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The LSD and sleeping pills were not in the original study I believe. That might be an artists representation of the image at the bottom of the original study, which I remember showed the results in a single row.

Plasma, meaning KDE.

I've been using the Kubuntu 26.04 prereleases for a few weeks. No surprises from KDE, but Wayland has broken a few things. Autotype in Keepass does not work, keynav and even the Wayland keynav forks don't work, and Wayland does not support priority keyboard layouts for switching between two specific layouts.


It's called plasma now :) KDE is the association, the desktop is plasma.

I still mostly use Xorg though, I only have wayland on a tablet.


It seems that KDE is fairly consistent in calling this “Plasma” and specifically, “Plasma Desktop”, but English Wikipedia insists on prefixing the names of their products with “KDE”. Especially Plasma 4, 5, and 6.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Plasma

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/

Is this, like, a “GNU/Linux controversy” thing?


"KDE Plasma" can be interpreted as "The KDE organization's Plasma" and probably saves on some article title consistency while avoiding the need to disambiguate the main Plasma article title with (Desktop Environment) or the like. Likely more trouble to try to change than it helps anything as a result.

It's really only calling it "KDE" in isolation that is a bit off. On the GNOME side, such a reference makes sense because the desktop environment is named GNOME and it's run by the GNOME Project/GNOME Foundation. I.e. a bit reversed which word in the order refers to the org's vs DE's name.

Most of the time people will probably figure it out at the end of the day via context either way though.


  > So everyone just prodded at hacks using trial and error instead of learning it.
And that is exactly why all those frameworks started appearing. It wasn't developer laziness. It was developer sanity.

Is this a non-sequiter or just poorly phrased?

  > Disk galaxies like the Milky Way form stars “inside-out” — starting from the center and working outwards through the disk. So, as a general rule, the farther out astronomers look, the younger the stars are.
Do they meant looking out from Earth (which is actually nearer to the center of a spiral arm than to either end) or out from the galactic bulge. Either way doesn't make sense.

To use an analogy, to add to everybody else: it's like rings on a tree stump. The innermost part of the stump is the oldest; the outer the youngest. Earth is on one of those in-between rings, neither the oldest nor the newest - doesn't matter which of the in-betweens, to be honest.

Suppose now that you're an ant on the middle ring of that tree stump. No matter which way you're looking from Earth's middle-ring, either the rings will get gradually older and then younger with increasing distance (if you're looking towards the center-ish), or the rings will get strictly younger (if you're looking away from the center-ish).

This analogy obviously breaks down if you delve into details but that should give a better intuition to what's going on.


When does "starting in the center" mean anything besides "starting in the center"?

The earth is not the center of the galaxy


He didn't say that. He said earth is nearer to the center of a spiral arm.

What does the center of a spiral arm have to do with the center of the galaxy?

I don't know but that's not what I'm talking about.

the location of earth has precisely zero to do with the topic

And your reply has zero to do with what I'm talking about.

The Earth is where the astronomers are. If they are looking outward (away from the center) then the further they look, the younger the stars.

I actually am not following what the ambiguity is - stars farther out from the center are younger, no?

The Earth isn't the center of the galaxy, so this feels confusing/confused:

> So, as a general rule, the farther out astronomers look, the younger the stars are.


The father out from the center of the galaxy they look, the younger the stars are.

The location of the Earth is completely irrelevant. "closer" and "farther" refer to the center of the galaxy.

Poorly phrased. The most recent stars are on the edges. The inner stars were first, hence the “working outwards”.

But why? Star forms when enough hydrogen (or maybe also helium) clusters together with gravity to spark fusion IIRC. The center of Milky way ain't some ultra dense place where stars are just trillions of kms from each other to support somehow earlier star formation.

Or did ie dark matter/energy somehow coalesce on the outer edge later? Milky way is supposed to be very old place, almost as old as universe itself so one would expect more homogeneous distribution, at least as a layperson.


You need certain density to start formation progress. Then you get more density as it drags more stuff via gravity from intergalactic void. So new stars form at edges when there is finally enough stuff pulled by gravity of whole galaxy to there for the formation to happen.

It seems that you need quite large concentrations(as in scale of whole universe average) to actually get to star formation. Otherwise stars would be uniform trough the universe.

Then again I am not astronomer.


> Then you get more density as it drags more stuff via gravity from intergalactic void.

The pre-stellar cloud has the same mass, and thus the same gravitational impact, as the stars that form from it.


They don't mean that the stars migrate out (then further stars would be older), they mean that stars further away from the center start forming later (so further stars are younger).

I agree that the phrasing can be confusing.


Looking from Earth at the stars closer to the center of a galaxy, they are found to be older. Looking from Earth at the stars closer to the edge of a galaxy, they are found to be younger.

Try: "the farther out [from the center] astronomers look"

Earth isn't relevant. The stars at the center of the galaxy developed first, and development proceeded from the inside out, so the youngest stars are on the edge ... then they get older from there on out, as the stars beyond the edge broke away from the galaxy. The bottom of the age U is the location of the formative edge.

From Earth (where astronomers are) looking "out"ward (away from the bulge).

It is beyond obvious what they mean.

My personal website has been up for over two and a half decades. I've paid for hosting and for the domain name. Never had an ad on the site.

So do you expect everyone else to not earn an income from their website if they so choose?

> Never had an ad on the site.

You know there are other ways of people making money without doing ads right?


  > So do you expect everyone else to not earn an income from their website if they so choose?
No. I expect the fact that a website _can_ be run without ads to become reasonably well known. Not that a website _must_ be run without ads.

> You know there are other ways of people making money without doing ads right?

Yes, of course. And as per the conversion, there was no need to mention that obvious fact.


  > exactly 0% of people I have spoken to where it's come up in conversation care at all about privacy or surveillance in general with the old "nothing to hide" fallacy.
But they do have something to hide.

Are they going to the toilet more often this week? Are they booking a flight for a funeral? Do they watch midget porn? Are they interested in science experiments that go boom? Did they just get a promotion at work? Did their car just fail the yearly inspection? Are they going on vacation and leaving the house empty for a week? Does their child have ADHD? Did their catalytic converter just get stolen? Is their phone model no longer receiving security updates? Is their child bullied at school? Did they have an abortion? Are they contemplating bankruptcy? Did they just start using a CPAP machine? Did they vote for an independent candidate? Do they listen to the local mosque's podcast? Do they smoke? Are they closet homosexual? Are they being sued? Did their dog just suffer liver failure? Did they put their teenage daughter's child up for adoption?

These are all things that your phone knows about you, which could lead to negative consequences if exposed - ranging from embarrasment to blackmail, higher prices to actual denial of services, scrutiny to arrest. Everyone has something to hide.


As it should be - the browser is termed a "user agent" for a reason. There should be browser settings for preferred dark (and light) colour schemes.

Actually - there are to a very small extent. But they are near useless, defining only the colours of uncoloured elements.


Most of what you've stated is relevant to Qatar, not UAE. I think that you've got the two confused.

Are you referring to the loudness wars?

  > carefully putting the needle on the lead in and hearing the subtle pops and scratches
Led Zeppelin III actually used that lead in as part of the music experience, and the original CD pressing didn't capture it. I've heard CD pressings (even the name remains from vinyl) that do capture it, I don't know when that started.

> CD pressings (even the name remains from vinyl)

The name comes from the CDs being manufactured by pressing into a master mold to create the pits. Replicated (mass manufactured) audio CDs are pressed not written with a laser like duplicated ones (CD-R/RW).


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