c/problems2solve

The set of possibly blocking operations for interactively using bash is big. Executable pages of the bash executable are far from the only thing that could be missing.

If the machine is swap trashing, all i/o goes to the same congested queue. .bash_history read or write access, memory allocation, stuff your terminal program does, stuff your wayland compositor or X11 stack does, bash accessing data in its memory that has been swapped out, etc etc. And each of those could be waiting for a while to issue their IO request since the IO system is flooded by swap IO.

There should be a tool that can show the interdependent graph of pending, blocking io operations.

Nobody wants to write Makefiles and recursive Makefiles are easier to write.

If it's truly the same information in multiple recursive Makefiles as it would be in one monolithic Makefile, then there should be a tool that converts recursive makefiles into monolithic makefiles. Humans should not have to reason about the entire project scope at once.

> Someone should really make a comprehensive list of programming languages beyond reproach here on HN so users don't inadvertently anger the mob. Obviously Haskell would be at the top

I don't think you'll get any arguments from any Haskeller about the record system being annoying, laziness being hard to learn about at first, or it being a more difficult (but not as difficult as people think) language to learn.

Perhaps I'm biased, but HN seems to cargo cult a lot less than other popular communities.

What's the big deal about Github? Too much hype.

Whenever you hear about the number of repos, most of them are just forks. In fact, I've created many by accident because Github changed their UI so clicking the icon instantly starts a fork instead of asking for confirmation first. I guess it's good for bumping the numbers up when getting private equity investors interested (cynical, I know).

Security wise, meh. Why would anybody pay to put their closed-source proprietary code onto Github? More holes than a sieve with their Rails setup.

Ok, you want somewhere to stash some private repos, nothing confidential. So why would you pay for Github when you can use Bitbucket for unlimited private repos? Plenty of other providers too.

Their enterprise product? Expensive meh. Atlassian's enterprise Stash is shared/open source when you get a license. You can also just install Gitlab, Gitorious, etc. for free on your own servers.

Github fanboys get excited whenever a big name dumps some code onto Github, like when Linus copied the kernel code over, but it was just a dumping ground while they sorted out server problems of their own. Ubuntu uses Bazaar and Trac, Linux Kernel development uses git on their own servers, KDE is over at Gitorious. Heck, there are some people still using Darcs and SVN.

Github is popular but it's not essential unless crave social karma points and your name/handle in lights.

Sorry for the rant like writing, lots of thoughts above, but I just never saw what the big deal about Github was. A good business and a slick offering but it's not going to suddenly transform your software projects or your abilities as a programmer.

Never realised this spelling mistake was such a thing but now I notice it all the time!

I've been living in Bogotá for a few months and I only realised I was spelling Colombia wrong a couple of months in - pretty embarrassing.

I now notice many if not most of my English-speaking friends make the same mistake when emailing/facebooking/whatsapping me and I try to correct them as I go.

It appears Columbia is a reflex spelling of the sound of the word - I'm from the UK so haven't had that much exposure to the use of the word for the NY University, so I don't think that's the explanation in my case.

Someone should make a website for this along the lines of amispellingcolumbiacorrectly.com -> NO to spread the word ;-)

The evidence for medium- to long-term sleep debt is sketchy at best. Certainly in the short term (1-3 days) if you are deprived of sleep, or if you're chronically short on sleep, there's all sorts of cognitive and physiological effects.

But after over longer terms of a week or more, after returning to a normal sleep schedule, it's more complicated. Much of the 'overtired' feeling and cognitive effects come from being deprived of slow-wave sleep (SWS), which you get in the deepest phases of sleep. It's in this phase of sleep that motor skills are consolidated, and it seems to be the 'physically restorative' part of sleep. This is opposed to REM sleep, which you get in the lighter phases of sleep and is where you dream and where memories are consolidated. Unlike SWS, there are very few side effects to being deprived of REM sleep. In a typical eight-hour sleep there will be several cycles of sleep, totalling about four to five hours out of eight spent in SWS, and the remainder in REM and in transition between states.

As for sleep debt and why it doesn't really exist beyond the short term, it comes down to what sleep researchers call sleep architecture, or how the cycles and phases of sleep are arranged through a night's sleep. For example, there's typically a bias towards getting more SWS in the first half of the night, and more REM sleep in the second. Here's what a typical night's sleep looks like (Stages 3 and 4 are SWS sleep):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_architecture#mediaviewer/File:Sleep_Hypnogram.svg

Your sleep architecture changes under sleep deprivation. If you are selectively deprived of SWS one night (e.g. by an evil sleep researcher waking you up any time you enter SWS), you will spend more of the next night in SWS to compensate. If your sleep is reduced gradually over time, your body will sacrifice REM sleep to maintain the same amount of SWS -- about four to five hours a night. As I said before, not getting much REM sleep has few side effects.

This is why you are able to sleep only five hours a night and still feel fine: your body simply adjusted to spend very little time in SWS. If I could guess, I'd say you probably have very few dreams anymore, maybe just one occasionally, shortly before waking up? I can't explain why this helped your insomnia or headaches, because I don't know much about how an insomniac differs from a typical person. But it's not to do with sleep debt.

Seems like a mix of AI slop and right wing racism.

> But here's what most people don't know: their average salary is under $105,000 — nearly 40% below what tech giants pay for similar roles.

Why would you compare random software positions with “tech giants”? Would you compare the pay for a local race track driver with an F1 driver?

> This isn't a story about hard-working immigrants. It's a story about a business model that exploits the H1B system.

Is it being exploited? The article doesn’t prove that at all.

> When 28,000+ positions pay 40% below market, it drags down wages for everyone in the field.

No, you’re just describing the market. “When the average is X, the data points below the average are below the average”. See how useless this observation sounds?

> The $90,000 gap isn't because the work is different.

The software work at big tech is absolutely different than software work at a random client of consulting companies. The fact that they both have a similar degree requirement is completely irrelevant.

-

There are so many more easily disprovable claims on this page. Conclusion: This is a propaganda website.

Hi HN! I'm the maker of Plotiq.

Right now the MVP focuses on the simplest workflow: upload a CSV → instantly generate a line chart.

I built it mainly for quick data exploration without opening heavy tools or writing code. The goal is to make visualizing CSV data as fast as possible.

Currently it only supports line charts and multiline charts, but I'm planning to add bar charts, scatter plots, better styling, and sharing options soon.

I'd love feedback: • What kind of charts would you want first? • What problems do you usually face when visualizing CSV data? • What more features would you like to have?

Thanks for taking a look!

Man, the MongoDB documentation looks different. I was getting into it a couple years ago, and I was so frustrated with it, like it would explain that something returns an error but not what the values could be, or the prototype would show it returned something but the documentation wouldn't say what, or parameters would be left unexplained, etc. Looks like it's all new and different now, which is probably a good thing.

Source: HN discussion

I sat in a coffee shop ~5 years ago, and sketched out what a lost-and-found system based on QR codes and QR code readers. My particular application was 'Non-verbal kid lost at mall, kindly smartphone user with QR reader scans (branded) QR code on kid's shirt to get parent's contact info', but I saw no reason why that couldn't work for any item large enough to have a QR code painted/sprayed/stapled on. I don't know why this doesn't exist yet.

Source: HN discussion

This is awesome! I love the idea and was actually discussing a couple months ago why this doesn't exist yet with current CC companies like AMEX or Visa.

All these all-in-one "supercards" coming out are cool, but this is beyond cool and serves a real purpose.

I imagine they'll add a sharing component to purchases eventually too. This way you just spin up a new credit card number that is split between a group of people (e.g.: at a dinner for the check) and set percentages for everyone. You no longer have to ask waiters to split bills, Venmo friends after, etc.

Source: HN discussion

I have trouble finding the "Programming Pearls" of various topics. For example, I'd like to find a book of similar quality and style that deals with networking, or distributed systems, or even non-technical subjects.

The problem: Amazon reviews are gamed, Goodreads is a popularity contest, and Google returns SEO-optimized "Top 10 Best Books" listicles that all recommend the same generic titles.

What I want is a community-curated, quality-filtered recommendation engine. Not "most popular" — the most insightful, the hidden gems, the one book that practitioners actually reference.

I notice a pattern where I'll discover something amazing by accident (like the Graphics Programming Black Book). Would be nice to just have a curated list of "the definitive resource" for each topic, maintained by practitioners.

A portal where small companies could apply for bespoke enterprise technical projects, without the hassle of bribing officials or writing 50-page tenders.

I run a 4-person dev shop. We're great at building custom software. But finding projects is painful — you either need connections (which we don't have) or you write these massive RFP responses that take 40 hours and have a 5% win rate.

What if there was a marketplace where enterprises post their technical needs ("we need a custom inventory management system") and small shops can apply with a portfolio and a quick proposal? Think Upwork but for $50k-$500k enterprise projects, with proper vetting on both sides.

The procurement process in most organizations is designed for large vendors. Small teams get filtered out by arbitrary requirements like "must have 50+ employees" or "must have $10M in revenue."

I am always struggling to find good educational games for kids. Something engaging enough that they actually want to play, but educational enough that I don't feel guilty about screen time.

My kid is 8 and the options are: cheap math drill apps with ads (terrible UX, no engagement), expensive subscription services that are 90% video and 10% interaction, or Minecraft (great for creativity but not really "educational").

What I want: a game that teaches real skills (math, reading, logic, coding basics) through genuinely fun gameplay — not "answer 10 math problems to unlock a sticker." I mean game-first, learning-embedded. Think Kerbal Space Program for physics, but for elementary school subjects.

The market is huge (every parent I know has this problem) but the products are all mediocre.

I want a universal messenger tool which integrates with all the messengers — WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, email — in a single unified inbox.

Every day I check 5 different apps to make sure I haven't missed a message. Some contacts only use WhatsApp, others Telegram, my parents email, my team uses Slack. The cognitive load of context-switching between apps is real.

I know some solutions exist (Beeper, Franz, Ferdi) but they're essentially browser wrappers that run each app in a separate tab. I want actual integration — one search across all messages, one notification system, unified contacts.

The hard part is that WhatsApp and Signal actively fight against third-party clients. But the demand is there.

Better automated webinar software. The existing solutions are good feature-wise but the UX is awful. This space needs serious innovation.

I've tried GoToWebinar, WebinarJam, EverWebinar, Demio — they all feel like they were designed in 2012 and never updated. The setup flow is 47 steps, the attendee experience is clunky, and the analytics dashboards look like they were built by someone who's never seen a modern SaaS product.

The worst part: automated/evergreen webinars (pre-recorded but delivered as if live) are the highest-converting sales tool for info products, but the tools to run them are so bad that people just use Zoom and record manually.

Someone who builds a clean, modern, Stripe-quality webinar platform would clean up.

I would pay for a way to manage my Google search results. I sometimes go to page 10, I make extra effort to avoid some websites, and I keep expanding my search words. If I search for something now and two minutes later refine the query, I don't want to see the results I already dismissed.

Either Google should have a way of not showing these results, or some kind of Chrome extension could remove/deprioritize them for me. Basically a "never show me this domain again" button that actually works across sessions.

The problem gets worse for niche technical queries where the same 5 SEO-optimized sites dominate every variation of the search.