1. Looking back at my transition from Windows to Linux in an anti-customer age
Total comment counts : 2
Summary
An IT professional recounts his switch from Windows to Linux, driven by Windows 11 policies and a broader shift to subscription software. After years of attempted Linux use, he now runs entirely on Linux for two years, despite persistent pain points, and questions continuing support for Windows. He cites OneDrive data moves, hostile design, and a feudal trend as reasons to reclaim ownership and control. He connects digital rights campaigns—EU Digital Markets Act, StopKillingGames, Right to Repair—with personal freedom, noting it requires effort, discipline, and small acts of insurrection.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author describes switching to Linux for similar reasons as others, after years of considering it and briefly returning to Windows a decade ago. They were motivated by the problems with Windows 10/11, and note that Linux’s desktop experience has slowly improved. They hope Linux becomes a viable option for average nontechnical users and criticize mainstream for-profit software vendors as increasingly harmful.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author suggests that even with a clean slate, their SMB might switch to Linux, but the main barrier is user software—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and browsers. Moving away from Windows would alienate users in cross-company collaborations. Essentially, the real battle isn’t the OS but Microsoft Office.
2. Show HN: My first game made with my homemade engine
Total comment counts : 16
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
Questioning whether this is a game or a tech demo, the poster notes starting with a single inventory item that can’t be used beyond the first room and little interactivity in the second beyond a cupboard door. They wonder if a larger scope is hidden. Still, they praise the art’s moody, old‑school point-and-click vibe and, recalling Zak McKraken, would buy a horror-themed version.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The piece offers a humorous audio warning about loud sounds, noting a screaming goat that nearly blew the listener’s ears.
3. The two versions of Parquet
Total comment counts : 2
Summary
Jerónimo argues that Parquet’s evolution is slowed by incomplete support from engines and tooling. Although Parquet Version 2 is finalized, core ecosystems (including Java libraries and Pandas) don’t fully implement or enable it, with four years of unresolved debate about what constitutes core features. The post distinguishes encoding improvements from page-structure changes, notes separate handling of new logical types, and mentions niche formats like Nimble and LV2 for ML. Parquet remains dominant, and Version 2 can boost write/read performance, but adoption is still slow.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The piece argues that vendor risk and support certainty drive governments and enterprises to Oracle and SQL Server despite open source. While rollback is possible, unplanned data outages threaten careers without vendor-approved CYA confirmations, prompting costly licensing from Oracle for similar open-source functions. The author credits Linux, led by Linus Torvalds, with resolving these risk issues and displacing commercial UNIX systems.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Back in the 2010s, Python users couldn’t reliably leverage Parquet because Pyarrow and Fastparquet weren’t compatible with each other or with Spark. Parquet support was effectively fragmented: you could only use advanced features when all expected platforms and tools agreed on compatibility, much like how JavaScript features depend on uniform browser support.
4. Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs
Total comment counts : 13
Summary
An Argentine software engineer, after 15 years, built and published Truco, a card game, in three months using a Go backend and React frontend, hosting without paid servers. A year later it remains popular. He also used Claude to convert Escoba rules into code, with only minor bugs. He shares starter stacks (Tic-Tac-Toe back/frontend) and explains building turn-based games with Go-to-WASM via TinyGo, JSON-based GameState, and a workflow to recompile WASM when the backend changes. He invites others to try making their own games.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The piece argues that coding isn’t the real bottleneck in game dev; a solo creator can implement mechanics quickly, with or without AI. The real challenge lies in invisible layers: balancing, tuning difficulty, asset quality, and overall polish to retain players beyond a few minutes. Despite AI-assisted coding and art, we aren’t seeing a flood of great Steam games—the walls lower, but new difficulties remain, like Unity’s democratization that didn’t spawn a sea of hits. The author speculates AI could eventually playtest and iterate designs, turning AI from a productivity hack into a design collaborator—an early data point toward that future.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The LLM gained a three-month head start by using the previous game’s code as a template and by incorporating the lessons and mistakes from the hand-coded pass.
5. Trees on city streets cope with drought by drinking from leaky pipes
Total comment counts : 9
Summary
Montreal street trees survive drought better than park trees because they drink from leaky city pipes. Researchers Poirier and colleagues analyzed Norway maple and silver maple trees in parks and streets across two neighborhoods, using lead isotopes in trunk rings to trace water sources. Park trees showed isotopes from air pollution; street trees showed isotopes from lead pipes linked to old mine deposits. Maples need about 50 liters of water per day, while the city leaks around 500 million liters daily. Rainwater largely drains away on streets, making pipes the critical water source. Street planting remains viable.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The city loses about 25–30% of potable water to leaks. A drought this summer stressed young street and park trees, while large old trees remained lush. The author suspects the dilapidated water system delivers more water to the ground around big trees, helping them survive. A study later confirms this amateur observation.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The piece discusses nominative determinism and highlights researcher André Poirier, whose surname means “pear tree” as an illustrative example.
6. Comet AI browser can get prompt injected from any site, drain your bank account
Total comment counts : 25
Summary
This message warns that JavaScript is disabled and asks you to enable it or switch to a supported browser to continue using X.com. It also points to the Help Center for a list of compatible browsers and provides links to Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, Imprint, and Ads info. © 2025 X Corp.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article warns that letting LLMs operate in a browser with cross-tab data access is dangerously powerful, and it’s unsafe that major providers haven’t released the same feature, instead using locked-down VMs with no cookies. LLMs in-browser represent a potential “lethal trifecta.” It notes Brave’s exploit discussion and argues the core risk isn’t addressed, that relying on model alignment alone is insufficient. The only mitigation mentioned is privilege dropping, but that doesn’t prevent data leaks via image URLs or emails.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The piece argues that after decades of securing network layers (even DNS), many systems now expose secrets via a plaintext API. It notes hypocrisy in public outrage over Microsoft screenshots while ignoring this security risk.
7. Show HN: Clearcam – Add AI object detection to your IP CCTV cameras
Total comment counts : 13
Summary
Summary: The article says feedback is read and considered, with documentation for available qualifiers. It promotes adding object detection, tracking, and mobile notifications to any RTSP camera or iPhone. Android sign-ups are not yet supported; users should follow iOS signup instructions and use the iOS user ID on Android. It includes links to the ClearCam iOS app and a related status tweet, and notes page-loading errors: “There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.”
Top 1 Comment Summary
A brief note encouraging readers to check out Frigate, with a link to its GitHub repository (blakeblackshear/frigate).
Top 2 Comment Summary
The piece states the app is free to download from Apple’s site and runs for free; it’s open source but includes in-app purchases that unlock certain features. It asks what the paid features and costs are, and whether installation is required to view the price list. It also suggests providing more upfront information to get better responses on Hacker News.
8. Cloudflare incident on August 21, 2025
Total comment counts : 8
Summary
On August 21, 2025, a single customer’s traffic surge saturated Cloudflare’s peering links with AWS us-east-1, causing high latency, packet loss, and origin fetch failures for Cloudflare customers relying on AWS us-east-1. Impact began 16:27 UTC and largely eased by 19:38 UTC, with intermittent latency until 20:18 UTC. The regional issue stemmed from network congestion, not an attack. Contributing factors included AWS withdrawing BGP prefixes from congested paths and a near-capacity DCI, plus a half-capacity direct link. Cloudflare and AWS coordinated to restore services by 20:18 UTC.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Per-customer resource budgeting would allocate bandwidth to individual users, enforcing a budget so excess traffic cannot degrade others on the platform. Practically, this raises questions: if a client overflows edge-router queues, you still must identify the client to drop its packets. A proposed approach is shuffle sharding, where a client spans multiple IP prefixes; if misbehavior occurs, the affected prefixes are withdrawn via BGP to effectively blackhole the client’s routes. When done correctly, only the misbehaving client experiences disruption, while other users on the same prefixes are isolated.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Ultimately, it will be revealed that the spike came from one person on a single machine running “pnpm install” on a fast 100 Gbps uplink.
9. NASA’s Juno mission leaves legacy of science at Jupiter
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
NASA’s Juno spacecraft, launched to study Jupiter and the solar system’s origins, has far outlived its expected life, enduring brutal radiation while circling the giant. Its extended mission ends in September 2025 (potentially another extension). Juno revealed a Jupiter unlike the one imagined: continent-sized storms around the poles, a heavy atmospheric layer that lingers, and an interior that looks less like layered lasagna and more like mingled inks. It probed beneath the clouds to understand planet formation after the Sun, reshaping planetary science and forcing theorists to rethink Jupiter and the solar system’s birth.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article highlights how the camera captures incredibly beautiful images and directs readers to NASA’s Junocam image gallery for more pictures.
Top 2 Comment Summary
I can’t access content from that link. Please paste the article text or its key points (or upload a few paragraphs). If you share the main ideas or a portion of the article, I’ll summarize it in 100 words or fewer.
10. Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
In the United States, the drug is acetaminophen and is the active ingredient in Tylenol and other over-the-counter medicines.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author expresses an uneasy dislike for paracetamol/Tylenol after learning it’s the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, noting how frightening liver failure can be. They also provide a link to a Wikipedia article on paracetamol poisoning for more information.