Top 29 stories from Hacker News. Top 10 include comment highlights. Compiled at 20:10 UTC.
343 points by scrlk · 131 comments
What HN said:
Bengalilol: Switzerland's real-time map of trains and public transport (zoom in on a city to view its public transport in real time). You can find boats too. And if you check on/off the other options, you get way more informations. https://maps.trafimage.ch/ch.sbb.
jimnotgym: Cool app with some useful features. Here is my custom map of UK trains that are affordable https://www.map.signalbox.io/[email protected],-2.32537,4.... And here is my map of UK trains that aren't subsidised despite being 'private companies' https://www.map.signalbox.
AJRF: > Signalbox's technology identifies the train a device is on by matching a snapshot of smartphone data to a train’s trajectory data. The technology uses advanced algorithms works even with severely degraded data.
dan_sbl: Meanwhile, the sad state of intercity trains in the United States, outside of the Northeast Corridor. https://asm.transitdocs.com/ https://amtraker.com/map
312 points by dabluck · 179 comments
Building meaningful relationships with customers through support didn't turn out as I'd hoped
What HN said:
faangguyindia: >I’ve rarely gotten useful answers from support from services I use. I thought if I used my own product every day, read every email and answered it thoughtfully, people would appreciate this, and it would build some degree of loyalty and appreciation.
tlogan: The key point of the article is this: > In other words, the best approach for us is what most companies do. Every inexperienced entrepreneur starts with a promise that their support will not be terrible like Google, Comcast, or other big companies.
ikawe: I know this isn’t a very interesting comment, but just to provide some balance to the mostly negative comments I’m seeing: It’s interesting that you did the experiment, and I appreciate you sharing your results. It all seems reasonable, even if a bit depressing.
speak_plainly: Thinking about customer support as a ‘differentiator’ or a way to drive profit is depressing. You should simply strive to do what’s best for your customers. The sort of feedback you’re getting is golden and in the right hands can be put to use rather than be dismissed.
311 points by dijksterhuis · 260 comments
What HN said:
rockyj: This is a total mess IMHO. - The make around 5 billion in revenue per quarter - The problem according to them is profit margin - around 150-160 million So first of all, they are big! Secondly they are not at a loss. They just have a "thin, non-growing margin".
hbn: It was pretty rich seeing armchair video game industry analysts act like the new CEO was gonna usher in a new age for Microsoft's gaming division because she got to announce the updated logo and some games that would have obviously been in development long before she became CEO.
speak_plainly: At some point, the games industry decided it wanted to be interactive Hollywood, and the consequences are entirely predictable. Meanwhile, Nintendo just quietly shipped 3.8 million units of Tomodachi Life in two weeks, and 4 million of Pokopia in five.
athorax: It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio This is shockingly self-aware for microsoft
269 points by wolfadex · 123 comments
A delightful language with friendly error messages, great performance, small assets, and no runtime exceptions.
What HN said:
bbkane: I think of Elm more as an incredibly influential research language these days. It's very focused, there's no public roadmap or official support and the leadership (which is far as I can tell is just Evan) is uninterested in most (any?) community building or core team building.
auslegung: About two years ago I was experimenting with ChatGPT vibecoding a snake game in the browser in elm, because elm is my favorite language. It was rough going and I concluded at the time that LLM‘s might kill elm.
lambdas: Did the restrictions on JavaScript get resolved? IIRC, they made it so you had to use their “Ports” mechanism to interface with JavaScript, and you couldn’t write your own wrappers.
surprisetalk: I wrote a thing in 2023 about why I'm still using Elm: https://taylor.town/elm-2023 It's 2026, and I'm still using Elm for all the same reasons :) As an added bonus, Claude seems to play very very nicely with Elm: https://taylor.town/diggit-000
265 points by akyuu · 165 comments
Starting summer 2026, in preparation for upcoming changes in European battery regulations coming into effect in mid-February 2027, selected Nintendo products in Europe will begin to be replaced on a rolling basis by revisions that contain a user-r
What HN said:
mdrzn: "There is no difference in functionality between current products and revised products containing user-replaceable batteries." So there was nothing "limiting" them from making it already with user-replaceable batteries, they just didn't care enough until EU forced them (like all...
benoau: Amazes me they don't just sell it like that everywhere because it sounds a lot like a product improvement... > The revised products will be available on a rolling basis in territories where Nintendo of Europe conducts business, either directly or through a distributor, namely: Au...
Melatonic: I almost bought a Switch 2 but then remembered this was going into effect. Decided to push it off and keep using my still quite functional Switch 1 until I can get one. Why would anyone not want a user replaceable battery ? I also specifically ordered an electric toothbrush from...
Animats: The push for replaceable batteries is coming just as battery life is increasing.[1] We're already seeing that with electric cars. When solid-state batteries finally come out in volume, they should outlast the devices they go into.
215 points by LabsLucas · 155 comments
Welcome to LTT Labs - your go-to destination for all things tech. Explore comprehensive test results, insightful commentary, and the latest analysis in hardware.
What HN said:
lhl: The one thing that's new/worth pointing out are the https://developer.amd.com/playbooks/ (https://github.com/amd/playbooks) - this is AMD's answer to Nvidia's playbooks (https://build.nvidia.com/spark / https://github.
kamranjon: In case it saves anyone some time (from the article): "The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395(Strix Halo) processor has been available since Spring 2025 and the Halo doesn’t offer anything new on that front.
Tenoke: I really want a 128gb+ machine but it's brutal to be at only 256 GB/s for $4k (especially with the drawbacks of both ARM and AMD). I fear that by the time the RTX Spark comes out it'd have to be $6k, and by the time a 128gb or more machine with 700+ GB/s comes out it'd be at $10k...
Catloafdev: These devices were great when they were cheaper than the DGX Spark. But when they cost the same price (unless the Spark has shot up too), there's no reason to buy this over a Spark. The Spark is literally a faster version of this, with better software support.
198 points by yreg · 32 comments
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What HN said:
JangoSteve: As a software developer who spent nearly 10 years founding and building a genomic startup, this is a good start, but does have a lot of vast oversimplifications and a few inaccuracies.
maaaaattttt: This guide is also made from me (or some of the me from a couple years back). I haven't read the whole thing yet and it's probably clearly stated at some point (though one can deduce it with the beginning already) but the surprise for me was that this field is highly statistical...
yreg: This website was made by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. AFAIK they are a non-profit which doesn't bill patients for anything. This course was mentioned in a recent whoishiring thread. Sounds like it could be a purposeful place to work.
fabian2k: One part that people from the software side tend to underestimate is how fuzzy and analog everything in biology is. Genomics look more predictable and organized at first, but even these parts are quite fuzzy and subject to all kinds of physical effects.
196 points by firephox · 92 comments
What HN said:
kragen: I wasn't expecting to see Dernocua at the top of HN today with 53 comments. You can download Dernocua as a whole from http://canonical.org/~kragen/dernocua/ if you're interested. I'm happy to answer any questions. (Well, almost any.)
0-_-0: This made me wonder about a 3D printer alternative that builds things by folding a thin sheet of metal into arbitrary shapes instead of extruding filament.
delichon: I appreciated the paean to aluminum foil in Project Hail Mary where (spoilers) the hero uses it as bowling pins and to reproduce astrophage to eventually save two worlds. It's right up there in the pantheon of useful things with duct tape.
t1234s: This was on S01E01 of How It's Made. Probably one of the best segments in the shows history.
162 points by peter_d_sherman · 77 comments
What HN said:
PaulKeeble: They are working on an OpenWRT Two at the moment which will be Wifi 7. OpenWRT runs on a lot of hardware and its a great way to extend the life of a router past the manufacturers patches as well as gain a lot of capabilities.
aborsy: How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP? OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools.
baggachipz: Off topic, but what amuses me about the "Wrt" name is that it was originally alternate firmware for the Linksys WRT54G router from 25 years ago. The name has stuck for whatever reason; I guess since only geeks use it and know what it is.
kennywinker: $106usd or $84usd without a case and antennas. That’s a solid price. Wish it had more than 1gb ram - goddamn datacenters.
154 points by FelipeCortez · 34 comments
What HN said:
slifin: This is a case I never really thought about - if the key is missing today you'll get nil as the value and since Clojure is a nil punning language it usually does sensible behaviour in your program I know this sounds unreliable but in practise I like a language that defaults to pr...
hk__2: Some explanations from https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/CLJ-2961: > Clojure’s idiomatic use of maps has proven valuable, but missing required keys, misspelled keys, and invalid values can lead to failures that do not connect to the actual source of the problem (e.g.
moomin: This is actually great, and I predict that fans of nil-punning will rapidly discover the joys of actually having errors trigger where the error was introduced rather than propagating through the program. Any news on ClojureScript gaining the feature?
IceDane: Slowly but surely dynamic programming proponents discover the value of statically verifiable correctness. Who'd have thought?
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