak too. It puts all the burden on the user compared to other main stream operating systems

> There's no concept of drivers in Linux ...

I'm not well versed in drivers, but this explanation makes it sound like hardware needs to target a specific linux driver to work as intended.

So instead of someone building their own driver against some api and including it with the product, they have to either design their hardware around linux (and maintain compatibility with windows/mac), or make a pull request for support and go through the normal development channels?

Is that really how that works? No wonder graphics + wifi cards have had so much trouble through the years...

> Your hardware generally either works or doesn't work. ... Linux-compatible hardware to purchase ...

I've never bought a device that didn't work with windows. Ever.

I understand what causes that, but for better for for worse, windows wins for usability here. And I'm not entirely convinced no one can come up with a system to smooth this out better.

> ... The distros keep your software working with newer versions of Gtk or Qt, and deal with licensing. It's not something that end users need to worry about.

Until something breaks and I do have to worry about it. Then it's explicitly my problem to solve, with only google on my side to help.

> Also the obsession with "screen tearing" ...

It doesn't bother me either, but "it doesn't bother me so it's a non-problem" is so unsympathetic to the typical user.

Is no one besides techie programmers supposed to being using linux? That's what it seems like most of the time.
> which is the same as any other OS

Apple's value story is that you can get a machine guaranteed to run MacOS by walking into a store and buying their hardware, no Internet search necessary (unless you need directions to the store).

There are a couple companies that do that for the Linux ecosystem, and I suspect it would make Linux easier to use if more were out there (but I don't know if the market would support them).
Manu Linux distributions have tclsh preinstalled.
Per other comments, county jail waiting for a trial.
put me in for $1 on both Lojban and Esperanto.
Adjency – Discovery, Publishing, and Monetization for Creators
"Ahh, yes, Ubuntu and KDE = Linux."

In this case, yes. Ubuntu and KDE are two major players in desktop Linux. There really is not anything stopping Linux vendors from using telemetry, and in fact I'd expect them to use more of it in the event their products get more popular.

"Debian's popcount, for instance, is opt-in - Windows' are mostly (if not all) opt-out."

This is a minor detail and I don't think it actually matters. If a company actually needs that data and is not getting it from that telemetry then they're getting it from somewhere else. For example Canonical builds products on Debian and doesn't use popcon, they use other data collection mechanisms, which are detailed in the privacy policy I posted.

"Ubuntu and KDE send their data to organizations that I trust"

This has nothing to do with the implementation. Plus, Microsoft's dedicated customers do trust Microsoft to similar degree, so this is not going to be convincing to them. You need a better selling point.

"Ubuntu and KDE's telemetry remain off when I turn it off - Windows' does not."

That sounds to me like a bug or glitch that someone should fix. Ubuntu or KDE could also manifest such bugs, I guess we're just lucky they haven't.

"I don't know what data Windows or Ubuntu collect"

It's possible to change that. You can just read the Ubuntu privacy policy that I posted. Windows also has a similar privacy policy, you should do a search for it if you're interested.

"trying to falsely equivocate Windows and Linux telemetry is FUD"

Actually I have not done this, I mentioned they're different, and I explicitly explained how you shouldn't be afraid, uncertain or doubting anything. In a lot of cases (including some you mentioned) telemetry is not actually bad, and Windows users may feel that it's not bad for them either. I can give you more details if you need them. Please just don't misuse the phrase "FUD" like this.
TIL ES6 Map is guaranteed to iterate in insertion order. That always made me crazy in C++ too; the structure that I usually actually want is std::unordered_map not std::map.

There are other algorithms and use cases for a stable iteration into an ordered sequence, but I can’t think of any off-hand. It is true that it’s rare to prefer a linked list on modern CPU architecture.
Mark Zuckerberg and the MetaUniVerse of Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus
The splc puts out their reasoning on their classifications,

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...

I suppose if you want to nit pick, they don't self-identify as white supremecist, but openly promote the idea that whites are superior and deserve to dominate society.
No. They didn't promote someone who funded anti-gay marriage propaganda to CEO and the comment sections of the internet never forgave them so basically every time they come up someone gets histrionic about that. You can't survive that kind of sustained, targeted vitriol.

I guess we got gay marriage but they took our Firefox and our open, non-corporate web as revenge.
China smartphone shipments fall 5% in September
It will never be the year of the linux desktop if they can't put their feet in the shoes of a non-linux hacker.
Yes, if you're a contractor your lack of a US passport doesn't seem to matter (in my limited experience).
I'm wondering, how is this kind of contract structured? Do they say "work X hours a week, we'll pay you X" like a normal employee? Or do you bill for variable hours (up to a maximum) where you fill up a log? Or something else? I've only ever experienced full time/part time so I'm curious.
As a further point to the above, while UF and PF are very prevalent for engineered / manufactured woods and planks of all types, it's possible to make manufactured bamboo planks without the use of formaldehyde-based glues.

You need to look for "NAF" (No-Added Formaldehyde) tested and certified bamboo products.

More details at https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/documents/frequently-asked-...

NAF glue alternatives and details: https://amienvironmental.com/formaldehyde-free-adhesives/
At some point improvements in computing will mean that the "crypto" in current cryptocurrencies will no longer be secure, and therefore all current currencies of this type will have to be abandonded for something else - quantum-something.
I have had exposure to industrial equipment sales in Asia, Latin America and the Mideast. American-made equipment generally has an excellent reputation. Cost, however, is often an issue.

It would be helpful if you were more specific. Where do you come from? What types of products are you talking about?
AWS SES Email Templates Manager
Thanks for the tip I will put it on my ever growing reading list.
1. Who are you to divine what he would prefer or to conclude that $100 million is enough for working on Stardew Valley for 10 years

2. I don't care what he would prefer, anyway

3. Regardless, it's not an either or situation
“The thing is there can't be more than one phone system, ever. The moment someone invents a new phone system, someone will create a gateway to the old phone system, and the phone system will live on.”

Thus far, this is true. The global phone system has persisted for almost 100 years, evolving via numerous “gateways” to older iterations of system (e.g. land lines -> cell phones, copper wires -> microwave links -> fiber optic lines, in-band signaling -> out-of-band signaling, individual lines -> multiplexing, etc.)

Yet despite the same phone system evolving and persisting for almost a century, dial-in BBSes, Minitel [0], and other outdated technologies that use phone lines are completely dead. Just because a communications medium may persist for a long time doesn't mean protocols utilizing the medium will.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
My working definition of antivaxer: "someone who does not get a recommended vaccine, or who advocates that others should not get a vaccine, based in a general disbelief or suspicion of the judgment of the vast majority of infectious disease experts, and with no reasonable reason to believe the inoculation provider is acting under false pretenses." [1]

In this case we are specifically talking about COVID, and police who refuse to reveal their vaccination status, so there is no ambiguity of which vaccine we are talking about.

I've not been vaccinated for the flu, and I've only just now found out that the CDC recommends adults be vaccinated. My reason for not getting the shot was that I thought it was only recommended for certain risk groups and their caretakers, not because of general disbelief, and thus I am not an anti-vaxxer.

[1] As an example of 'false pretenses', the US used a fake vaccination program to search for Osama Bin Laden, making many unwilling to trust other vaccination programs, and slowing down the polio eradication effort. There's also the reverberating effects of historic systemic racism in the US at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study#Public... .
If you'd heard about it, you wouldn't need someone else to find cites or links, I'm not that gullible.

> Did not create new law

Right, it had no effect, just more signalling from Trump. He sought to increase the legal responsibility of social media companies for what their users say, exposing them to lawsuits, in effect silencing and canceling users.
Years ago I used Linux as my daily driver. That was before kids and a real house and all the other things that go with being a father and husband. Now, I ain't got time for that. I need something that works and doesn't require a lot of fiddling. I also support four other machines for various family members (total of eight including mine). I encouraged everyone to buy Macs. That lowered my support effort by 80%. I use one Windows machine for work. No Linux anymore (except WSL2) and I wouldn't even consider it.
> Then the other guys pretty much reached feature parity while Firefox was busy tossing XUL out the window with all its plugins.

In the case of Chrome, which ate Firefox's lunch, the new guy was built with isolation and security in mind, while the old guy was dragging a very modular but much less secure architecture.

There's a case for keeping the old XUL, but I'd much rather use the more recent multiprocessing, sandboxed browsers than a less secure one that lets me re-skin its UI at will. My understanding is that the two weren't compatible, and a meaningful sandbox could only be added by breaking existing extensions.
Guys. Windows 11 runs linux desktop apps via WSLg. So how about nailing 2021 as year of Linux desktop? :)

Brought to you by Microsoft: https://github.com/microsoft/wslg
Ask HN: Is GitHub's API always fragile or just today?
I started to experiment with Github's GraphQL API today and have been getting just so many errors and failures - like about 20-50% for fairly simple queries (costing 1 unit). I am wondering if this is always the case? Is there something trivial I am missing?
> Exactly this. These are the exact reasons why users having to 'install Linux distros' these days will always be limited to tech geeks and enthusiasts and not widely adopted as a mainstream desktop.

I don't think you've thought this through. How many Windows users out there have installed it themselves? How many could install it themselves? How many could complete an installation if somebody else booted up the installer for them on a machine with a single empty hard drive?

The popularity of Windows and MacOS have nothing to do with how easy they are to install, or with "hardware support".
To quote: "Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers. Developers."

I personally think Chrome gained so much market share, in large part, because it simply had the best developer tools.

Firefox had FireBug, which was great, and revolutionary for its time!

However! Having FireBug meant that Mozilla's built in tools never got much attention. So their dev tools were severely lacking, and stagnant. They remained that way until a few years back.

Meanwhile Chrome's dev tools just kept advancing. So in the end, FireBug (unintentionally) helped FireFox lose major marketshare
Rack jobbing means the vendor stocks the shelves, sometimes literally. The vendor isn’t paid until the item sells. That’s common for a variety of merchants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_jobber
The biggest issue preventing me from switching to Linux on my macbook pro is trackpad support.

Before I tried Linux, I never realized how important a good trackpad driver is. The mouse never moves where I want it so I have to constantly correct. It registers a tap when I don't it to yet doesn't tap when I do. Trying to use a trackpad on Linux is so frustrating.

Whereas on macOS I've mastered the trackpad so that using it is easier than a mouse. I can move to and click on a random button in like 1sec.

I also need to mention that macOS has two-finger scrolling, and four-finger navigation through multiple windows / screens. I use both features a ton. Linux has two-finger support but it sucks, and I don't know about any four-finger navigation.

I've tried both the default linux driver and mtrack, mtrack is slightly better but still nothing compared to whatever macOS uses. AFAIK this is a well-known problem, but until it's resolved I just can't imagine using Linux on a laptop. Having a good trackpad just makes everything so much easier.
Why not? A true hacker would consider it.
ALSA was written to allow psuedo-devices to be implemented in user-space, which is how PulseAudio (and now Pipewire) does what it does.

Nobody is abandoning ALSA, it continues to be both the device driver layer and the lowest layer of the audio stack in user-space.

[ EDIT: you could make an argument that after many years of experience, it's time to put the lessons learned from JACK and PulseAudio into ALSA itself, and have ALSA provide the sorts of audio capabilities that the two of them, combined, enabled. I don't have much of a position on this compared with the Pipewire approach, which is to do the same thing, but outside of ALSA. There are good arguments for both, but Pipewire is what we have, and it remains as dependent on ALSA as JACK and PulseAudio and just about all other Linux audio has been since 2000 ]
There are barely any economic incentives to make the Linux desktop usable. I can't name anyone whose income would be dependent on people being happy with a Linux desktop to any significance. It's a miracle it works as well as it works in my view.

Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical make some money off of Linux and sell desktop operating systems, but their customers are the enterprise (their users have to use what they get) and their primary revenue stream is around servers anyway. They finance part of the development of Gnome or KDE, but that's not a lot of money. The Gnome Foundation's total income last year was under $1 million, KDE e.V.'s was under €250k. These are by far the largest and most professional Linux desktop projects.

One tiny exception is Elementary OS - which makes some donation money from their community directly to make a usable desktop experience. There you see the difference - it's a tiny project but is being well received for its core experience. Sadly it's too small to have a significant impact the wider Linux ecosystem.

If this situation doesn't change, the free desktop will always be viewed as a hobby project for people scratching their own itch. Many like it that way. But vendors will find it hard to take the Linux desktop seriously, and this limits adoption from a wider audience too.

The Linux desktop has no shortage of opinions, but a big shortage of money.
So I've been running Linux (and various BSDs) on the Desktop for at least 20 years or so. All flavors and distros. And I think the problems in 2021 are mostly the same as they have always been: caused by vendors.

It always comes down to what you're willing to tolerate in your desktop and hardware support and what vendors are dishing out.

Most people can just install Linux nowadays on a fresh PC and be done with it. It mostly just works which is amazing in many respects.

But - if you come up against some bug for some specific piece of hardware you have (eg graphics driver is not working properly out of the box), you're in for some work. And that's fine if you are OK with that.

Personally, I am not OK with that anymore and here are my rules:

1. If I have a random PC I will just run Windows 99% of the time.

2. If I want desktop Linux, I will purchase from a vendor who is testing with their hardware (e.g. System 76 or PINE64) OR I might buy a chrome book for Crostini. But I don't consider Chrome OS or Android "linux" because they are at their hearts proprietary operating systems that happen to utilize the Linux Kernel, IMO.

I consider this whole issue orthogonal to systems like macOS. I appreciate the work being done for M1 by the Asahi folks and will donate to it, of course.

I believe in 2021 it's time for me to start voting with my dollars if I want Desktop Linux (or phone Linux..) to be a thing. As much as I enjoy building a software system that matches my expectations, it's time for me to fully pass these expectations back to vendors, many of whom deserve my support.
I doubt any commercial/legal entity will live through the upcoming societal transformations. It is naive to believe our current political and economic systems will not change too much even in the next 20-30 years.
Have the website engraved on stainless steel plates. There are many affordable online services out there that would do that for you.

If your descendants store the plates in a dry attic, they could last 500 years just fine.

But… did anybody ever find something on their attic that was there for 500 years. That is very rare. I would assume that your great-grandchildren will throw them away because they need the space.