skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Microsoft can access any file, install any software, change any setting, or remove any access at any time for any reason with no notice or indication to you that it happened. They can even just shutdown your device. Any device which works like that is not one under your control.

Having this power is inherent in making the OS. Whoever is the vendor of your particular Linux distribution has the same powers, it is just that you trust them not to use them (or, in a very small theoretical minority of cases, you’ve audited the code and binaries yourself).

So yes, you shouldn’t use an OS from a vendor you don’t trust, I agree completely.

I don’t understand why people are acting like this is earth shattering news though, this has always been the case since people started using software they didn’t write themselves.
Does the collapse of all knowledge as we know it count as a material harm? Or is it a revolutionary opportunity to craft a new Knowledge Society independent and protected from the abuses of the old and failed knowledge order?
Linux May Be the Best Way to Avoid the AI Nightmare
The full screen OCR will capture the jpeg file names
It shouldn't surprise anyone that a checking a bool is faster than calling a function and checking the bool it returns.
All social networks will be confined to their nation states 5 years from now. The Chinese firewall will exist in every country.
I genuinely like Windows. I was raised on it, and have used every consumer version since 98, and have programmed on it since Windows 7. I believe that from a purely technical, systems programming, and even UI/UX perspective, it is superior to the competition—both commercial and free/libre open-source. I will be very happy to defend this statement as factually and reasonably as possible, because I also program on 'the competition OSs' at work, and every time I do so, I want to go back to a cohesive platform like VS 2022 which, for me, is unparalleled in terms of productivity.

But this sort of tone-deaf move from Microsoft is irritating me. I already dislike Windows 11's UI and UX flow because it is so reminiscent of macOS; this is why I haven't updated to it on my personal main computer yet (which is running Windows 10 Education, courtesy of my alma mater's Azure subscription). I've seen rumours that Microsoft hired a bunch of UI designers who used nothing but macOS and decided it was a good idea to port macOS UI designs to Windows. What a terrible terrible thing. UI responses that are instant even on Windows 10 now have a jelly-like lag to them on Windows 11, for no good reason. Also consider the regression of the right-click context menu, the ads and Copilot everywhere, a preference for unlabelled icons over text, amongst many others.

As another comment says, Windows Recall appears to be an AI evolution of the already-present Windows Timeline feature. The privacy outcomes of this are concerning and I really really wish we didn't have 'AI' and 'Copilot' stuffed down our throats all the time. I would like to opt-in to features I want, rather than have them all pre-enabled. Some of them are very useful, like clipboard history with Windows-Ctrl-V; some less so and are flagrant privacy violations.

I have already disabled almost every tracking, phone-home and auto-update feature possible using group policies; this is just another thing to add to my list of disabled 'help' features.

That being said, if Recall doesn't phone home—which appears to be the case here—I don't buy the argument that 'it's stealing everything you do and hackers can access it if they have physical access'. I believe that the moment a computer's physical access record is compromised, the entire computer is compromised, regardless of security theatre like disk encryption in the form of BitLocker/LUKS, Secure Boot etc. It doesn't matter whether Recall is present or not.
1. It is encrypted at rest, once you login its decrypted with the rest of the stuff running+on your drive. All this stops is someone with physical access and that's it.

2. The article says that they are not releasing PoC (my words not theirs) because this feature isn't out, and they want to give M$ a chance to fix it:

> I am deliberately holding back technical details until Microsoft ship the feature as I want to give them time to do something.
> I’m not particularly patriotic, but this kind of thing feels particularly American.

??? America has no doubt done some very remarkable things (the moon landing, the first backward compatible color TV standard), but I don't think this is a notable example of that.

I think everyone in Europe was familiar with even wristwatches getting the time from "airwaves". At least in Germany, watches were a very common thing since the 80s (I think everyone old enough vividly remembers the many Junghans commercials on TV). The corresponding signal has been broadcast for many decades earlier, as it's no surprise that railroad and airplane networks were in need of a common time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77

> But we had a problem, and we solved it with technology. And none of that fancy newfangled technology — we solved it using solid technology, the kind that you can touch with your hands and that buzzes in the airwaves.

There wasn't much "newfangled technology" around at the time. We essentially solved it using the simplest method there was at the time, at least I find it a bit hard to come up with a simpler one.

Also, what would be an example of technology that you can't either "touch with your hands" or that does "buzz in airwaves"?
I can't believe I had never heard about webseeds [1] before!

Do I understand correctly that one can make a torrent from any HTTP-available file (without even owning the file) and start downloading and sharing with BitTorrent? It's incredible!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Web_seeding
I love nuclear stuff, and I agree with you that SMR have a very good chance to become cheaper. I think we, the society, should invest in nuclear (specific nuclear fission) because of the immense energy density of uranium and thorium.

Yet, I think reaching our climate goals is entirely doable without nuclear.

Why? Net zero does not mean zero emissions. It means emissions equal to sinks. Right now in the US all the emissions coming from natural gas power plants are equal to all the sinks (generally forests) [1]. When I tell people that they are surprised. Here's the numbers: electricity contributes 25% to the emissions, and natgas power plants generate 45% of the emissions associated with power generation [2]. So 11.25% of emissions come from these power plants. The greenhouse gas sinks for the US are at 13%.

So, if we ditch all the coal power plants (which is happening right now, at high speed) and we build a lot of solar and wind, and keep all the current natural gas power plants as peakers, then we will be well below net zero.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=77&t=11
Yeah this is my problem with windows. I’ll delete or disable things that were added to my machine only to have windows update restart my computer and those things show up again. I’m using a legit copy of Windows 11 Pro and it’s absurd that I’ve had to delete or disable random shit like social media apps multiple times.
There are at least two places in the standard library that behave like this: sql.ErrNoRows and the error thrown by os.Open when a file doesn't exist.
Neat idea! Simple yet effective.
> apps allowing users to denote their windows as DRM content to avoid Recall

That would prevent user-initiated screen captures as well. Not a good idea for browsers at least.
Everything is outsourced to the compositor. It's insane. Same reason there's no xbindkeys for Wayland - every compositor needs to implement their own version of it. Every compositor needs their own screen reader and accessibility software as well. All in the name of preventing mythical attack surface (people write exploits to give themselves arbitrary code execution, not for the ability to read window contents or whatever Wayland is supposed to prevent).
They all are required to have a process service agent and address, legally.
Tell HN: What Performers Hear in Their In-Ear Monitors During Concerts
Hey HN,

I wanted to share something fascinating about live concerts that not everyone might know. As a radio amateur and tech enthusiast, I recently delved into the world of in-ear monitors (IEMs) used by performers on stage. Here's what I've discovered, and I thought it might interest you too.

In-ear monitors are specialized earbuds that performers wear during live shows. They play a crucial role in allowing artists to monitor the sound in real-time, which is essential for a precise performance. So, what exactly do they hear in those monitors? Here are some key points:

Personalized Sound Mix: Each performer gets a customized mix of audio, which can include different levels of vocals, instruments, drums, and more. This helps them hear themselves and other band members accurately.

Communication with Technicians: In-ear monitors also facilitate communication with backstage sound engineers. This can include cues, changes in settings, or other important information.

Hearing Protection: IEMs help protect performers' hearing by blocking out ambient noise and allowing them to control the volume, which is especially important in loud concert environments.

Diversity Technology: To ensure a stable connection without dropouts, many IEM systems use diversity technology, which employs two antennas to receive the signal, minimizing the risk of signal loss.

If any of you are into sound technology, wireless systems, or have experience in this field, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Do you have favorite brands or models of IEMs? Or do you have questions about the tech used on stage? Looking forward to your comments!
Necessity of Complex Numbers [video]
nix flake update then nixos-rebuild switch --flake and encountering an error is nightmare fuel. There is always a moment right after the error occurs where it feels like you'll never figure it out. I've always manage to up to this point but man...
I'm impressed! I live on a forested ridge above a horseshoe bend in a big lake and there's a fairly steep hill behind our home. Our home is surrounded by big oak trees but there is a big front yard that's all lawn, and behind us there is a lot of open space where we have a pretty big garden and a pretty steep hill below that is forest with big hardwood trees. It pretty much nails down when and where it's shady.
"those engaging in it should be punished" isn't a call for harsher penalties, it's a call for consistent penalties, which is a good idea.
I’m in FL rn, right next to Cape Canaveral and if the wind doesn’t subside it looks like there will be no launch tomorrow. Today it’s really bearing down pretty hard.
What are you referring to as "sleep hygiene"?

It seems like that phrase usually refers to the things the author mentions as being "necessary but insufficient," not to the CBT-I components that they had newly discovered (which I sometimes summarize as "teach yourself that sleep is not as important as you think it is, and then maybe you'll be able to sleep").
> In practice, that audience’s needs are a very small (tiny, in fact) portion of Windows userbase — and frankly talking about screenshotting the things people in the real world, not executive world, is basically like punching customers in the face. The echo chamber effect inside Microsoft is real here, and oh boy… just oh boy. It’s a rare misfire, I think.

> I think it’s an interesting entirely, really optional feature with a niche initial user base that would require incredibly careful communication, cybersecurity, engineering and implementation. Copilot+ Recall doesn’t have these. The work hasn’t been done properly to package it together, clearly.

Definitely needed some copy editing however.
10yo+ B2B SaaS company we're still on Heroku. I think the value prop is particularly good for B2B SaaS and probably less so for consumer products. Our margin per customer is so much higher than the infra cost it just never makes sense to spend money on devops instead of building features.

That said it does feel a bit like a ghost town, I'm always happy to hear when someone is doing something over there.
I am trying not to be reactionary but I swear, my usual response to the announcement of a new Windows feature is often "... and how do I turn that off?"

Still, sqlite ... tempting. Sometimes, if I am missing something I read months or even years ago, the right query to the sqlite files Firefox keeps can give good results.
They're not the exception of the rule, the rule is just going to kick off later for you (pre-IPO, when cost cutting measures will take place and the process described above will start)
Actually Timeline was a semantic store from what I understand-- it didn't store screenshots of what you were doing, instead apps that used the Microsoft Graph API could contribute information about what you were doing to be included in the Timeline.

As far as I know, nothing used it except for MS' own apps. This new solution bypasses that problem by having no requirement for apps to use the Graph API-- it will just use an AI to deduce what the tasks were, and provide a search-like conversational experience on top of the collected images.
Sorry, I meant making up stuff, e.g. creative writing.
That's what they say in marketing materials, but TFA claims to have dumped their database and was speaking from experience dissecting that. Hard to say which should be trusted.
What do you mean if Google want to take over? They control Chromium now. And maintaining a fork is harder than you think. Even harder when the fork maintainers have different agendas. Even harder when the upstream maintainers are hostile.

Look at Manifest V3. Microsoft said the harm to extensions would be acceptable. Opera hedged and echoed Google's FUD about the removed APIs. Brave acknowledged the problem, recommended their integrated blocker, said they would support MV2 until Google removed the code, and declined to promise more. Vivaldi said similar.
Need to stick a camera on something like the Optimus 3 tracker with gps/cellular then although it’s already pretty large. Then you have proof where it is and pictures of the inside of the place.

https://www.amazon.com/Jiobit-Real-Time-Waterproof-Encrypted...
This is not something to be grateful for. They are normalizing spying by default.
> The Evening Standard was bought by businessman and former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny in 2009.

> The Lebedevs also bought the Independent in 2010, and scrapped that paper's print edition entirely six years later.

A Russian intelligence officer owning two major UK newspapers seems like a seriously undercovered story.
For those interested in specific models, here are a few popular choices among professionals:

Shure PSM900/PSM1000: Known for their excellent sound quality and reliability. The PSM1000, in particular, offers advanced features like networkability and precision RF performance.

Sennheiser EW IEM G4: A solid choice with a good balance of performance and affordability. It's widely used in live performances for its robust construction and reliable signal.

Audio-Technica M3: Offers great value for money, providing clear sound and a sturdy build. It's a popular choice for those looking to enter the professional IEM market without breaking the bank.

Ultimate Ears UE 11 Pro: Custom-molded for the perfect fit and excellent sound isolation. These are highly regarded among top-tier musicians for their superior audio quality.
> Do you remember when you could put your Mac to sleep, and when you woke it up a few days later, the battery would barely have dropped?

Has the author not used the m series Macs? Standby battery life is the best it has ever been in my time using laptops.
No. Linux might be the best way to miss out on AI bandwagon. These new developments are here to stay. The years of privacy loss and getting worried with the shortcomings of social media and internet is over. We are in the new era with new challenges. There is no rolling back.
There is a certain price for renewables and storage where, yes, gas infrastructure will absolutely be dead. I don’t know what that price is: but it exists. And it won’t be the first time entire generations of capital investment have been torn up and thrown in the trash. Go out and take a look at what remains of the industrial Midwest.

But 20 years, where gas gradually becomes a backup seasonal fuel source and is increasingly displaced by renewables and storage? That is absolutely consistent with a net-zero-by-2050 world. And probably a shorter timeline than the one that gives us ubiquitous SMRs, unfortunately.
> 4. External resources (files, I/O): this would be a very difficult topic if not for our simple question. Only writing to a file or outputting to an I/O stream is considered an effect, as only the process of writing mutates external state. Reading data creates new state, but does not modify it, therefore reading data of various sorts is not an effect. Because of this, printing is effectful, but reading from stdin is not.

Lost me at this part. Of course reading is a side-effect. A function which reads from a file/console cannot be pure. Purity implies referential transparency - a function given the same arguments will always return the same result.

If we consider the example given:

pub fn read_guess() -> int {
return io.read_int("Take a guess (0-100): ");
}

We should take `read_int` to be effectful because it will have the effect of advancing the position to read from in the console's buffer. If it didn't, it would always read from the same position, so even if the user took a second guess, the first guess would be read again the second time `read_int` is called. So given that `read_int` is effectful, so too is `read_guess`.

> 1. Well, creating a variable is creating new state, but it’s not changing the state, therefore creating a variable is not an effect, but changing it is.

Creating a local variable isn't a side-effect, but allocating a variable is a side effect. Sure enough, if we also free the allocation before leaving scope, we can avoid propagating that effect, but if you return a value that contains anything allocated by a function, then the function becomes effectful.
we still cant purchase Linux pre installed from most vendors and for most people thats the biggest bottleneck: they will not go out of they way to install an OS'
Yeah, our police force has definitely been struggling - but funding isn't the problem.
tl;dr: let’s replace this arbitrary set of numbers with an arbitrary set of words. Everyone loves rote memorization, but only for words, not numbers
Many compositors use the xdg portal standard. Go figure.
At least with dishwashers, part of the reason is actually that home dishwasher detergents are no longer allowed to have phosphates.

And for a lot of people the no-phosphates thing happened around the same time they got an energy-efficient dishwasher.

And then they blamed the bad dishwasher performance on the energy efficiency, when it's actually that home dishwasher detergent is far less effective now.

Except restaurants still get to use dishwasher detergent with phosphates, which is why their dishes continue to be sparkling clean.

(And I don't know about your dishwasher, but the last two I've had default to energy-efficient, but it's a single button press to put them on hi-temp mode.)
> Having this power is inherent in making the OS.

No, it really isn't. For decades I owned computers with operating systems which didn't have that capability. Once installed and configured, the OS was consistent and (reasonably) stable. Someone would literally have to break into my house or office to modify my settings or install software against my wishes.

Even after I started connecting my devices to the internet the OS itself had no ability to do these things and couldn't gain that ability unless I explicitly chose to install updates that enabled that behavior. That's entirely different from the situation today where MS forces updates and restarts, installs unwanted software on our computers, and has files and folders that we (even using administrator accounts) don't have access to.

Linux too is very different. Linux is transparent about what it does, adds, or changes. You have the power to choose which updates to apply or not. You have the power to modify any part of your OS so that it does what you want. I can't speak to all distros out there, but I've never seen a linux system force a restart in the middle of the day, or reinstall applications users removed without notice. Can't say the same for Windows. Unlike Windows, linux typically respects its users and their wishes.

You really don't have to write your own software in order to have software that respects you and leaves you in control of your own devices. It's kind of crazy that you'd think there could be no other way.
missing out is a feature. Microsoft will infest its OS with AI driven ads faster than you think
“the future of windows is cloud”.
I sometimes think our chosen vocabulary for cancer is a bit self-defeating. I am sure oncologists have a more nuanced view than mine, but there's three big components which stick out to me. First, where did the cancer start (organ is good, tissue specific is even better)? Second, what mutations were involved? Third, where has it gone from there? All three give a more complete picture than just the point of origin.
> Body height is largely hereditary if you can avoid malnutrition. But improved nutrition has led to an increase in average height over time.

To be clear, good environment increases the phenotypical expression of genotype. A malnourished population will have lower height variance than a well-fed one ceteris paribus.
This was fun! I like how the letters didn't reset to their original spots. It made finding words easier with the different letter combinations.
Not to mention every cloud provider has something built in (AWS CodeBuild, GCP Cloud Build, etc.)
Did the industrial revolution happen over an extremely compressed timeframe and feature machines that can assemble machines based on labor output data?
Outside of high school, where literally everything is a reason to ostracize people who are different, where is it a social issue to not have an iPhone?
I don't see how "AI" is going to be more dangerous than the existing telemetry / forced updates / onedrive / icloud paradigm we already have in Windows/iOS.

The ship has already sailed for (non-linux) OS privacy. And it seems like most ordinary consumers largely don't care. Microsoft word has been synced to the cloud for years now, so I doubt that adding a msword AI is going to be the tipping point for people switching to Linux.
Speak for yourself, Linux runs AI just fine when you want it. The big difference is that I get to choose where it lives, not my OEM (who let's face it, doesn't care how AI is implemented).

Sign me up for missing out. I also don't use native DirectX, first-party filesystem drivers, Office 365 or Dropbox/iCloud. I'll happily add AI to the list, if I have to.
NASA launch coverage has really improved. YouTube access is great especially as SpaceX has moved off YouTube quality also has improved. It seems the last year regardless what I think about SLS and some other NASA programs this is very nice to see. telemetry and video back, though still a bit weaker