Hacker News
1Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceasing operations
- The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced its closure after losing federal funding. The organization, which has supported public media for nearly 60 years, will wind down operations by September 2025, with a small team remaining until January 2026 to manage the transition and financial obligations.
Impact on local stations
Rural PBS/NPR stations rely heavily on CPB funding (up to 50% of budget) and many will likely shut down, while urban stations with strong donor bases will survive. This widens the urban-rural divide in public media access.CPB's role and structure
CPB primarily distributes congressional funding through grants rather than creating content directly. Programs like NOVA and Frontline receive funding through this system but are produced independently.Educational value
PBS/NPR provide trusted educational content, especially children's programming, with minimal bias and no commercial influence. Critics argue there is some political bias, but supporters value the educational mission.
2The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong
- The article challenges antitrust critics' claims about housing market monopolies, particularly focusing on Dallas, Texas. Through interviews with experts and data analysis, it reveals that large homebuilders aren't restricting supply or abusing market power as alleged, and arguments from antitrust advocates often misrepresent or misapply research findings.
Journalism quality
Discussion of how basic investigative reporting and fact-checking are becoming rare, replaced by opinion pieces and analysis. Decline attributed to changing economics of journalism and loss of local reporting institutions.Housing regulation
Debate over whether excessive regulation and zoning restrictions are the primary cause of housing shortages and high costs, versus other factors like wealth inequality, corporate consolidation, or investment patterns.Wealth inequality
Arguments about whether concentrated wealth and investment properties drive housing unaffordability, or if supply restrictions are the root cause. Discussion of whether increased supply alone can solve affordability issues.
3MacBook Pro Insomnia
- A user encountered battery drain issues on their MacBook Pro M1 Max during overnight idle periods. After investigating power management logs and trying various solutions, they discovered that enabling the "Wake for maintenance" option in the Sleep Aid app resolved the battery drain problem during sleep.
Sleep prevention by apps
Discussion about how various apps can prevent Macs from sleeping, with users discovering this through Activity Monitor's Energy tab. Debate about whether apps should have this power and calls for better system alerts.Wake for maintenance settings
Confusion and discussion around MacOS's "Wake for maintenance" setting, with users trying to understand why enabling it counter-intuitively leads to fewer wake events by batching maintenance tasks.Sleep/battery solutions
Users sharing various technical solutions to prevent battery drain, including setting hibernate mode, disabling Find My, turning off WiFi/Bluetooth, and discussion of how these affect different Mac models.
4Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
- Austria's opposition to chatcontrol was mainly about leadership, not the policy itself. Interior Minister Karner, known for opposing German authority, advocates for an Austrian-controlled version. The ÖVP government, influenced by Kurz and Thiel, continues to expand surveillance measures.
Difficulty fighting surveillance laws
Discussion of how hard it is for citizens to oppose surveillance laws vs organized lobbying, with diffuse costs affecting many people slightly while concentrated benefits motivate powerful interests to push legislation throughGovernment surveillance expansion
Concerns about global pivot toward surveillance states, particularly in EU/Western nations. Discussion of China's influence, erosion of privacy rights, and how surveillance proposals keep returning until passedActivism website criticism
Critiques of chatcontrol.eu website's poor usability and lack of clear calls-to-action, making it difficult for people to effectively oppose the legislation despite claiming to be an activism platform
5Live coding interviews measure stress, not coding skills
- Live coding interviews can be challenging due to stress, which impairs cognitive function and working memory. Research shows that being watched during coding significantly reduces performance, particularly affecting women. While some companies value stress resilience, live coding often fails to accurately measure engineering skills.
Live coding effectiveness
Debate over whether live coding interviews effectively measure programming skill vs stress handling. Many argue it filters out good candidates who perform poorly under pressure, while others say it's necessary to verify basic coding ability.Alternative approaches
Discussion of different interview methods like take-home projects, paid trial work, and testing actual job skills. Challenges include avoiding unpaid labor, ensuring fairness, and maintaining hiring efficiency at scale.Interview stress impact
Personal accounts of how interview stress affects performance, particularly for experienced developers with family obligations. Many report being able to solve problems easily after interviews but freezing during them.
6Gemini 2.5 Deep Think
- Google is rolling out Deep Think in the Gemini app for Ultra subscribers, featuring advanced problem-solving capabilities through parallel thinking techniques. The technology can handle complex tasks in coding, science, and math, achieving gold-medal standards in mathematical competitions and offering extended reasoning capabilities.
Deep think model performance
Users discuss Deep Think's rate limits, pricing, and performance compared to other models. Mixed feedback on value vs competitors, with some finding the 5 prompts/day limit restrictive at $250/month. Parallel reasoning approach noted as key feature.Technical implementation approaches
Discussion of how to implement similar parallel reasoning systems locally using LLM CLI tools and model consortiums. Debate about effectiveness of running multiple models vs single model with different parameters.Pricing and limits
Analysis of subscription pricing across AI providers (OpenAI $200, Anthropic $100-200, Gemini $250, Grok $300). Criticism of companies not being transparent about usage limits and debate about fair pricing models.
7Ubiquiti launches UniFi OS Server for self-hosting
- Ubiquiti has released UniFi OS Server in Early Access, enabling users to self-host the complete UniFi network stack on their own hardware. The server supports UniFi Network, Innerspace, and UniFi Identity, with detailed installation instructions for both Windows and Linux systems, offering features like cloud backup and remote management when linked to a Ubiquiti account.
Unifi experience
Mixed experiences with Ubiquiti's Unifi products - some praise reliability and integration, while others cite issues with firmware, VLANs, and post-power-outage recovery. Generally good for basic setups but can be problematic for advanced use cases.Self hosting evolution
Discussion of Unifi's journey from self-hosted controller to cloud options and back. Users clarify that self-hosting never went away but new OS server potentially enables hosting more components of the ecosystem locally.Software quality concerns
Debate about Ubiquiti's software quality, with users reporting UI bugs, configuration issues, and questionable QA. Some defend the platform as sufficient for most use cases while others have switched to alternative solutions.
8Releasing weights for FLUX.1 Krea
- Black Forest Labs and collaborators have released Krea 1, an open image model designed to address the "AI look" in generated images. The model focuses on superior aesthetic control and photorealism while maintaining compatibility with FLUX.1-dev ecosystem. Their approach combines technical capabilities with artistic aesthetics to create more natural-looking AI-generated images.
Technical details
Discussion of model size, parameter counts, and file formats, focusing on the 23.8GB safetensor file size and relationship between parameters and VRAM usage. Includes explanations of different numerical formats like bfloat16.Business model
Exchange about why Krea open-sourced their model, with focus on recruiting talent and fostering community engagement. Includes discussion of practical use cases like food photography and marketing assets.Model performance
Discussion of model's strengths and limitations, particularly around aesthetics vs prompt adherence, photorealism, and specific generation challenges like handling octopus hands in creative prompts.
9AI is a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser
- The article discusses how AI is reshaping the learning curve by providing personalized learning experiences that meet users at their skill level. While AI makes learning basics easier, mastery remains challenging due to data limitations. The impact varies across fields - helpful for basic coding but less useful for complex projects, minimal impact on established apps, and unlikely to revolutionize creative work.
Inequality and AI access
Discussion of how AI may increase inequality by benefiting skilled users more, with evidence from studies showing higher performers gain more advantage while lower performers see minimal or negative impactPrototyping vs engineering
Debate around AI being better suited for rapid prototyping and initial development versus engineering production systems that require deeper expertise and consideration of edge casesAI limitations and errors
Analysis of AI's current limitations in complex tasks, tendency to make confident but incorrect statements, and need for user awareness to identify errors, using chess playing as a key example
10I tried Servo
- The article discusses how Google Chrome dominates the browser market, with most competitors using Chromium code. It explores Servo, a new web rendering engine developed in Rust, as a potential alternative to Chrome's dominance, and touches on Mozilla's past involvement with Servo before abandoning it to the Linux Foundation.
Mozilla's decline
Discussion of Mozilla's shift away from Servo/Firefox development, their reliance on Google funding, and criticism of leadership decisions that led to abandoning promising technical innovationsAlternative browser engines
Debate about viability of new browser engines like Ladybird and Servo challenging Chrome's dominance, with focus on technical approaches, funding models and ability to gain adoptionTechnical implementation
Discussion of Servo's modular approach using Rust libraries like Taffy, CSS Grid implementation details, and how browser engine development experience affects frontend development practices