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Showing posts from December, 2025

New ask Hacker News story: Broadcom Changing Licensing to BSL

Broadcom Changing Licensing to BSL 3 by CubsFan1060 | 2 comments on Hacker News. I am not sure if this is part of the Bitnami Helm Chart Fiasco, but they seem to be changing open source projects from Apache to BSL. Was looking at chart-syncer, and found: https://ift.tt/elnUSM0 And it depends on some tooling from VMware, which has the same notice: https://ift.tt/IV6X215 Not that I'm surprised, just stumbled across this.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How many email accounts do you have?

Ask HN: How many email accounts do you have? 2 by asim | 3 comments on Hacker News. I was thinking about this recently as a I work on a new mail client/server. I have one personal email that has a custom domain. 1 that's a plain gmail address and then a variety of random accounts I can't even remember but I guess were legacy or tests for new providers like protonmail. Then there's email address for whatever company you work for at the time. I realise I don't really want to hand out my personal email in a public setting and my company address is mostly for internal stuff. So where's public email? Are we missing public email accounts? One's that you can just hand out anywhere?

New ask Hacker News story: Firefox restart and tabs = Google says I'm a robot

Firefox restart and tabs = Google says I'm a robot 3 by prirun | 0 comments on Hacker News. Yesterday I let Firefox update. After it restarted and opened my tabs, some of which were on Google, Google decided I was a robot and made me go through captchas. If Google wants people off their platform, this is a great start toward that goal!

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why do small voting or ranking projects get flagged as spam so easily?

Ask HN: Why do small voting or ranking projects get flagged as spam so easily? 4 by rankiwiki | 1 comments on Hacker News. I’ve been experimenting with a very small side project: a simple voting/ranking tool. Everyone gets one vote, results are shown as a ranked list, and the goal isn’t decision-making but discussion. What surprised me is how quickly these kinds of projects get treated as spam across communities, even when there’s no monetization, no ads, and no growth hacks involved. In some places, just mentioning “I built a small ranking tool” seems enough to trigger suspicion or moderation. I’m not trying to promote anything here. I’m genuinely curious about the dynamics: - Do voting/ranking tools have a bad reputation because they’re often used for manipulation or low-effort engagement? - Is the problem the format itself (polls, rankings), or the way they’re usually introduced? - From a community’s point of view, what would make an experiment like this feel acceptable rather th...

New ask Hacker News story: How would you learn to code in 2026?

How would you learn to code in 2026? 2 by jeevships | 1 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Built a content system that 6x'd traffic. Turning it into product. Want to test?

Built a content system that 6x'd traffic. Turning it into product. Want to test? 3 by zchmael | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hey YC Jumping in here because we've been building something we think is pretty cool and are looking for some founders to test it out and give us some honest feedback. We're technical founders. We hated content marketing. But we needed organic growth, so we built a cohesive system to handle it for us. Researched trending keywords & competitors. Proactively queued topics. Drafted SEO & LLM optimized content. Published directly to CMS. Tracked what ranked. Doubled down on what worked. It's led to 6,000% traffic growth in 6 months for us. Now we're packaging that entire workflow into Averi — a content engine for founders who'd rather be focused on shipping product than writing blogs. What it does: → Researches and queues topics for you → Drafts content optimized for Google + LLM citations → Publishes to your CMS → Tracks rankings and...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Are you afraid of AI making you unemployable within the next few years?

Ask HN: Are you afraid of AI making you unemployable within the next few years? 4 by johnwheeler | 8 comments on Hacker News. On Hacker News and Twitter, the consensus view is that no one is afraid. People concede that junior engineers and grad students might be the most affected. But, they still seem to hold on to their situations as being sustainable. My question is, is this just a part of wishful thinking and human nature, trying to combat the inevitable? The reason I ask is because I seriously don't see a future where there's a bunch of programmers anymore. I see mass unemployment for programmers. People are in denial, and all of these claims that the AI can't write code without making mistakes are no longer valid once an AI is released potentially overnight, that writes flawless code. Claude 4.5 is a good example. I just really don't see any valid arguments that the technology is not going to get to a point where it makes the job irrelevant, not irrelevant, but ...

New ask Hacker News story: The offline geocoder we wanted

The offline geocoder we wanted 4 by gipsyjaeger | 2 comments on Hacker News. What is this? This is an offline reverse geocoder written in Python. Given a latitude–longitude pair, it returns the correct administrative region such as country, state, or district without calling any external APIs. This avoids API costs, rate limits, and network dependency. Why build another reverse geocoder? Most offline reverse geocoders rely on nearest-neighbor lookups. While fast, this approach often fails near borders because the closest location is not always the correct administrative region. This project focuses on correctness over proximity by verifying which boundary a coordinate actually falls inside. How does it work? A KD-Tree is used to quickly shortlist nearby administrative boundaries. For those candidates, the system performs polygon containment checks to confirm the true region. It supports both single-process execution for small workloads and multiprocessing for large batch processing....

New ask Hacker News story: Cloudflare has been broken for 15 hours

Cloudflare has been broken for 15 hours 4 by Canada | 6 comments on Hacker News. They first acknowledged Dec 19 15:06 UTC, and it's still broken as I write this. https://ift.tt/wIeH5Wb

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: The internet is getting worse every day. How do we fix this?

Ask HN: The internet is getting worse every day. How do we fix this? 16 by electrodisk | 2 comments on Hacker News. Outrage, addiction, shallow engagement... this is what much of the modern internet is optimized for, with younger users especially vulnerable. This is vastly different than the internet’s original promise: a global system that allowed access to knowledge, creativity and collaboration no matter who you are. The internet feels increasingly broken every. single. day. How do we fix it?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is GitHub becoming more and more unstable?

Ask HN: Is GitHub becoming more and more unstable? 2 by pavish | 0 comments on Hacker News. I have been noticing several issues with GitHub over the last few weeks, most of which used to work flawlessly a few months ago. The outages aside, a couple of annoying, super-recent experiences: - Our release process involves creating draft releases before QA, and publishing them when ready. We published a new release today and team members from the US were able to see it as published while members from different countries still saw the release marked as a draft and not visible publicly. We only noticed it two hours after making our announcements. We had to unpublish and publish it again to fix it. - Recently, a colleague noticed a number of unrelated changes while reviewing a diff on GitHub, which led to us reverting a merge, only to later notice that the commit itself had no issues and it was the GitHub UI. Outages and major issues are fine, they are loud and addressed directly. These kind...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do teams remember why infrastructure decisions were made?

Ask HN: How do teams remember why infrastructure decisions were made? 4 by curious_sre | 2 comments on Hacker News. On teams I’ve worked with, we often run into systems where nobody really knows why certain configs, services, or architectural choices exist. Docs are outdated, Slack history is messy, and the people who made the decision are often gone. When something breaks, we end up rediscovering the same context over and over. Is this just inevitable on long-lived systems, or do experienced teams have a better way of preserving this kind of context?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is anyone using LLM based document processing in production?

Ask HN: Is anyone using LLM based document processing in production? 3 by asdev | 3 comments on Hacker News. I'm wondering if anyone is actually using LLMs to process documents reliably in production. One hallucination could lead to a host of issues. For example, if someone is using LLMs to process documents and enter data into an ERP, if even one number is off it could cause accounting issues, inventory issues etc. Human in the loop doesn't help because the human would just have to read the document themselves to ensure accuracy, defeating the point of the automation.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Who here is not working on web apps/server code?

Ask HN: Who here is not working on web apps/server code? 5 by ex-aws-dude | 3 comments on Hacker News. I feel like reading HN sometimes there is the assumption that everyone who is a programmer by default works on web stuff (front end/back end). I'm curious to hear about what other jobs/domains exist outside of this and how it is working on non-web stuff.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works?

Ask HN: Does anyone understand how Hacker News works? 5 by jannesblobel | 9 comments on Hacker News. When working on my projects and talking to investors, I often hear: “Just post it on Hacker News or Reddit and show that people love it.” What I find strange is that Hacker News feels oddly opaque. I’ve never met anyone who can clearly explain how it works in practice. Not just the rules, but the dynamics: what’s repeatable, what’s luck, and what actually matters. By using the Kevin Bacon-number idea: I can usually get within three degrees of separation of well-known technologists like Linus Torvalds, but I can’t seem to get within three steps of someone who confidently understands how HN works. So I’m asking sincerely: Does anyone here feel they understand Hacker News? If so, what are the real levers, and what do people consistently misunderstand? PS: This question comes from a mix of genuine curiosity and personal frustration. I’m honestly trying to understand how HN works in pract...

New ask Hacker News story: How Much Energy Does One Solar Panel Produce in Australia?

How Much Energy Does One Solar Panel Produce in Australia? 4 by scorpeoanlibra | 0 comments on Hacker News. Interesting to see how Australia is hitting the solar saturation limit. In Victoria especially, the VEU upgrades are shifting the focus from 'how many panels' to 'how efficient is the load' (heat pumps, etc). We wrote a piece on what a single 400W+ panel actually produces in the current AU grid environment versus what the sales guys claim. Link for those interested: https://ift.tt/KZsJUGf

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Should I start a software foundation (goal: help emergency services)?

Ask HN: Should I start a software foundation (goal: help emergency services)? 2 by strgcmc | 0 comments on Hacker News. I've been on a business trip this week, and sitting on the plane, I was randomly browsing NYT and read this article which really REALLY pissed me off: https://ift.tt/JbKHCZI TLDR: Private equity is buying up all these software vendors, and preying upon vulnerable fire departments; one rural department with a total budget of $130k/yr saw their software costs go up 3x in one year (from $4k/yr to $12k/yr). I want to do something. I have not worked in the emergency services domain before, so I know that I am naive. I do have experience with oncall and mission-critical software maintenance and highly available/durable services, but when I say mission critical I mean millions-of-dollars at risk, not human lives. I want to solicit HN for very early directional advice, of any and all kinds. - Are there some existing open source projects or foundations with a mission li...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026? 6 by mfrw | 2 comments on Hacker News. What are your predictions for this coming year?

New ask Hacker News story: Who has enjoyed using PR code reviewers? What worked and what didn’t?

Who has enjoyed using PR code reviewers? What worked and what didn’t? 3 by yashwantphogat | 1 comments on Hacker News. I’m curious about people’s experiences with pull request code reviewers, both human and automated. For those who have used PR review tools or bots: What did you actually find helpful? What ended up being annoying or counterproductive? At what point did you stop paying attention to the feedback? I’m particularly interested in how people balance signal vs noise in reviews, and whether summaries, inline comments, or opt-in depth work better in practice. Asking to understand real usage patterns and pain points, not to promote anything. Happy to just listen.

New ask Hacker News story: Implemented the WindMouse Algorithm in Python

Implemented the WindMouse Algorithm in Python 2 by AsfhtgkDavid | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN, WindMouse is a fairly old and well-known algorithm for generating human-like mouse movements (curved paths, variable speed, natural deceleration). It’s often referenced in automation discussions, but surprisingly I couldn’t find a clean, well-tested, reusable implementation as a Python library. So I decided to implement it myself. The project is now released as WindMouse : * Strong typing ( NewType for coordinates, mypy-friendly) * Two backends: * PyAutoGUI (cross-platform) * AutoHotkey (Windows) The algorithm itself is not new - the implementation is. My goal was to create something that could be downloaded and immediately used in projects. I’m looking for help with: * Testing on different OS setups (especially macOS edge cases) * New backends (e.g. native macOS, Wayland, low-level Windows APIs, game engines, remote desktops) * Feedback on API design and parameter defaults Happy to a...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How are you vibe coding in an established code base?

Ask HN: How are you vibe coding in an established code base? 3 by adam_gyroscope | 0 comments on Hacker News. Here’s how we’re working with LLMs at my startup. We have a monorepo with scheduled Python data workflows, two Next.js apps, and a small engineering team. We use GitHub for SCM and CI/CD, deploy to GCP and Vercel, and lean heavily on automation. Local development: Every engineer gets Cursor Pro (plus Bugbot), Gemini Pro, OpenAI Pro, and optionally Claude Pro. We don’t really care which model people use. In practice, LLMs are worth about 1.5 excellent junior/mid-level engineers per engineer, so paying for multiple models is easily worth it. We rely heavily on pre-commit hooks: ty, ruff, TypeScript checks, tests across all languages, formatting, and other guards. Everything is auto-formatted. LLMs make types and tests much easier to write, though complex typing still needs some hand-holding. GitHub + Copilot workflow: We pay for GitHub Enterprise primarily because it allows as...

New ask Hacker News story: `nmrs` is officially stable v1.0.0 released

`nmrs` is officially stable v1.0.0 released 3 by cachebag | 0 comments on Hacker News. Super excited to say I've finished `1.0.0` which deems my library API as stable. Breaking changes will only occur in major version updates (`2.0.0`+). All public APIs are documented and tested. `nmrs` is a library providing NetworkManager bindings over D-Bus. Unlike `nmcli` wrappers, `nmrs` offers direct D-Bus integration with a safe, ergonomic API for managing WiFi, Ethernet, and VPN connections on Linux. It's also *runtime-agnostic* and works with any `async` runtime. This is my first (real) open source project and I'm pretty proud of it. It's been really nice to find my love for FOSS through `nmrs`. Hope someone derives use out of this and is kind enough to report any bugs, feature requests or general critiques! > I am more than open to [contributions](https://ift.tt/6G91tKr) as well! https://ift.tt/6G91tKr Docs: https://ift.tt/WVmTilS

New ask Hacker News story: DietPi released a new version v9.20

DietPi released a new version v9.20 3 by StephanStS | 0 comments on Hacker News. DietPi is a lightweight Debian based Linux distribution for SBCs and server systems, with the option to install desktop environments, too. It ships as minimal image but allows to install complete and ready-to-use software stacks with a set of console based shell dialogs and scripts. The source code is hosted on GitHub: https://ift.tt/E1pA6oV The main website can be found at: https://dietpi.com/ Wikipedia: https://ift.tt/OEHvkw0 The project released the version DietPi v9.20 on December 14th, 2025. The highlights of this version are: Orange Pi 5/Max/Ultra, Radxa ZERO 3: Fixes for these SBCs RustDesk Server: New software title (selfhosted remote access server) DietPi-Backup: Improvements for NFSv4 mounts Allo GUI: New major version is used for installation Fixes for Portainer, DietPi-Drive_Manager, BirdNET-Go, ProFTPD, LazyLibrarian, Fail2Ban, Radarr The full release notes can be found at: https://ift.tt/D...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How are you educating your elementary aged children?

Ask HN: How are you educating your elementary aged children? 2 by ychandler | 0 comments on Hacker News. Hi folks! We are pretty set on continuing in public school. I totally understand that we should focus more on social / emotional and extra curricular front. As it comes to academics, how have you supplemented their education besides the standard Kumon/Russian School of Math / Singapore Math? Hearing lots of “stuff” around alpha school and AI enabled learning but have people tried something they liked? We have tried 1. Stuff like Tynker 2. We love Khan Academy kids 3. Haven’t tried any of the subscription box stuff yet

New ask Hacker News story: I realized bad lighting is quietly hurting productivity (and no one measures it)

I realized bad lighting is quietly hurting productivity (and no one measures it) 4 by emmasuntech | 0 comments on Hacker News. We spend a lot of time optimizing tools: keyboards, monitors, IDEs, latency, ergonomics. But recently I noticed something odd — lighting almost never gets the same level of attention, even though it directly affects focus, fatigue, and decision-making. I ran a small personal experiment while working long hours: Removed the main overhead light Used fewer, lower-intensity, indirect light sources Let some areas stay intentionally dark The result wasn’t just “more comfortable” — my working behavior changed: Less eye fatigue late at night Longer uninterrupted focus blocks Fewer impulsive context switches What surprised me is that most productivity advice assumes “more visibility = better”, while human perception seems to work the opposite way: contrast, shadow, and restraint improve clarity. It made me wonder: Why don’t we treat lighting like we treat typography ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Please suggest a smart watch that can be customized

Ask HN: Please suggest a smart watch that can be customized 6 by VladVladikoff | 3 comments on Hacker News. I’m looking for an affordable/cheap smart watch than can be modified. Ideally I just want to put a custom image background and lockdown/disable all other smart features, especially games or things like that. And preferably cheap enough that when my kid inevitably loses it or breaks it I won’t be crying over the wasted money.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Best back end to run models on Google TPU?

Ask HN: Best back end to run models on Google TPU? 2 by vood | 0 comments on Hacker News. So, I got Pixel 10 Pro, and I'd like to run parakeet (or whisper) model on it for voice to text. I'm building an ai dictation app (aidictation.com). I'm struggling to find a way to run this model on device. I have to reserve to use groq API, which is suboptimal. Any recommendations?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is starting a personal blog still worth it in the age of AI?

Ask HN: Is starting a personal blog still worth it in the age of AI? 10 by nazarh | 14 comments on Hacker News. Hi HN — I’ve wanted to start a personal blog for a few years, but I keep hesitating. I write a lot privately (notes, mini-essays, thinking-through problems). Paul Graham’s idea that essays are a way to learn really resonates with me. But I rarely publish anything beyond occasional LinkedIn posts. My blockers: •“Nobody needs this” / “It’s not original” •“AI can explain most topics better than I can” •A bit of fear: shipping something that feels naive or low-signal At the same time, I read a lot of personal blogs + LinkedIn and I do get real value from them — mostly from perspective, lived experience, and clear thinking, not novelty. For those of you who blog (or used to): •What made it worth it for you? •What kinds of posts actually worked (for learning, career, network, opportunities)? •Any practical format that lowers the bar (length, cadence, themes)? •If you were starti...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do I navigate horror of requirement gathering in product management?

Ask HN: How do I navigate horror of requirement gathering in product management? 2 by souravpradhan | 1 comments on Hacker News. Every other day I face challenges while gathering requirements from various clients. 1. When everything becomes priority number 1 2. When the stakeholder goes back on the discussed requirements 3. Requirements change after every single meeting 4. During UAT a new stakeholder appears out of nowhere and says "This is not what we wanted" 5.You rely on SME for inputs who actually doesn't have a clue 6. Two clients from same team give you opposite requirements 7. Scope creep is the new fashion 8. THE BIGGEST OF ALL - The client doesn't know what they want How do you navigate the horrors of the requirement gathering process to make yourself a better product manager?

New ask Hacker News story: What is the most effective way to learn programming?

What is the most effective way to learn programming? 2 by luis_journey | 1 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you handle release notes for multiple audiences?

Ask HN: How do you handle release notes for multiple audiences? 6 by glidr_dev | 1 comments on Hacker News. For those of you who ship often, when you release updates, do you typically write one set of release notes, or do you end up rewriting them for different audiences? For example: • technical version for developers • simplified version for end users • something more high-level for stakeholders etc… In my current position I’ve seen a plethora of different ways teams, and even the company I currently work for, go about this. What I’ve seen: 1. paste raw GitHub changelogs into customer emails (highly wouldn’t recommend if you’re currently doing this ) 2. manually rewrite the same update multiple times for each audience 3. skip release notes entirely because it’s too much work So I guess my question is: How do you or your company currently go about handling more than one set of release notes, and do you feel like more than one set is needed? Would love to hear what’s working (or not...

New ask Hacker News story: Computer Animator and Amiga fanatic Dick Van Dyke turns 100

Computer Animator and Amiga fanatic Dick Van Dyke turns 100 4 by ggm | 2 comments on Hacker News. Here's a video from 2004 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1J9kfDCAmU It's his 100th birthday today.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: ArXiv Endorsement as Independent Researcher

Ask HN: ArXiv Endorsement as Independent Researcher 5 by 7777777phil | 6 comments on Hacker News. I have a preprint article [1] which I'm trying to get submitted to arXiv's cs.SI (Social and Information Networks) for peer review. As an independent researcher I do not have any affiliations to a university anymore. How do I go about this? Appreciate any kind of info / support. [1] https://ift.tt/vDyEQPC

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Go all-in on AI Boom vs. enjoy parenthood?

Ask HN: Go all-in on AI Boom vs. enjoy parenthood? 5 by pratchett | 6 comments on Hacker News. After many years of working hard, my wife and I finally decided to have a kid recently. I am looking forward to spending a lot more time with her, while working just a 9-5. However, the AI boom seems like a short-lived, once in a life-time opportunity. Now I am considering if I should dive in fully even if it means sacrificing time with family? Options: 1) Joining an AI startup 2) Founding an AI startup 3) Stay at my big-tech role I make good money at my current role, but I am extremely passionate about the work I do. With the AI boom, there seems to be a lot of great infra, data movement and algorithmic challenges on the table. However, it is also clear that options 1 and 2 seem to require a lot more time commitment than a simple 9-5 job. There are also financial considerations. If AI affects the SWE job market in a meaningful way, my future salary will be drastically low. Maybe it makes ...

New ask Hacker News story: Referral to coach for fundraising for pre-revenue seed capital?

Referral to coach for fundraising for pre-revenue seed capital? 3 by FWKevents | 1 comments on Hacker News. Hi! I'm pre-revenue but there's a buzz in the corporate events industry about my AI Agent MVP. Who do you recommend to help me get my slide deck and financials ready for fundraising? What is the best way to fundraise for seed capital when pre-revenue? Family Offices in the Middle East (because the US is sluggish on startup investing right now)? "Go Fund Me" type sites for B2B products? Something else?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Can someone explain why OpenAI credits expire?

Ask HN: Can someone explain why OpenAI credits expire? 2 by jemiluv8 | 6 comments on Hacker News. I was surprised to find out only recently that some credits I bought about a year a go were unusable because they had expired. I find this a bit concerning because it seems as though I'm being forced to use the credits. In my part of the world, that tactic is used by telcos to sell "broadband data". You buy internet bundle of about $1 and they give you expiry of about a week. This drives up the "real" price of these purchases because of the time constraint. Ultimately, if you had 1GB of data left after a week, it is all gone and you have to purchase again - further driving sales. Since this is a third world country we're talking about and telco's tend to be oligopolies and tend to also do some form of price collusion among themselves, it was generally accepted as "just how things were". But I always found it to be unfair because people should be...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What are you buying your kids for Christmas?

Ask HN: What are you buying your kids for Christmas? 6 by JamesSwift | 6 comments on Hacker News. I thought this would be a helpful thing to read what others on the site were getting for their kids, along with the age of those kids. Doesnt have to be tech-oriented. EDIT: besides robux : D

New ask Hacker News story: AI coding is sexy, but accounting is the real low-hanging automation target

AI coding is sexy, but accounting is the real low-hanging automation target 2 by bmadduma | 0 comments on Hacker News. Working on automating small business finance (bookkeeping, reconciliation, basic reporting). One thing I keep noticing: compared to programming, accounting often looks like the more automatable problem: It’s rule-based Double entry, charts of accounts, tax rules, materiality thresholds. For most day-to-day transactions you’re not inventing new logic, you’re applying existing rules. It’s verifiable The books either balance or they don’t. Ledgers either reconcile or they don’t. There’s almost always a “ground truth” to compare against (bank feeds, statements, prior periods). It’s boring and repetitive Same vendors, same categories, same patterns every month. Humans hate this work. Software loves it. With accounting, at least at the small-business level, most of the work feels like: normalize data from banks / cards / invoices apply deterministic or configurable rules ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Relatively SoTA LLM Agents from Scratch?

Ask HN: Relatively SoTA LLM Agents from Scratch? 2 by solsane | 0 comments on Hacker News. As we know, OpenAI is not so open. In 2023, I was playing with transformers, RNNs and I had an understanding how it worked from top to bottom (e.g. made my own keras, could whiteboard small nets) and I can throw things together in keras or tf pretty quick I got a job and never touched that again. Data and compute notwithstanding, how hard would it be to make a pet project foundation model using the latest techniques? I’ve heard about MoE, things like that and I figure we’re not just throwing a bunch of layers and dropout in Keras anymore.

New ask Hacker News story: Practical Tips for Gemini 3

Practical Tips for Gemini 3 3 by xiaoru | 0 comments on Hacker News. 1. Turn Any Screenshot into a Structured Note Screenshot (meeting notes/webpage/paper/etc.): Extract key text; Summarize as clear bullet points; Create 3–5 to-dos with due dates & owners (TBD). 2. “One‑Click” Spreadsheet Analyst “upload a spreadsheet image / CSV of your data. Describe the main patterns in plain language. Suggest 3 charts that best explain the data and describe what each chart should show. Point out anomalies or data quality issues.” 3. Context‑Aware Refactor Coach for Code “From screenshots/pasted text, infer code architecture and file roles. Suggest a step-by-step refactor plan. For Step 1 only: provide exact code changes—await your approval before Step 2.” 4. Auto‑Generate Test Cases from Real UIs “Upload app/web screenshots → Identify interactive elements → Generate test-case table: [Element, Expected behavior, Edge cases] → Suggest automated test ideas for Playwright/Cypress/Appium (no full...

New ask Hacker News story: Console.text() – SMS alerts when code executes

Console.text() – SMS alerts when code executes 3 by Noel04 | 3 comments on Hacker News. Hey HN! I built console.text() - a tool that texts you when specific code paths execute in production. The idea came from Jason Goodison's YouTube video about micro-SaaS products. I'd been stuck in tutorial hell for months, so I decided to just ship something. What it does: npm install @holler2660/console-text const { init } = require("@holler2660/console-text"); init({ apiKey: 'ct_live_xxx' }); console.text('Payment failed', { userId: '123' }); // → SMS arrives in 5-10 seconds Try it: https://soorajdmg.github.io/Console-text/ Why this vs Sentry/PagerDuty? Those are great for teams. This is for solo devs and side projects who want dead-simple alerts without the setup overhead. If you know console.log(), you already know how to use it.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What hard problems are still underexplored?

Ask HN: What hard problems are still underexplored? 2 by brihati | 0 comments on Hacker News. Problem with ambiguous boundaries, messy constraints and no linear path to a solution

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is it still worth learning a new programming language?

Ask HN: Is it still worth learning a new programming language? 5 by xparadigm | 5 comments on Hacker News. I have been writing Python code for a few years now. But I feel like LLMs can write much better code than me. I used to keep myself updated with newer technology. But now I am loosing interest. I was interested in learning Rust. But I don't find any motivation now since I can just vibe code with Rust. Any thoughts in that?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025) 5 by mchaver | 3 comments on Hacker News. What is everyone working on?

New ask Hacker News story: Is any of you using LLMs to create full features in big enterprise apps?

Is any of you using LLMs to create full features in big enterprise apps? 2 by not_that_d | 1 comments on Hacker News. Let me be clear first. I don't dislike LLMs, I query them, trigger agents to do stuff where I kind of know what the end goal is and to make analisys of small parts of an application. That said, everytime I give it something a little more complex that do something in a single file script it fails me horribly. Either the code is really bad, or the approach is as bad a someone who doesn't really know what to do or it plains start doing things that I explicitly said not to do in the initial prompt. I have sometimes asked my LLM fan's coworkers to come and help when that happens and they also are not able to "fix it", but somehow I am the one doing it wrong due "wrong prompt" or "lack of correct context". I have created a lot of "Agents.md" files, drop files into the context window... Nothing. When I need to do green fie...

New ask Hacker News story: Why are "remote" jobs in late 2025 still limited to hiring in US/CA/UK/DE?

Why are "remote" jobs in late 2025 still limited to hiring in US/CA/UK/DE? 4 by ftonato | 1 comments on Hacker News. Throughout 2025, I've been following job boards like YC Jobs, RemoteOK, NoDesk, WeWorkRemotely, and others. Across all of them, I keep seeing a recurring pattern: Many companies advertise "remote" roles, but hiring is limited to the US, Canada, UK, or Germany. Sometimes they add one or two more countries, but rarely anything beyond that. Given that it's the last quarter of 2025 and remote work is more established than ever, I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind this. A few questions I'm hoping founders, hiring managers, or people with international hiring experience can shed light on: - Is the main blocker regulatory complexity? (employment law, compliance, local registrations, PE risk, etc.) - Is it primarily about taxes and payroll overhead when hiring abroad? - Are there security or liability concerns that make certain ju...

New ask Hacker News story: What's Next? Clippy Copilot?

What's Next? Clippy Copilot? 2 by johnnyballgame | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm sure there's more, but Copilot gave up. - Microsoft Copilot - Microsoft Copilot Pro - Microsoft 365 Copilot - Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat - Microsoft Security Copilot - Microsoft Copilot in Intune - Microsoft Copilot Studio - Microsoft Copilot in Edge - Microsoft Copilot in Windows - Microsoft Copilot in WhatApp - Microsoft Copilot in GroupMe - GitHub Copilot

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Are there any viable Android phones for a power user to buy nowadays?

Ask HN: Are there any viable Android phones for a power user to buy nowadays? 4 by gooob | 0 comments on Hacker News. i have a pixel 4, and it looks like i might be stuck with this phone forever if things keep going in the same direction (hopefully they don't). the pixel 4 isn't bad, but even on this i don't have the level of customization that i had back in the day with cyanogenmod etc. on my note 3 or epic 4g touch. here are some requirements that i can think of: - not huge. small enough to use with 1 hand - able to root and install custom OS without too much difficulty/annoyance (the manufacturer doesn't actively try to stop you from modifying your own device) - able to use mint mobile - has a trackball (like the htc hero, that thing was fuckin awesome) - possibly some hardware buttons

New ask Hacker News story: Thoughts of a Neopagan / the Reconstruction of Neolithic Religion

Thoughts of a Neopagan / the Reconstruction of Neolithic Religion 4 by 5wizard5 | 0 comments on Hacker News. Many books have been written about Neolithic religion, a time when a Goddess was worshipped along with a multitude of male Gods, seen as her consorts or sons; but how is it possible today, in such a distant and different era, to reconstruct the contours of an ancient spirituality without having sacred texts or scriptures? How can we hear the voices of a people who left no written words? The answer does not lie in a simple archaeological equation but in an act of profound spiritual intuition and listening; we are not simply solving a puzzle with missing pieces, we are practicing a form of sacred remembrance, a re-knitting of the threads of instinctual knowledge that lies dormant within us; Archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians of religion are, in a sense, our modern shamans. Through sophisticated methodologies, they interpret patterns of ancient settlements, terracot...

New ask Hacker News story: Which of my HN comments get upvoted?

Which of my HN comments get upvoted? 2 by sema4hacker | 1 comments on Hacker News. I spend too much time on HN posting comments. I can never predict which will be upvoted, so I tabulated them to see if there was any trend: 68 points on 1 comment about Musk vs. OpenAI 39 points on 1 comment about private equity 26 points on 1 comment about Teamshares 24 points on 1 comment about surveillance 23 points on 1 comment about project pitch 19 points on 1 comment about complicated web pages 16 points on 1 comment about fire truck efficiency 15 points on 2 comments about SQLite, elevator cost 13 points on 2 comments about AI coding errors, balancing cube 12 points on 2 comments about domestic garbage, my salary history 11 points on 4 comments about age of study subjects, Las Vegas Sphere, my tech history (2x) 10 points on 4 comments about Waymo, pest contractors, YouTube Dewey decimal, burglars 9 points on 11 comments about productivity, a bad comment, surveillance misuse, TLDR wind turbines...

New ask Hacker News story: Cursor and Claude Opus 4.5 is a game changer

Cursor and Claude Opus 4.5 is a game changer 4 by seinecle | 0 comments on Hacker News. The combination of the two delivers on the promise: fast and clever editing of multiple files in a codebase, with minimal human intervention. No other model I tried in Cursor comes even close. Question: did anyone tried Claude Codex: as good as Cursor?

New ask Hacker News story: What's the "best" way to version your product?

What's the "best" way to version your product? 3 by sshadmand | 1 comments on Hacker News. There is the classic “Major.Minor.Patch”. Maybe git sha? I see this becoming popular this year: “year.version” from folks like Neo4J and Rivian.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Who else got pwned by the Next.js RCE?

Ask HN: Who else got pwned by the Next.js RCE? 4 by whycombinetor | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm a little embarrassed, but not sure what I could have done differently other than reading the Saturday email from GCP with the nondescript subject "New Advisory Notification". Ten hours later, GCP instance suspended due to crypto mining. Now looking at the disk image, it installed something at ~/nxt/ , installed a monero miner at ~/c3pool/ , and added several systemctl services to run these on startup. BRB, killing this machine with fire... This makes me think I should be running everything in Docker, even simple small stuff that "shouldn't" have any potential security issues. Fortunately this machine wasn't anything important for me and there was no sensitive data to exfil beyond AI API keys. But I imagine there's other orgs that just got catastrophically, irrecoverably pwned. What's your story? (RCE context: https://ift.tt/Cj5qU9E )

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is it just me or techno-optimism died in the past few years?

Ask HN: Is it just me or techno-optimism died in the past few years? 7 by shubhamjain | 0 comments on Hacker News. I see people all around me who have this bleak, pessimistic view of where everything is going. That art/originality is fading, that technology is causing more harm than good, and that most jobs now exist to feed some mindless machine where sole goal is to get people addicted. Tech roles feel drained of purpose, and non-tech roles are being eaten away. This outlook is a stark contrast to the era I grew up in. From 2010 to 2020, tech optimism was at its peak. Despite the flaws, companies like Airbnb, Uber, Amazon, and countless SaaS startups felt like they were genuinely improving things—breaking old monopolies and building better systems. Now we have AI, arguably the most transformative technology of our lifetime, yet a lot of times the reaction seems to be exhaustion rather than excitement. Sure, people love using it, but unlike the early Internet, AI doesn't seem l...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why does every B2B SaaS have to look like Linear/Stripe?

Ask HN: Why does every B2B SaaS have to look like Linear/Stripe? 2 by PaulShin | 2 comments on Hacker News. I'm a founder (and ex-architect) building a logistics OS. Recently, I received feedback that my site looks "cheap and ugly" because I used Serif fonts and an engraving style aesthetic instead of the standard Sans-Serif "Clean Tech" look. My intent was to evoke the "Age of Exploration" vibe, since the AI era feels like charting unknown territories. But users seem conditioned to trust only "Standard Blue SaaS UI." My question to HN: Does a B2B tool have to follow the "Standard Modern UI" to be taken seriously? Or is there room for distinctive, maybe even polarizing, aesthetics in enterprise software? I'm debating whether to cave in and redesign to "boring but safe" or double down on our soul. Would love to hear your thoughts on "Brand Distinctiveness vs. UI Familiarity."

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is Mythical Man-Month still relevant in todays AI Vibe Coding world?

Ask HN: Is Mythical Man-Month still relevant in todays AI Vibe Coding world? 2 by Codegres | 4 comments on Hacker News.

New ask Hacker News story: Tell HN: iOS 18.7.2 in Lockdown Mode is unable to load many websites

Tell HN: iOS 18.7.2 in Lockdown Mode is unable to load many websites 3 by HotGarbage | 1 comments on Hacker News. Since updating to iOS 18.7.2 many major websites fail to load with "A problem repeatedly occurred." Disabling Lockdown Mode for the site fixes it but is annoying and defeats the purpose. I'm not the only one experiencing this https://ift.tt/KI4Mp8E and I've opened a ticket via Feedback but I thought I'd try to get more visibility here.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What is the future of SaaS when things are this easy to build?

Ask HN: What is the future of SaaS when things are this easy to build? 4 by fbrncci | 1 comments on Hacker News. In the past two 3-4 months, I noticed a pattern with myself, where I see an interesting SaaS being launched here on YC (or other places online), I try it out and I like it. Often these are more cutting edge AI tools; which still are really just LLM wrappers with agentic capabilities. I don't want to downplay them, as they are often products that make my professional life smoother and easier. But the longer I use them, the more issues I notice with them through becoming a power-user and start to understand exactly how they work. Then usually before my first months subscription runs out; if I find them useful, I do not renew the subscription, but I spend a weekend with the latest SOTA LLM in Cursor or VCcode to build out the core capabilities for myself, and then never go back to the service. Often, even as a power-user, if some SaaS has 10-20 features, I really only ne...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Modern C# book for experienced developers?

Ask HN: Modern C# book for experienced developers? 3 by Fire-Dragon-DoL | 0 comments on Hacker News. I worked with C# about 15 years ago. Due to some circumstances at work, I have the opportunity to use it again. What are some great books that could help me learn to write *modern* C#? I will mostly work with web and .NET Core, are there books specifically about using .NET Core on Linux?

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Cloudflare WAF Alternatives?

Ask HN: Cloudflare WAF Alternatives? 7 by rco8786 | 1 comments on Hacker News. I don't know if we're ready to pull the trigger yet, but curious if other folks are looking at alternatives. The WAF is great, but recent events have made it obvious that having a single point of failure entirely defeats the purpose of DNS being a distributed/decentralized service. Is anyone doing anything creative here? We like the features that the WAF provides - but not at the expense of global outages. If you have a 3 9s availability SLA, you've just blown 90% of your allotted downtime because of Cloudflare's WAF.

New ask Hacker News story: Cloudflare Down Again – and DownDetector Is Also Down

Cloudflare Down Again – and DownDetector Is Also Down 24 by bakigul | 16 comments on Hacker News. https://ift.tt/S0zwuVO

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why are streaming apps so bad (insiders only)?

Ask HN: Why are streaming apps so bad (insiders only)? 3 by tonymet | 0 comments on Hacker News. A sincere question to the many actual & former employees on this forum. And before you get suspicious, yes I understand TVs are underpowered. There are still great streaming apps which perform adequately. Horrendous quality issues I've seen: * Deliberately not reusing rendered Activities (e.g. hitting the back button re-draws and re-requests content with painful latency). * Not cleaning up Ads resources when the ad terminates, so playback drops frames and audio * Not minding viewed ads, so viewers are punished with duplicate ads plays if they close or skip by accident (Netflix is mindful of this) * exhausting massive memory -- clear memory leaks and waste * humiliating UIs for search , playback , scrubbing , etc Sure teams are time and budget constrained I get that. But I'm curious about actual stories of corner cutting leading to such painful UIs. It's especially bizarre...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Anyone writing code from scratch or mostly doing architecting and LLM?

Ask HN: Anyone writing code from scratch or mostly doing architecting and LLM? 2 by mattfrommars | 0 comments on Hacker News. I'm assuming most firms have access to LLM, is it true? If so, is anyone really writing code from scratch lately or relying on the tool to write code for them? At work, I have access to Github Copilot but it has a lot of guardrail. It is great to debug issues. Minor fixes and enhancement, it is useful. I mostly double check what it wrote and make sure it's code that I can read and understand. If it uses too many shortcut, I tell it to become more 'human readable'. Now, I've been wanting to learn Python coming from Java and picked up Automate Boring Thing with Python Book. I'm looking at one its exercise which is to walk a tree directory. I can either memorize how its done in Python or just rely on LLM to write it. Am I wasting time doing these exercises when they can easily be done with LLM within one or two shots? Because doing these ...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Does anything beat Hetzner storage boxes for the price?

Ask HN: Does anything beat Hetzner storage boxes for the price? 3 by opengrass | 0 comments on Hacker News. The lowest end BX11 has 1TB storage, traffic use is free of cost, for €3.80 a month with VAT or $4.40. Object storage is a tad more and egress is billed, but I think you can always set something up like Garage for your own S3 buckets on any cloud if you need that.

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Selling one's self

Ask HN: Selling one's self 2 by it_is_beautiful | 1 comments on Hacker News. I'm having a hard time. I lack the skills to sell myself. I have a hard time communicating, even this post. It feels like I'm looking through 100x zoom, I can't find a clarity of message. I used to sit to write résumés for hours and hours, to come up with nothing of value. Lack of schooling and lack of real-world experience contributed. I didn't get interviews, and when I did, they weren't impressed. Mia culpa. --- While others worked publicly and sent out hundreds of résumés, I worked privately and sent nothing for years. Years! Now I'm trying to be practical and freelance, which I've tried twice before. There are a lot of jobs that I have the skills for easily, but when I try to write my profile, or my past projects, I spin out endlessly. --- Concretely, although I don't have any major projects shipped, I do have a lot of previous software with relevant problems I solve...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What fiction books would you recommend for programmers?

Ask HN: What fiction books would you recommend for programmers? 4 by superconduct123 | 6 comments on Hacker News. What are some fiction books that you think programmers especially would enjoy? Doesn't have to be but I'm interested as well if there are any that are written by programmers or engineers

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What did onboarding training look like in OS kernel teams?

Ask HN: What did onboarding training look like in OS kernel teams? 6 by markus_zhang | 2 comments on Hacker News. Context: I'm wondering how did OS kernel teams provide training to their new hires. I'm mostly curious about: - NT kernel / XNU kernel / Android kernel teams, or anything that is not OSS like Linux, e.g. some prop RTOS team would also count - When teams still hired new graduates from targeted schools into kernel teams. Not sure whether your team is still doing this so I put up a past tense. Questions: - How much time do new hires work on the training? Do you give e.g. 3 months to catch up and start to work on small tickets, or it's a swim or die strategy? - If there is any structured training, what material do you use? Is it mostly reading internal docs, or shadowing seniors, or published books about the kernel, or something else? - How does the training address code quality? What kind of exercises/material does it lay on the new hires to work on code quality...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: What has been your experience with Agentic Coding?

Ask HN: What has been your experience with Agentic Coding? 3 by grandimam | 0 comments on Hacker News. I have been experimenting more deeply with agentic coding, and it’s made me rethink how I approach building software. One key difference I have noticed is the upfront cost. With agentic coding, I felt a higher upfront cost: I have to think architecture, constraints, and success criteria before the model even starts generating code. I have to externalize the mental model I normally keep in my head so the AI can operate with it. In “precision coding,” that upfront cost is minimal but only because I carry most of the complexity mentally. All the design decisions, edge cases, and contextual assumptions live in my head as I write. Tests become more of a final validation step. What I have realized is that agentic coding shifts my cognitive load from on-demand execution to more pre-planned execution (I am behaving more like a researcher than a hacker). My role is less about 'precisely...

New ask Hacker News story: Microsoft won't let me pay a $24 bill, blocking thousands in Azure spending

Microsoft won't let me pay a $24 bill, blocking thousands in Azure spending 7 by Javin007 | 0 comments on Hacker News. Two years ago, a $24 autopay charge on my Azure account failed. The invoice is now marked "Locked" in their billing portal. I cannot pay this invoice. There is no button to pay it. There is no button to dismiss it. There is no way to interact with it at all. Azure displays a banner: "You must pay all previous invoices before creating new subscriptions." Fair enough. I would love to pay it. Microsoft won't let me. So I tried to contact support. The Azure portal requires a "paid support plan" to create a support ticket. To purchase a paid support plan, you must create a subscription. To create a subscription, you must clear outstanding invoices. To clear outstanding invoices, you must contact support. Azure on Twitter, as well as the website claims to have a "free support ticket" option for billing issues, but every poss...

New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Does cross-posting to Medium still help, or does it just dilute SEO now?

Ask HN: Does cross-posting to Medium still help, or does it just dilute SEO now? 2 by StealthyStart | 1 comments on Hacker News. I’m building a small tool that syncs WordPress posts to Medium using canonical URLs to preserve SEO. Before I go further, I’d love perspectives from people who actively publish: • Is Medium still worth distributing to in 2025? • Have canonical links actually protected your SEO in practice? • Do you cross-post manually, with scripts, or not at all? I’m trying to avoid building something people used to want but no longer do.

New ask Hacker News story: My 2016 iPhone SE got an update after 9 Years

My 2016 iPhone SE got an update after 9 Years 2 by vigneshesan | 2 comments on Hacker News. Just got iOS 15.8.5 in India