https://notado.app/feeds/jado/hacker-news-commentsEvery comment I have ever saved from Hacker Newshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48444940
Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with that manipulation. It's long past time to leave it permanently.

And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome.]]>source:hnMon, 8 Jun 2026 17:51:44 +0000everdrivehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48215154artcapitalismsource:hnThu, 21 May 2026 00:27:26 +0000analogpixelhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039715 "Requirements documents that were once a page are now twelve. Status updates that were once three sentences are now bulleted summaries of bulleted summaries. Retrospective notes, post-incident reports, design memos, kickoff decks: every artifact that can be elongated is, by people who do not read what they produce, for readers who do not read what they receive."

Great article. The "elongation" of workplace artifacts resonated with me on such deep level. Reminded me of when I had to be extra wordy to meet the 1000 minimum word limit for my high school essays. Professional formatting, length, and clear prose are no longer indicators of care and work quality (they never were, but in the past, if someone drafts up a twelve page spec, at least you know they care enough to spend a lot of time on it).

So now the "productivity-gain bottleneck" is people who still care enough to review manually.]]>source:hnThu, 7 May 2026 01:23:21 +0000wcfroberthttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47993338developmentsoftwaresource:hnwindowsSun, 3 May 2026 17:26:30 +0000YPPHhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45140032
Just with those two criteria you’re down to, like, six formats at most, of which Protocol Buffers is the most widely used.

And I know the article says no one uses the backwards compatible stuff but that’s bizarre to me – setting up N clients and a server that use protocol buffers to communicate and then being able to add fields to the schema and then deploy the servers and clients in any order is way nicer than it is with some other formats that force you to babysit deployment order.

The reason why protos suck is because remote procedure calls suck, and protos expose that suckage instead of trying to hide it until you trip on it. I hope the people working on protos, and other alternatives, continue to improve them, but they’re not worse than not using them today.]]>developmentsoftwaresource:hnMon, 20 Apr 2026 00:35:59 +0000lalaithionhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36673951 you just have to change a single value in a yaml file

Most dangerous 12-words sentence.]]>developmentsoftwaresource:hnMon, 13 Apr 2026 07:24:56 +0000brunoborgeshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47744268
If you can’t source it, I’m not going to tell you that you SHOULD pretend to be a bottling company and ask a gum provider to send you some free samples, but you could and the amount they send you will last the rest of your life. TIC gums is pretty awesome and if you’re into frozen desserts has some incredible gum mixtures for ice creams, sorbets, etc.

Also, consider just using water soluble flavor concentrates and skipping emulsification all together. That’s what most pros do and it’s why Sprite isn’t cloudy like it would be if you used oils. My favorite suppliers that sell in consumer and pro-sumer qtys are Apex Flavors and Nature’s Flavors.

This probably won’t work for Cola as I think some of those ingredients have all of their flavor molecules in the oils, but as a general rule, if you can buy it at the store and it is clear, it is made using water soluble. If it is brown it probably isn’t, hence the caramel color additive.]]>source:hnMon, 13 Apr 2026 02:19:19 +0000mattmaroonhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47631490
Average comments sentiment when an American is caught while bombing bridges and elementary schools: poor thing hope they treat him well]]>source:hnSat, 4 Apr 2026 14:24:35 +0000zaelochihttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571131capitalismsource:hnMon, 30 Mar 2026 09:02:01 +0000eloisiushttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47452306
My wife regularly observes that this hell of a journey looks more taxing on me than her. Which is probably true.

This process is hard on the fathers-to-be as well. We do exist, we want to have kids, we are heartbroken each time as well. We also have to be careful not to hurt our wives' feelings when expressing our grief and sorrow.]]>source:hnSun, 22 Mar 2026 03:48:20 +0000inglor_czhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47093470 So: is this just something wacky with my algorithm?

No, it's not. Once Meta identifies you as male, you will get almost exclusively thirst trap posts no matter what you do. It started about two years ago.

Some other interesting points: A woman posted on reddit recently saying she noticed her son's feed was filled with this stuff, so she created her own instagram account, identified as a man, and had the same feed. No matter what she did she couldn't fix it. She asked other women about this, and they all said their partner's feeds were the same.

This is not a problem for women. At least not one I've ever talked to or read about on the internet.

Another point: I tried very hard to fix this at one point. I went through instagram and hit like on nothing but pottery and parenting videos. For about a week I had a feed that looked like my wife's -- pottery and parenting. And then it reverted.

I got a whole bunch of thirst traps again.

It doesn't bother me anymore, I just tune it out and scroll past it because my feed still has the parenting and pottery too, and my friend's updates, which is what I'm there for.

But it would be good for more people to learn about this so they don't get angry when they see their male-identified partners/friends feeds.]]>addictioninstagramsocial-mediasource:hnSat, 21 Feb 2026 00:07:57 +0000jedberghttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47093428
I recently caught a glimpse of her Facebook and I was shocked to discover a version of the website that seemed to be the platonic ideal of exactly what all the Facebook PMs intended. Her feed was filled with the photos of her friends and coworkers international trips and holidays, posts in groups for planning activities in her most frequented cities. But I discovered that my mum was also a frequent "poster" of the photos of her various trips around the world, and the comments sections were filled with with some beautiful messages from her many many friends and family.

From this I learned that there is a subset of the population that Facebook works perfectly for and meaningfully improves their real-world social relationships. And perhaps Facebook has been hyper-optimized for that kind of use case through relentless A/B testing. But I fear my mum is quite privileged to have this kind of experience.]]>facebooksocial-mediasource:hnSat, 21 Feb 2026 00:07:23 +0000mbohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46949755advertisingcapitalismsource:hnMon, 9 Feb 2026 20:32:02 +0000mbb70https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858684
The fact that sudo is a critical security pillar for trillions of dollars of global infrastructure but this guy gets bupkis for it screams volumes about the current state of technology.

We must do better, or it’ll be closed systems (OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle) all the way down as maintainers age out, go bankrupt, or die without succession plans in place.]]>capitalismopen-sourcesource:hnMon, 2 Feb 2026 21:45:44 +0000stego-techhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46860734
It's disgusting that maintainers of critical projects have to go through the humiliation of begging for money, and absurd to suggest they all hang out Kofi or PAtreon banners. Realistically nobody is going to go through their bash history working out what utilities they use in order of frequency and allocating funds to the maintainers proportionally. I'm baffled that some entity like the Linux Software Foundation isn't administering this already.]]>capitalismopen-sourcesource:hnMon, 2 Feb 2026 21:45:19 +0000anigbrowlhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46775691
First, if getting dropped off in a car (most American airports this is your only option), you must suffer being screamed at by traffic cops while trying to navigate a perpetually under construction dropoff area. You get one (1) peck on the cheek from mum before some uniformed individual waddles over to yell at you some more.

Then you must wait in line at a check in counter behind fifty families with 4 large luggage items each, despite the fact that you only have a backpack. Why? Because when you tried to do online check-in and boarding pass, the site broke / said no, and the self-service check-in kiosk at the airport still isn't switched on despite being installed a decade ago.

At the check-in counter, a person who knows less than you about the country you're traveling to will inform you as a matter of fact that you can't get ok the flight until you buy a return ticket, since that's what their binder says and they don't understand your visa. You must wait for a supervisor to come and verify that your visa is actually valid.

Before security, you're offered the rich person line if you have the money to pay for it. Literally advertised as a "white glove experience." If not well, into security with the rest of the cattle.

At security, you get to be screamed at by TSA for not knowing the exact procedures of this airport you've never been to. Why must they have to tell Passenger, who is one person they see ten thousand times a day, over and over again that you have to push your box onto the automated belt yourself, rather than let it be pushed on as a train with the other boxes. Passenger must be stupid. Surely it's not because of poor signage that Passenger doesn't know what to do. And by the way, take off your shoes and let us look at your genitals. Oh, you don't want us to look at your genitals? Well then we'll have to just grope every inch of your body, and nut check you for making us do our job in a slightly more annoying way. Just in case you're terrorist scum, we'll check if you have bomb making residue on your skin, while someone else opens your luggage and digs around in it so everyone else in like can see what your underwear looks like. At TSA we offer full service sexualized humiliation, guaranteed!

The dehumanization never ends. Once on the flight you are packed in like cattle, so tight you're rubbing shoulders with the person on your right and left, while your knees dig into the back of the person in front of you. You're served a tray of slop that you have to pay for now. Security took your water bottle, but when you ask for water on the flight, it's given to you in a tiny plastic cup, that's free if you're lucky. Now sit there quietly while we try to sell credit cards to this captured audience.

Finally you land and it's time to get off the plane! Oh actually no, the curtain is closed in your face. Silly peasant, you must watch the first class passengers leisurely pack their things and stroll off the plane. Only until the last one is off may the dirty peasants pass the fabric barrier.]]>source:hnTue, 27 Jan 2026 05:17:58 +0000komali2https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46700715source:hnWed, 21 Jan 2026 04:15:59 +0000venturecrueltyhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46700873
And we solved this problem over 30 years ago? Ncurses was made for this. The buffer is kept in memory, you hit page-up and it renders the previous page, page-down and it renders the next page, let it roll and it renders each successive page as a stream, or just the last page, etc.]]>source:hnWed, 21 Jan 2026 04:15:22 +00000xbadcafebeehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46625436
Corporations should start paying their fair share, they've scammed society enough.]]>developmentlicensingopen-sourcesoftwaresource:hnWed, 14 Jan 2026 23:35:16 +0000shimmanhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46622482
Then you jump on to a place like Reddit or HN and you have people mostly supporting the status quo. Of course people are going to do open source more than they should. And then if they complain later on, you will say they chose to make it open source. Reinforcing the status quo by blaming the individual.]]>developmentlicensingopen-sourcesoftwaresource:hnWed, 14 Jan 2026 20:24:32 +0000skinnymuchhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46588672
This implementation gets one thing most Metro clones miss, i.e the typography as structure paradigm. In Win8, there were no divider lines or heavy drop shadows to denote hierarchy. The hierarchy was defined strictly by the weight and size of the font.

We spent the last decade drifting back into glassmorphism and mica materials (win11) because people missed the comfort of texture but from a pure information density and rendering performance perspective - the flat, monochromatic 2D plane of windows 8 is a nice tangent. It removed the cognitive load of decoding the UI chrome for touch users.

ps: I'm impressed by the constraint of using native Qt/C++ here instead of taking the easy route with electron or QML/javascript bindings for everything.]]>designdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnuser-experiencewindowsMon, 12 Jan 2026 18:12:15 +0000Fiveplushttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=464737372. Make your auto closing and locking logic based on that label (eg the label-actions github action)
3. As a maintainer, remember to remove the label when creating an issue!]]>developmentgithubsoftwaresource:hnuser-experienceSat, 3 Jan 2026 18:42:12 +0000rarkinshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46367336
They needed Windows games to run on Linux so we got massive Proton/Wine advancements. They needed better display output for the deck and we got HDR and VRR support in wayland. They also needed smoother frame pacing and we got a scheduler that Zuck is now using to run data centers.

Its funny to think that Meta's server efficiency is being improved because Valve paid Igalia to make Elden Ring stutter less on a portable Linux PC. This is the best kind of open source trickledown.]]>developmentgaminglinuxsoftwaresource:hnTue, 23 Dec 2025 22:46:19 +0000Fiveplushttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46339663
Additionally there was a lot of discourse about music and a lot of curated discovery mechanisms I sorely miss to this day. An algorithm is no replacement for the amount of time and care people put into the web of similar artists, playlists of recommendations and reviews. Despite it being piracy, music consumption through it felt more purposeful. It's introduced me to some of my all time favourite artists, which I've seen live and own records and merchandise of.]]>source:hnSun, 21 Dec 2025 04:38:00 +0000flxyhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46224168developmentsoftwaresource:hnWed, 10 Dec 2025 23:06:28 +0000lijokhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46146115
There were silly ones like the one making your characters head larger for each kill, and those which made it just different like low gravity, and so on.

It was also relatively easy to make your own, thanks to UnrealScript.

Really wish more multiplayer games embraced this concept, it really increased replayability by changing things up.]]>gamesnostalgiasource:hnThu, 4 Dec 2025 12:45:57 +0000magicalhippohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46125620
I know they claim they work, but that's only on their happy path with their very specific AMI's and the nightmare that is the neuron SDK. You try to do any real work with them and use your own dependencies and things tend to fall apart immediately.

It was just in the past couple years that it really became worthwhile to use TPU's if you're on GCP and that's only with the huge investment on Google's part into software support. I'm not going to sink hours and hours into beta testing AWS's software just to use their chips.]]>awsdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnTue, 2 Dec 2025 23:15:37 +0000ZeroCool2uhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46108253
It used to be pretty easy to just ban people from playing, now we're 100% reliant on their ability to do it. So we have anti-cheat which roots our computer, and still doesn't 100% solve the problem.]]>gamesnostalgiasource:hnMon, 1 Dec 2025 15:38:30 +0000LanceHhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46097045githubsocial-mediasource:hnMon, 1 Dec 2025 05:42:29 +0000the__alchemisthttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080933
Full text search or even grep/rg are a lot faster and cheaper to work with - no need to maintain a vector database index - and turn out to work really well if you put them in some kind of agentic tool loop.

The big benefit of semantic search was that it could handle fuzzy searching - returning results that mention dogs if someone searches for canines, for example.

Give a good LLM a search tool and it can come up with searches like "dog OR canine" on its own - and refine those queries over multiple rounds of searches.

Plus it means you don't have to solve the chunking problem!]]>artificial-intelligencedevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnFri, 28 Nov 2025 21:36:11 +0000simonwhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45981361hackernewssocial-mediasource:hnThu, 20 Nov 2025 02:25:24 +0000radicalbytehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45961399
Let's hope Rebble doesn't get steamrollered. They did good work when the original company failed its users.]]>licensingopen-sourcesource:hnTue, 18 Nov 2025 04:58:41 +0000Klaus23https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941097
If, instead, you only act on a percentage of requests, you can add noise in an insidious way without signaling that you caught them. It will make their job troubleshooting and crafting the next iteration much harder. Also, making the response less predictable is a good idea - throw different HTTP error codes, respond with somewhat inaccurate content, etc]]>artificial-intelligencedevelopmentscrapingsoftwaresource:hnSat, 15 Nov 2025 22:39:37 +0000thephyberhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45937166
PS: the first step towards feeling why such research is so important is when you start customizing productivity shortcuts on your existing keyboard. Then you understand that the input device in front of you can be more than a stupid typewriter. From there you start interrogating your interaction with machines. [and then you are addict, and you end up designing your own device :)]]]>developmentmusicproductivitysoftwaresource:hnSat, 15 Nov 2025 15:56:20 +0000lolivehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45929499
I'm increasingly convinced that spirituality is a vital part of the human experience and we should embrace it, not reject it. If you try to banish basic human impulses, they just resurface in worse, unexpected forms somewhere else.

We all need ways to find deep connection with other humans and the universe around us. We need basic moral principles to operate on. I think most atheists like myself have quietly found this or are in the process of finding this, but it's ok to say it out loud.

For me it means meditation, frugality, and strict guidelines on how I treat others. That's like a religion, I guess. But that's OK. I embrace it. By owning it and naming it, you have mastery over it.]]>source:hnFri, 14 Nov 2025 21:13:38 +0000asdfman123https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927212artificial-intelligencefaithsource:hnFri, 14 Nov 2025 21:12:51 +0000lordlefthttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45913437 So you're saying that it is impossible for a large company to somehow use native toolkits to draw text bubbles and emojis??

One weird thing about software development is that there are plenty of things which motivated individual developers can achieve which large companies can't even write the requirements for, let alone achieve.]]>developmentsoftwaresource:hnThu, 13 Nov 2025 15:07:06 +0000pjc50https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45891580 Many in the FFmpeg community argue, with reason, that it is unreasonable for a trillion-dollar corporation like Google, which heavily relies on FFmpeg in its products, to shift the workload of fixing vulnerabilities to unpaid volunteers.

That's capitalism, they need to quit their whining or move to North Korea. /s The whole point is to maximize value to the shareholders, and the more work they can shove onto unpaid volunteers, the move money they can shove into stock buybacks or dividends.

The system is broken. IMHO, there outta be a law mandating reasonable payments from multi-billion dollar companies to open source software maintainers.]]>capitalismlicensingopen-sourcesource:hnWed, 12 Nov 2025 06:29:46 +0000palmoteahttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45892119licensingopen-sourcesource:hnWed, 12 Nov 2025 06:25:51 +0000aweiherhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45886316
I run into this same failure mode often. We introduce purposeful scaffolding in the workflow that isn’t meant to stand alone, but exists solely to ensure the final output behaves as intended. Months later, someone is pitching how we should “lean into the bold saturated greens,” not realising the topic only exists because we specifically wanted neutral greens in the final output. The scaffold becomes the building.

In our work this kind of nuance isn’t optional, it is the project. If we lose track of which decisions are compensations and which are targets, outcomes drift badly and quietly, and everything built after is optimised for the wrong goal.

I’d genuinely value advice on preventing this. Is there a good name or framework for this pattern? Something concise that distinguishes a process artefact from product intent, and helps teams course-correct early without sounding like a semantics debate?]]>animationfilmsource:hnTue, 11 Nov 2025 15:00:06 +0000janewayhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41841873
A static site generator that has somehow managed to be more inconvenient than many CMSes.]]>developmentgohugosoftwaresource:hnSun, 9 Nov 2025 01:02:00 +0000rodgerdhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45846435parentssource:hntechnologyFri, 7 Nov 2025 15:10:50 +0000fouronnes3https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45835507 how few things would have to get flipped on to have roughly the same thing in the united states?

I'd argue it's already been flipped on. Our system just works a little bit differently. Nothing is strictly prohibited via some grand theatrical firewall. Things that are "undesirable" simply meet an information theoretical death sooner than they otherwise should. We've got mountains of tools like DMCA that can precision strike anything naughty while still preserving an illusion of freedom.

Data hoarders are the American version of climbing over the GFW. The strategy of relying on entropy to kill off bad narratives seems to be quite effective. Social media platforms, cloud storage, et. al., are dramatically accelerating this pressure.]]>capitalismsource:hnusaThu, 6 Nov 2025 15:44:13 +0000bob1029https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45831033artificial-intelligencecapitalismsource:hnworkThu, 6 Nov 2025 03:32:08 +0000kaveh_hhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827614
It's only because the late 1800's billionaires wanted to leave legacies and made pay-to-enter and free libraries, and migrated them to free, or public libraries. Thats why so many of them are (John) Carnegie Libraries.

Only legal when billionaires do it.]]>capitalismlibrariesliteraturesource:hnThu, 6 Nov 2025 02:15:30 +0000nekusarhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45809800
Still find it incredibly sad that Adobe and Steve Jobs were able to destroy it together.

This tool was able to draw in creative, previously non-technical people and provide a gradual ramp of complexity that we could navigate.

Nothing has come close since.]]>flashsource:hntechTue, 4 Nov 2025 17:43:50 +0000anymouse123456https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45800349developmentlannetworkingself-hostingsoftwaresource:hnMon, 3 Nov 2025 15:56:14 +0000zeppelin101https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45731884
I wish workers voted for their managers and did so periodically, managers at the end of their term would return to their previous position if any. In fact, an expectation of every position being temporary could lead to exactly what you are describing.

But only if pay cuts hit everyone at the company equally or based on their merit, not the top layer deciding the bottom layer gets paid less, while giving themselves bonuses for saving the company money.]]>capitalismsource:hnworkTue, 28 Oct 2025 12:40:16 +0000martin-thttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45731811
All the while people who own it don't have to perform any kind of work and keep getting paid in perpetuity as long as the company exists, even if the amount of time they spent is less than one millionth of the total man-days spent building it.

And they can use that money to buy more properties which generate them more passive income, getting ahead further and further.]]>capitalismsource:hnworkTue, 28 Oct 2025 12:29:13 +0000martin-thttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45691042
What was wrong with that? Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections?]]>counterstrikegamesnostalgiasource:hnFri, 24 Oct 2025 10:26:46 +0000uvaursihttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45619225
Alternative take: "EVs now easy to afford for the 80% of Americans who don't have $50-90k to spend on an EV!"

This year I bought a 2022 EV with 16k miles. A luxury brand. The sticker price when new was $79,000. I paid $35k. It was an off-lease vehicle so if anyone took a bath, it was the bank. I would never in a million years spend 80 grand on a car but now I have a great EV.

Battery life is not a huge concern. Any more than timing belts/chains, transmissions, etc. can be dauntingly costly repairs for cars with 150k miles or more.

I also have a gas car which I love (spouse drives the electric for a much greater commute) so I'm no EV absolutist. But this whole premise is stupid. EV adoption has had 2 main blockers: 1. only rich people had justification to buy them until recently, and 2. Charging space for people who don't have their own private garage.

Now #1 is no longer a factor. This is a GOOD thing.]]>capitalismcarssource:hnSat, 18 Oct 2025 11:57:18 +0000xp84https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45603913
1. They co-opted the free software movement and made it more business friendly.

2. They convinced people that Open Source is pure and software that isn’t Open Source is unclean.

3. They convinced a bunch of developers that their definition of Open Source that was specifically crafted to protect business interests is canon.

4. They convinced a well meaning subset of those developers to police the other devs and pressure them to release their software under big tech approved licenses.]]>developmentlicensingopen-sourcesoftwaresource:hnThu, 16 Oct 2025 14:04:17 +0000sarchertechhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45465191
Social anxiety is a condition that cannot be thought away, you cannot rationalize social anxiety nor can it be represented as a cost/benefit analysis of risk of being disliked vs. reward of being liked. You can feel socially anxious without having social anxiety. You can be depressed without having depression. You will be depressed after your beloved pet dies. You will be socially anxious walking into a room full of people you haven't met before.]]>source:hnFri, 3 Oct 2025 17:21:56 +0000abxyzhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45392902
“Here’s a really nice split keyboard. But we’ve removed everything except the alphanumerics”

Whhhyyyy.

“Oh but it’s programmable. And you can have layers. And you can have macros”

Cool. I actually didn’t want any of that. I just wanted a single row of function keys. My Moonlander can somehow make space for a “meh” key, a “caps word” key, 3 keys in 2 variations for “change layer” but a play/pause/ volume keys are simply out of the question.]]>source:hnSat, 27 Sep 2025 14:59:29 +0000FridgeSealhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45148648 commonly are subject to rug pulls

This open source purism is toxic. Projects have to be sustainable.

Hyperscalers have hoovered up the entire Internet and own the entire mobile device category. We're over here bickering about small developers writing source available / OSS-with-CLA.

If the community cares so damned much, they can take the last open version and maintain it themselves.

Please take all of this negative energy and fight for a breakup of big tech instead.]]>capitalismopen-sourcesource:hnSat, 6 Sep 2025 13:08:11 +0000echelonhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44945465
Game servers are the perfect digital third space, it starts off with random players but as you log in each night, you see more and more familiar faces pop up and before you know it you're all regulars popping in to chat while playing a few rounds, learning more about your new friends and praying to god that you've got the godlike Finnish sniper player on your team.

By comparison, modern matchmaking-lead multiplayer feels gentrified and - for lack of a better term - soulless. You're blindly shuffled between random players each game, and there's no way to properly build a connection with players or a community out of it. There's a vacuous and temporary nature to it all that just feels cold.

Edit: also the fact that things like skins & sprays - player controlled ways of expressing themselves - have been neatly packaged by gamedevs and sold back to players at a premium. It feels completely antithetical to the player-led nature of what such games used to be.]]>gamesnostalgiasource:hnTue, 19 Aug 2025 04:30:39 +0000OliveMatehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44945226
I made so many friends by joining a lobby and just playing a game for a few nights in a row or whatever

Now I don't know how to really connect with people online anymore or build any kind of community

Discord servers don't seem like the right way, they are too busy and chaotic for me

I miss making friends online and gaming with them]]>gamesnostalgiasource:hnTue, 19 Aug 2025 04:30:12 +0000bluefirebrandhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44944319
I used to be an admin on a group of about 18 or so connected Counter-Strike 1.6 servers called T3Houston*. We ran modified versions of various Warcraft 3 mods which added persistent XP/leveling, as well as integration with an external item store and player database the owner maintained. Most of those servers were filled to the brim during peak US gaming times, and our forum was quite active.

There aren't many games these days where you could do something like that. I discovered the community because one day I was just looking for a server with open slots for me to join. I was fairly skeptical of whatever a Warcraft mod would be like, but ended up enjoying it so I added it to my favorites. Eventually I got to know the regulars and joined the forum. Notably, the place felt far less toxic than the average server I'd join back then. I can completely believe this is just me looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but it feels like the general toxicity has gotten worse at the same time as we've lost a lot of tools to manage it.

* If anyone else here remembers the name T3Houston: hi! I'm Stealth Penguin]]>gamesnostalgiasource:hnTue, 19 Aug 2025 04:27:45 +0000rimunroehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44541090
Anyway, this reminded me of that. Making these pictures in anything but the tools of the time wouldn't just change them, they'd be totally different artworks. The medium is part of the artwork itself.]]>artcreativitysource:hnSat, 12 Jul 2025 14:39:18 +0000seabombshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44432589
There's no source of that signal that someone is open to chitchat these days, and it's in my opinion kind of killed what was once great about online communication.]]>nostalgiasocial-mediasource:hnTue, 1 Jul 2025 20:07:22 +0000donatjhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44351974 Is this an actual SLR replacement

There's just no way to replace the massive 35mm sensor of a larger DSLR / mirrorless camera. The amount of light gathered can only be simulated by capturing many frames. True depth of field can only be emulated by imperfectly blurring estimated background area via software, leading to goofy blurred hairs. Even the reported megapixels of a smartphone contain a quarter or less the equivalent DSLR resolution detail (a 24MP smartphone photo is roughly equivalent to the detail of a 6MP DSLR photo).]]>source:hnMon, 23 Jun 2025 02:26:01 +0000tlhunterhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44294364
Whereas Whatsapp was simple - only phone numbers to sign up, only text and images, only mobile phones. That simplicity meant my parents could onboard smoothly and operate it without having to navigate a maze of UX. I literally saw Whatsapp winning in real time vs Hangouts and other alternatives.]]>source:hnTue, 17 Jun 2025 06:03:35 +0000RestlessMindhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44074612source:hnFri, 23 May 2025 19:03:22 +0000jeffbeehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44044056komorebisource:hnTue, 20 May 2025 18:01:47 +0000MisterKenthttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44016747
I even wrote a program to scrape the websites of my favorite radio stations (well the stations of my favorite music directors) and add the songs to a Spotify playlist.

Whenever I meet a teenager today, one of the first things I ask them is "what apps do you use most", but the next thing I ask is "how do you find new music".

The answer is usually something like "I don't know, I just sort of find stuff I guess?". Some have said they follow influencer's playlists on YouTube or Spotify, which I guess is the new version of the music director? Or they just get it from Spotify playlists.

But what's missing is a shared cultural experience. In the 90s, everyone at my school knew those 40 songs that the local stations played. They might know other stuff too, but you couldn't avoid those top songs. It's not the same today. And it's the same problem for visual media. We all knew the top movies at the theater, because it was the only place to see new movies. And we all knew the top TV shows because they were only on four major networks.

Kids don't have a shared cultural experience like I did.]]>source:hnSat, 17 May 2025 23:17:01 +0000jedberghttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44006650
But also, the culture of Stack Overflow has changed significantly over the years. It used to be a place where anyone could ask a question and get help with a problem ... and it was amazing.

Today, you're far more likely to have your question downvoted, flagged as a duplicate (of an unrelated question), or attacked in the comments by overzealous responders (and once that happens, good luck on actually getting help). Your odds of actually getting help on the site are only a fraction of what they once were.

And I'm not just saying this as some SO newbie: I've been using the site since beta! As someone who has used it that long, the change in quality is undeniable.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsocial-mediasoftwaresource:hnstack-overflowFri, 16 May 2025 18:57:04 +0000hungryhobbithttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44007633
The general platonic ideal is "have the product automatically fix the issue" => "provide short documentation within the product if the problem can be explained with just a paragraph or two of content" => "link to a targeted doc that deals with this exact problem if it takes more than a few paragraphs to explain"

A lot of time, my work as a technical writer is advocating to update the product (or updating the product myself) to do the first two steps, rather than just jumping immediately to the last step. Startup people often refer to this as "the perfect product requires 0 documentation." When teams always resort to fixing product issues with docs, your docs start to get huge and complicated. We technical writers often refer to this as "putting docs lipstick on the product pig."]]>developmentrustsocial-mediasoftwaresource:hnFri, 16 May 2025 17:20:38 +0000kaycebasqueshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43983183source:hnWed, 14 May 2025 12:03:42 +0000hectorchuhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43961147source:hnMon, 12 May 2025 16:38:39 +0000cedwshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43960260But later, a friend of mine dropped out and started training as a machinist—and somehow, he ended up living much more freely than most of us.
He’s not what you'd call especially “smart,” but he has this intuitive sense for metal, welding, and machines.

Every day he works in the shop, sweating through long shifts, but somehow still has the energy at night to tell us stories—about the machine he fixed, or how he spotted a tiny issue just by the sound it made.

That feeling of solving something and seeing the result immediately. I’ve never felt that in a year of sitting at a desk.

Sometimes I wonder if being truly respectable isn’t about how much you earn, but whether you feel proud of what you do.]]>source:hnMon, 12 May 2025 16:37:55 +0000Quenbyhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43961825
A trade being any job you can do with your own tools and is universally useful to people. So carpentry, plumbing, electrician, mechanic, basically anything you can do that does not require the permission of an employer, just you and the person that needs the job done, and results in the satisfaction of some basic human need. Ideally you could arrive in a new town with only this skill and your tools, and begin to eke out an existence. I favor trades that are also useful to oneself, so the building trades are good because everyone needs shelter-may as well build your own or at least understand what you are buying. Doctor also works as a trade, because the need is so basic and universal.

A profession being anything else, basically, especially if it generally requires an employer (major capital investment) to be a useful activity. Interestingly, being a farmer falls into this category, since it requires land and equipment. Even if you own the land and equipment, you could lose it, and then your livelihood is out of your reach. So that’s a profession, by my narrow practical classification.

I figured with a trade and a profession, young adults are much better prepared to roll with the punches in the inevitable chaos they will confront, and be empowered to walk away from situations that are untenable. The power to walk away is highly underrated.

For myself, I have benefited greatly from my practical upbringing, and am a sophomore journeyman in many trades but my happy place is creating things. Electronics, a little mechanics, and software to breathe life into the soul of a new machine. Fortunately I have been hardcore unemployable by nature for decades, so I have developed the freedom to follow my own path, which is deeply gratifying. But without a strong trades type background this would not have really been possible.]]>source:hnMon, 12 May 2025 14:07:20 +0000K0balthttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43955613developmentsoftwaresource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 21:35:13 +0000pelagicAustralhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33229725komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 17:55:54 +0000extrhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33172392
After using i3, anything else for productivity just doesn't feel right for me, although I've made do. I'm excited to dig deeper into this and to make it work for me.]]>komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:07:52 +0000LeonenTheDKhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40781045komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:06:24 +0000patuitarhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40780619komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:06:19 +0000funkhouserhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40780367komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:06:11 +0000mionhehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40780743komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:05:50 +0000frebordhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40781156komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:05:26 +0000cisoto5034https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40781686
It takes a bit longer to get configuration up to speed because its not exactly one single program. Hotkeys are facilitated by whkd or an Autohotkey script, but thats because its built to allow other programs like status bars and application specific keyboard daemons can integrate with it. But all that also makes it a good learning experience.

Not sure how to stick in this with the other points, but maintainer is really helpful with any problems.]]>komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:05:17 +0000NanerBaghttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41547053komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:04:27 +0000apfsxhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40903041
Make sure to make yourself familiar with application specific configs, there's already a whole community-driven config for that [1]. But all in all it's very beginner friendly, since it does enable you to float windows still (and pause komorebi).]]>komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:04:19 +0000the_cramerhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40780826
1. I love the automatic tiling, even if I 99% of the time only use it to have 2 windows split. It's just such a nice feeling not having to tile windows each time you open them up.

2. It let's me set programs being tied to specific workspaces at launch, so I always get spotify and discord on the first workspace on my second monitor. Again, a nice qol feature.

3. I think komorebi's workspaces are more powerful than virtual desktops. In virtual desktops then you change the desktop for both monitors when you switch, with komorebi you only change one monitor at a time. Which allows me to for example keep a youtube video on my second monitor playing while switching between workspaces on my main monitor.

These are probably the main reasons, I mention most of that in my youtube video that got linked in the thread.]]>komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:03:37 +0000omark96https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33169415komorebisource:hnSun, 11 May 2025 01:02:05 +0000extrhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43890764
The AI conversation tends to split folks along similar “passionate engineer craftsman” vs. “temporarily embarrassed billionaire” lines.

[1]: https://www.history.com/articles/industrial-revolution-luddites-workers]]>artificial-intelligencecapitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnMon, 5 May 2025 18:22:52 +0000pixelreadyhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43890895
This is most painful when I try to “imagine” my wife’s face, my family, friends, favorite parts of nature, etc, but am left with nothing.

For me, this means that I struggle to remember things from my past beyond major life events. Even major events can be fuzzy for me.

As a result, I’ve always tried to snap quick pictures of what I’m doing, even if it means I have to “step away” from enjoying the moment for a brief second.

A few months ago, I loaded my 30k+ pics (across ~10 yrs) stored on a hard drive into an Immich instance. I can now easily look at those pictures and remember my past in a way that I simply couldn’t beforehand.

This has been an unbelievable improvement in QoL through an improved self-identity, remembrance of my past, and reconnection with memories of lost loved ones.

I can agree with the author on the disruptive nature of picture taking. But for me, none of what I listed above would be possible without capturing my memories in moderation and with pointed intent.]]>memorymental-healthphotographysource:hnMon, 5 May 2025 03:11:27 +0000j_bumhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857864
I have never been to a politician's dinner. I have never changed a law. If I were fired, which can be done at any time for no reason, I would have no source of income. Money is the weakest form of power, and a well-paid job is the weakest form of money.]]>capitalismsocialismsource:hnusaworkThu, 1 May 2025 14:25:33 +0000freeone3000https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857771
Plus, at the risk of too much head-shrinking, I've never gotten the impression that tech workers liked each other very much. There's a lot of disdain in the industry, for the guy who uses that language or framework or operating system that I think sucks. You don't see that so much with, say, truckers. There may be some good-natured rivalry based on truck brands or long-haul versus short-haul, but not the real disdain you see in tech.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsocialismsoftwaresource:hnThu, 1 May 2025 14:24:15 +0000aaronbaugherhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43843209appledevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnWed, 30 Apr 2025 15:35:07 +0000RandomWorkerhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43820610
The other side of all this academic brownie points via papers (and doing reviews, which has become "brownie points for gatekeeping") is that most academic software is not only unmaintained, but actually unusable. They rarely even compile, and if they do, there is no --help, no good defaults, no README, and no way to maintain them. They are single-use software and their singular use is to write the paper. Any other use-case is almost frowned upon.

One of the worst parts of Academic software is that if you re-write it in a ways that's actually usable and extensible, you can't publish that -- it's not new ("research") work. And you will not only have to cite the person who wrote the first useless version forever, but they will claim they have done it if your tool actually takes off.

BTW, there are academics who don't follow this trend. I am glad that in my field (SAT), some of the best, e.g. Armin Biere and Randal Bryant are not like this at all. Their software is insanely nice and they fix bugs many-many years after release. Notice that they are also incredibly good engineers.]]>academiadevelopmenteducationsoftwaresource:hnMon, 28 Apr 2025 13:51:44 +0000zero_khttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43763766artificial-intelligencedevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnTue, 22 Apr 2025 16:30:05 +0000michelpphttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43725709
"Most common chord" is mildly interesting, but not really that useful. The most common key, and the most commonly used chords relative to that key (i.e. with roman numeral analysis) would be much more useful and interesting. This would help paint a clearer distinction between e.g. country and jazz, not that "jazz uses Bb major more". Also, anyone with general instrument knowledge would surmise that since Bb and Eb instruments are much more prevalent.

"If you’re sitting down to write a song, throw a 7th chord in. The ghost of a jazz great will smile on you."

7ths don't belong to jazz only, and the average songwriter isn't making data-driven decisions on how to settle on the chord structure for their song.]]>musicsource:hnFri, 18 Apr 2025 13:53:51 +0000huimanghttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43678606
I think there's some stigma with confronting the fact that relationships are just ephemeral. We are social creatures in the sense that we can cooperate with each other on a task laid in front of us, but once that task is done, we mostly tend to drift apart onto the next task with another group of people. And that's okay. We're only weakly social with everyone except our direct family and significant others. The quality of a relationship is in no way measured by how long it endured.]]>friendshipsmental-healthrelationshipssource:hnworkMon, 14 Apr 2025 16:37:23 +0000roncesvalleshttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43652999
If you're designing a consumer-oriented web service like Netflix or Spotify or Instagram, you will probably add in some user analytics service, and use the insights from that analysis to inform future development. However, that analysis will aggregate its results over all your users, and won't pick out the enthusiasts, who will shape discourse and public opinion about your service. Consequently, your results will be dominated by people who don't really have an opinion, and just take whatever they're given.

Think about web browsers. The first popular browser was Netscape Navigator; then, Internet Explorer came onto the scene. Mozilla Firefox clawed back a fair chunk of market share, and then Google Chrome came along and ate everyone's lunch. In all of these changes, most of the userbase didn't really care what browser they were using: the change was driven by enthusiasts recommending the latest and greatest to their less-technically-inclined friends and family.

So if you develop your product by following your analytics, you'll inevitably converge on something that just shoves content into the faces of an indiscriminating userbase, because that's what the median user of any given service wants. (This isn't to say that most people are tasteless blobs; I think everyone is a connoisseur of something, it's just that for any given individual, that something probably isn't your product.) But who knows - maybe that really is the most profitable way to run a tech business.]]>developmentsoftwaresource:hnFri, 11 Apr 2025 14:35:29 +0000cjs_achttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43638526
There has also been a growth in first-hand bookshops, especially specialists/curators (e.g. only selling sci-fi, only selling books by women, etc.) to distinguish themselves from the Waterstones and Blackwells of this world.]]>readingsource:hnWed, 9 Apr 2025 23:27:45 +0000amiga386https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43620583
Pix revolutionised the way we transact in Brazil. I've used Pix to pay for things that cost only cents, and I have a friend who bought her house using Pix. The system just works for any transfer amount. And it's so easy to use.

Its speed is truly baffling, and so is its reliability. Never have I failed to make a Pix payment because of downtime. I never cease to be amazed by how fast money arrives in my Brazilian account when I make a withdrawal directly from my EUR wallet on Wise. I receive a push notification from my Brazilian bank before Wise finishes running the animation of confirmation of withdrawal. It's like magic.

And it's so widespread that nowadays I don't even question whether someone accepts Pix. When I get in a taxi, no matter how old the driver is, it's certain that they take (and prefer) Pix.

I've even had homeless people ask me for Pix instead of change on multiple occasions.

Cryptocurrencies don't stand a chance.]]>bankingbrazilfinancesource:hnTue, 8 Apr 2025 13:51:48 +0000SwiftyBughttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36903735
Open-Source is a generic term. It's the opposite of "closed-source".

The OSI is on the record on this: https://opensource.org/pressreleases/certified-open-source.p...

The only people who want to push the whole "The OSI's version of Free Software" defines "open-source" rather than "OSI Approved License™" are the Anti-Property GPL folks that never liked the term "open source" anyway, the trolls that want to force other people to work for free, and the people at the OSI]]>licensingopen-sourcesource:hnSat, 5 Apr 2025 19:44:00 +0000daniel_rielhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43568326
It's a pretty hopeful, optimistic view of the future in a time of high uncertainty, but also represents a positive argument: it's worth doing these things because they are interesting, weird, and fun, and because they represent a continuity with past and future people we will never meet.

Plus, you can already buy a ticket to the finale, so your distant descendants can go see it :)]]>artcapitalismsource:hnThu, 3 Apr 2025 16:30:32 +0000_petroniushttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43563216
My grandpa once said something that seemed ridiculous but makes a lot of sense: that every workplace should have a “heavy” who steals a new worker’s lunch on the first day, just to see if he asserts himself. Why? Not to haze or bully but to filter out the non-fighters so that when management wants to impose quotas or tracking, they remember that they’d be enforcing this on a whole team of fighters… and suddenly they realize that squeezing the workers isn’t worth it.

The reason 1950s workplaces were more humane is that any boss who tried to impose this shit on workers would have first been laughed at, and then if he tried to actually enforce it by firing people, it would’ve been a 6:00 in the parking lot kinda thing.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnworkThu, 3 Apr 2025 01:31:03 +0000zusammenhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43562875 In the last years you often have some manager where you basically have to justify every thing you do and always a huge pile of work that never gets smaller. So you just hurry through your tasks.

This has been my exact experience. Absolutely everything is tracked as a work item with estimates. Anything you think should be done needs to be justified and tracked the same way. If anything ever takes longer than the estimate that was invariably just pulled out of someones ass (because it's impossible to accurately estimate development unless you're already ~75% of the way through doing it, and even then it's a crapshoot) you need to justify that in a morning standup too.

The end result of all of this is every project getting bogged down by being stuck on the first version of whatever architecture was thought up right at the beginning and there being piles of tech debt that never gets fixed because nobody who actually understands what needs to be done has the political capital to get past the aforementioned justification filter.]]>capitalismdevelopmentsoftwaresource:hnworkThu, 3 Apr 2025 01:28:44 +0000p1necone