skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The ZX Spectrum computing nostalgia highlights the abyss between what could have been and the state and direction of personal computing technology anno 2024.

In four decades we went from zero, to infinite possibilities and then (de-facto) to zero again, even as the planet is drowning in oceans of smartphone electronic waste.

Back then you would plug your rubber key wonder into a TV and could program the device right away [1]. Think of what it takes to program [2] a smartphone today. Its practically impossible unless you are a professional developer with very specific specializations. Yet we now "own" devices that are infinitely more capable than the ZX, in every possible dimension (cpu, disk, memory, comms, screen, camera, microphone, you name it)

Mass personal computing has been hijacked, sealed up, dumbed down and thoroughly diverted to serve pretty much only one objective (out of the vast range of social and economic opportunities and challenges): consumer tracking and profiling, for the purpose of intermediating online consumption.

We can only guess at what wonders would have developed in the intervening four decades if the original ethos and creativity of the tech industry had survived even in part the onslaught of the particularly virulent type of commercialism that has come to define digital technology.

[1] https://worldofspectrum.org/ZXBasicManual/zxmanchap1.html

[2] "programming" meaning in this context any advanced controls a user has over a digital device, providing agency and abilities to shape its function for their own benefit in ways that are not pre-programmed and fixed by the vendor.
Yeah the camera upgrade is the most I’m looking
for, especially shooting videos
The Modern Developer's Dilemma a Machine's Perspective
The problem is that bloom filters are good when your dataset is large and calculating several hashes per item is not as expensive as looking it up in the original dataset. Here, they say that even one hash is expensive, so bloom filters would be much slower than the original hash map.
Yeah, it seems more like they'd all shoot for 45th percentile and say "We pay competitive wages" instead, slowly driving the wages down.
Using a rent estimate would be a brilliant way to double-check if you are overpaying salaries. /s
The unseen, silent tribute to those we have lost
SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes (2023)
uBlock origin with the "annoyances" list blocks 90% of these I find
Just to add, I have heard horror stories of entire google accounts being nuked in retaliation for disputing the transaction. So I'm hesitant to do that until I can untangle myself from google services.
the antiphons and magnificat are, not surprisngly, very good advent music.
Building a browser using Servo as a web engine
Beautiful, this person can do some really good web design.
Pffft! Those new fangled computer thingies will never take off. I'm perfectly happy with my Sinclair ZX80 and its spacious 1k of ram.
Another thing you can do is to publish source code for releases only.

By keeping the commits internal you don't have to think hard about what you commit and it allows to have other stuff in your repository that logically belongs there but is not suitable for a public release (internal tooling, things used to create the source code initially but not required, etc.).
I got access to Pave through one of my investors. Seeing the data made us set salaries and contractor rates higher, not lower. It’s like salary banding at big companies. It’s a framework for how much other people are paid at the same level, not a contract. HR will make it seem like a rule, but if you do spectacular work - you can always negotiate.

Collusion requires an agreement between rivals that negatively disrupts market equilibrium. Is this company not actually making the market more efficient and transparent? That said - an efficient market is good for the collective, not necessarily the rogue / outlier individual.
Essential mindset shifts for starting/moving from Big Tech to an early startup
Beyond the typical advice about the "resource-constrained" nature of early-stage startups, I wanted to share my personal take on key mindset shifts that engineers and product managers need to complete when transitioning from Big Tech (Google, Meta, etc.) to a 0-to-1 startup.

I’ve seen that being too slow to complete these mindset shifts, leads to slow learnings and validations, which ultimately impacts motivation, velocity, focus and the ability to reach PMF.

The points discussed are centered around:
1- Length of feedback cycle
2- Interpretation of user signals
3- Urgency to ship impacts the speed and quantity of learnings
4- Proactiveness in setting and maintaining standards
5- Speed of decision making
6- Less work needed on internal stakeholders, much more focus on users
I would assume the secrets standard library creation might be related to this concern.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/secrets.html
Well, I wouldn't mind getting my wage fixed, if that works both ways, down _and up_, because then I would be guaranteed to never earn less than average for my skill and experience. Assuming, that those things of course factor into the averaging. Person X with experience Y in position Z. However, something tells me, that there is a tendency towards the downwards direction and none towards wage increase.

(Background: In Germany not so many companies pay competitive wages for their software engineers, especially not, once you worked for some years and are no longer a bloody junior. So I calculate it would result in a wage increase for me, since everyone says I am underpaid for my experience.)
Relevant: "Sony Is Killing the Blu-ray" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40880077

Ah, this stupid industry.
End-to-end correctness does not matter in a comparison. If every app implements the same functionality, then that is a valid comparison. Even if that functionality is incorrect.
Not for a little while now. The escrow business was sold to NCC: https://www.nccgroup.com/us/newsroom/ncc-group-launches-esco...
We moved from pure cloud to hybrid cloud to save money. Basically moved our data warehouse to our own hardware in a Colo.

Then we moved our build infra as well, but it has the option to "expand" into the cloud to pickup extra capacity during high load conditions.

We're now planning to move our production environment and database to colo hardware that we own.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for naming the project “YourNextStore” instead of “MyNextStore.”
> A senior engineer writes comments that explain why the code isn't written in another way

I suggest providing that sort of high-level decision information in a separate design document. This sort of documentation is written before the code and is presented/discussed with management and peers.

That is how it was done at a couple of companies I worked at and it was very effective. Naturally, this was done at the feature level, not on a function to function basis.
Example? I see little woke stuff or politics in general here.
I think what's missing from a lot of these discussions is how much more commerce-driven the present day internet is over the 90s-00s. Social media is highly addictive and destabilizing in order to get it's audience to eventually pay for something in TikTok Shop, or view sponsored content, for example. Dark patterns were introduced to increase revenue or to get users to dole out their personal information for advertising effectiveness.

I personally think that these sorts of changes were inevitable, especially since the development of internet-native payments infrastructure lagged (and continues to lag) the development of web technologies, as well as humanity spending more of our time on the internet — if the society revolves around accumulation and transfer of capital, the internet would eventually change to facilitate trade
> It’s the guy who said he’ll single-handedly going to keep Python 2 alive?

I don't know about that, but he's extremely competent, so I wouldn't be too surprised.
Look around, we are living in a veritable vetocracy.

There is no need for anyone to advocate banning everything. It is a result of aggregate efforts of a diverse set of activists each trying to ban something.

You dislike AI training. Someone dislikes high speed rail, or possibly any new rail at all. Someone dislikes Starship. Someone dislikes new housing or rezoning of their city. Someone dislikes new biotech. Someone dislikes new factories. Someone dislikes new wind turbines. Someone dislikes new nuclear power plants. And nowadays, the fear of harm and doing harmful things is in vogue, so the standard line of defense is to argue potential harms, and given that no activity in the world is completely harmless, the result is stasis and a paper war over everything.

It is as if there was a group of activists who dislike individual letters. Even though Alice only hates H and Bob only hates Q, if enough people do this, the entire alphabet is going to be banned soon.

There is a certain irony in the fact that the Internet, a revolutionary technology in itself, has enabled various reactionary folks to organize themselves to stop their $Nemesis, for whatever value of $Nemesis. Where once were isolated naysayers, a pressure group is now easily put together.
Europe has a lot more people in cars than on transit. in general the cities are somewhat petter but there is a lot of room to do better. not that you are wrong but you need to do better not focus on butting down the us.
Yeah this is borderline. It probably won't fly in California. In the past big tech companies (like Symantec) used to require you to submit your last W2 or tax return for a job offer. Credit card companies also sell your salary information etc...
What is the use case?
- GPS devices works better if they have cellular connection
- Do you need maps?
A bit out of left field: The Best Interface Is No Interface. The blog post is good enough; no need to read the whole book I think

Don't Make Me Think is old but still applicable.

Sweat The Small Stuff by Rory Sutherland is a talk worth watching.
How do you define great?
You just lay them off.. ;)
GitHub effectively contributes a significant amount of money and work hours by hosting close to all the open source software for free, including some CI time and the collaboration features. For some projects like Nix that's a really non-trivial system on its own. It's not just the code that counts towards FOSS contributions.
The only issue with Tesla is that sometimes they fully self drive themselves into other cars or static objects. But rest be assured they are Fully self driving.

The official and legal requirement is not important. The only important thing is what Tesla’s marketing team says about its own features(I.e FSD).

If I think a bit about this I think I could make an unofficial FSD system as well.

>>The CEO went as far as claiming that this would make Tesla vehicles “appreciating assets”

Right…

Meanwhile they can’t even make it legal for level 3 like other auto manufacturers(I.e Benz)
There's an unfortunate lack of fear.
Yeah, therefore big tech should get to treat their workers however.
> The Radicle team is funded by Radworks. To date, around $7m has been granted towards the development of Radicle, by Radworks.

That's quite impressive.
Because dei and the nyt focus on that being important.
unless disclosed to employees and applicants this seems like de facto colluding.

I always ask myself, as to the legality or ethics, would this survive review by a jury of my peers...
For the umpteen millionth time, please please please do not use red/green for the scale, it is very difficult for colorblind people to distinguish, which is ~5% of the male population.

Look at Colorbrewer for some alternative suggestions:

https://colorbrewer2.org/
While comfort is an important issue with a lot of low-hanging-fruit solutions (top-straps!!!), it's a hole every serious VR user will mod themselves out of. There are numerous third party solution to make existing headsets more comfortable, be it complete strap replacement, facial interfaces or top straps. Even alternative headsets like the BigScreenBeyond or Xreal that are substantially lighter and smaller exist. The option are out there.

> It's impressive, but it starts to hurt after an hour or so.

The issue is that "impressive" wanes after a few weeks or months, while comfort tends to improve by additional adjustments and customization. What VR is missing is long-term content, the stuff you use VR for after the initial wow-factor has vanished, the stuff that takes advantage of the 360° 3D screen in front of your eyes and the 6DOF controls without just being gimmicky.

That's one issue I think Apple handled much better than Meta. On VisionPro you have full 2D app support, so most of the apps just work. It might sound boring, but VR needs to embrace that kind of boring when it wants to survive long term, since boring stuff is what people do with computers 24/7.

On Meta Quest things are much more of a mess. There is no clear vision for what's the headset is actually good for. You have a few lackluster games here, a few exercise apps there, a "Metaverse" that still feels woefully incomplete, basic 2D app support without Google Play Store, no easy way to watch movies and a whole lot of other half done ideas.
I'm on the fence about this. A business can take whichever currency it wants, but at the same time we are slowly being nudged towards a cashless society. Something I do not like. I think if a business takes in more than a certain amount of money, then it should be obligated to take cash. Some type of obligation but I don't know where to draw the line.

With that said, I was traveling outside of America and found retailers charging a fee for using a phone to pay. That irks me. Government is pushing for a cashless society, but some retailers still preferring cash and penalizing when you pay by card. I have seen this in the States but not nearly as much abroad until recently.
Related, CD-Rs. When I left my submarine in 2013, they (by which I mean the entire Virginia class) were still using them to store archived logs, despite my explanation that they’d be lucky to get a decade out of them. The first chosen storage location was literally the hottest part of the engine room, right in between the main engines. Easily 120+ F at all times. After protest, we moved ours to a somewhat cooler location. Still hot, and still with atmospheric oil and other fun chemicals floating around.

I look forward to the first time logs from a few decades ago are required, and the media is absolutely dead.

EDIT: they weren’t even Azo dye, they were phthalocyanine. A decade was probably generous.
Laws and regulations have downsides, too. And if you locally regulate some dual-use tech out of existence, it is well possible that you may lose a subsequent war.

In this particular instance, we are talking about AI analyzing pictures, and looking at the Russo-Ukrainian war which is developing into a massive drone-fest, you cannot ignore the military ramifications thereof.

It is possible to jam a remotely controlled drone, it would be much harder to neutralize a drone that is capable of detecting targets reliably on its own.
Chemistry does ring finding in various ways. I've always liked the SSSR (smallest set of smallest rings) just for the name :)

https://depth-first.com/articles/2020/08/31/a-smallest-set-o...
rg, fd, etc. all use not only .gitignore, but also merge in rules from a global gitignore in your home directory, as well as a local .ignore file that takes precedence over .gitignore.

Setting up all that with CLI flags is a lot of work for what is arguably a sensible default.
Genuine question: What makes you believe that an employer would decide to pay you more when they notice that they're paying you less than other companies would? Why wouldn't they just think "Oh, neat, we got such a bargain!"
Show HN: I Built an AI Prayer Diary to Capture and Reflect on Daily Prayers
The Moment I Discovered the Need

A few months ago, I was starting my morning as I always do—with prayer. I’ve always found peace in my daily conversations with God, recording my thoughts and reflections. But over time, I realized something important was missing. While praying daily brought me comfort, it was difficult to track my spiritual growth and revisit those meaningful conversations. I wanted a way to look back and see how my prayers were shaping my life and deepening my faith.

---

*Understanding the Need*

I knew that if I was facing this challenge, others might be as well. Many people pray every day but struggle to maintain a consistent routine or reflect on their spiritual journey in a meaningful way. So, I started asking myself: Is there a tool that could not only help us record our prayers but also provide insights to help us reflect and grow spiritually?

---

*The Development Journey*

With that question in mind, I set out to create a solution. I envisioned a tool that would let users track their daily prayers while also using AI to provide meaningful insights. What I thought would be a simple journaling app turned out to be much more complex. I realized that to make this truly valuable, I needed to incorporate AI that could analyze prayers and provide feedback to help users reflect deeply on their spiritual journey.

The development process took several months, and there were plenty of ups and downs. I had to iterate multiple times to get it right—ensuring that the AI wasn’t just summarizing prayers but helping people gain deeper spiritual insights and track their growth over time.

---

*The Features and What Makes It Unique*

After months of work, the product is finally here. It’s more than just a prayer journal—it’s designed to help users connect with God on a deeper level. Here’s what it offers:

1. *Daily Prayer Logging*: You can record your daily prayers, capturing gratitude, reflections, and personal requests.
2. *AI-Assisted Reflection*: The AI analyzes your entries and provides meaningful insights to help you reflect on your prayers.
3. *Spiritual Growth Tracking*: Over time, you’ll be able to see patterns and themes in your prayers, showing how your faith has developed.
4. *Personalized Suggestions*: Based on your prayer content, the AI offers tailored insights and suggestions to strengthen your connection with God.

---

*Invitation to Try and Share Feedback*

This product is the result of my own spiritual journey, and I truly believe it can help others grow closer to God. I invite you to try it out and share your feedback with me. Whether it’s suggestions for improvements or your personal experiences using the tool, I’d love to hear from you.

Are you ready to bring more structure and depth to your daily prayers? Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Very interesting, I had no idea!
It does not look like any of the prices have been updated since 2023.
For some reason a lot of syntax highlighting color schemes de-emphasize comments, making them low contrast, which is probably because a lot of mandatory / generated comments are low information. Get rid of mandatory and generated comments, and change your color scheme to make them a bright neon colour instead (on a dark theme) to draw the attention, because IF something is commented then it's important.
There is a whole area of multi-domain simulation, where the simulator seamlessly jumps from one form of energy to another as long as the units match. I have always loved that.
O.M.G. - the attack surface gained by buying a single expired domain of an old whois server is absolutely staggering.
I always thought that in a lot of places you can choose to only accept whatever payment methods you like, but you have to accept a cash payment for a debt.
Forgjeo/Gitea support would be nice. I was waiting for Radicle for long but for our self hosting needs we are using Gitead then moved to Forgejo and never looking back.
I just needed simple values. It worked fine for me. I should've fuzzed it to check, but really I think all I needed was 1-2 decimal places.
Largely it seems people miss the point in these topics.

It probably shouldn't be legal to decline legal tender because it is absolutely not legal to accept any other form of payment than pound sterling.

That is largely for tax reasons, if I pay you in pokemon cards, what's the VAT on that and how do I give it to HRMC? Not possible. People like to argue that private businesses can do whatever they like but that's simply untrue.

They can decline cash, but they must take payment in pounds and pence somehow.

I understand why they wouldn't want to deal with cash as it makes transactions faster and you don't have to deal with taking your cash to the bank (or an expensive courier) but, as the article mentions, it affects the poorest and least technically literate in society disproportionately.
If you can't be intellectually honest and accept that Ireland would be a fraction of what it is without its tax evasion system idk what to say, there is literally not a single source that will tell you otherwise, even their own official reports mention that it is the case.

When 25% of your GDP comes for a single foreign company with 6000 employees in your country it's time to raise an eyebrow, especially when the facility's job is to assemble "made to order" computers (like the dude at the corner of my street).

> The "multinational tax schemes" used by some of these multinational firms contribute to a distortion in Ireland's economic statistics; including GNI, GNP and GDP

> A particularly dramatic growth in Ireland's 2015 GDP (from 1% in 2013, to 8% in 2014, to 25% in 2015) was shown to be largely driven by Apple restructuring their double Irish subsidiary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%27s_EU_tax_dispute#

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Republic_of_Ire...
You say you have contacted the courier. I assume that means that you had communication that it has been dispatched?
I have multiple accounts on fb, twitter, reddit, maybe youtube. It's not that big a deal in practice. And it's quite unusual to get banned unless you do something quite bad.
[0] probably not, if i stick to the optimal interpretation that Old Ben is Orwell incognito. (Jura & the pistol under pillow could well be merely prudential, but i dont see it)

Gotta drop the discreetly placed marshal’s baton angle for now since i cant even find a half decent example pair lol
"wise"

This is very much in the eye of the beholder. In my opinion, we already suffer from an abundance of suffocating safetyism, which may be a consequence of aging of our societies.

"time has been taken to look into pootential harms."

And I am also very skeptical towards the idea that a theorizing committee can predict future reliably. Which includes future harms and rewards of some technology that has barely started to develop.

The experience from the past is that we cannot tell such things in advance.
Great write-up - the tip of the iceberg on how fragile TLS/SSL is.

Let's add a few:

1. WHOIS isn't encrypted or signed, but is somehow suitable for verification (?)

2. DNS CAA records aren't protected by DNSSEC, as absence of a DNS record isn't sign-able (correction: NSEC is an optional DNSSEC extension)

3. DNS root & TLD servers are poorly protected against BGP hijacks (adding that DNSSEC is optional for CAs to verify)

4. Email, used for verification in this post, is also poorly protected against BGP hijacks.

I'm amazed we've lasted this long. It must be because if anyone abuses these issues, someone might wake up and care enough to fix them (:
There's also a more cynical explanation.

It's possible the purpose of wage benchmarking companies is to allow bosses to say they pay the 95th percentile - which is useful to be able to say, when someone at an all-hands Q&A asks about raises and bonuses.

Then the benchmarking company simply has to define 'comparable roles' broadly enough to give the customer the result they want.