srazzaque

Agree with what others have said: you need to try a few out. But I'd put Qwen3-14B on your list of things to try out.

Get the LLM to read and summarise N pages at a time, and store the outputs. Then, you concatenate those outputs into one "super summary" and use _that_ as context.

Theres some fidelity loss but it works for text, because there's quite often so much redundancy.

However, I'm not sure this technique could work on code.

This is impressive! Some interesting (and seemingly accurate) insights on my own behaviours :-)

Caveat: I didn't try this on desktop. On mobile (DDG Browser) I couldn't actually see any charts on the questions I asked. Whilst the display of the tables (dataframes?) is nice, my suspicion is a general user would prefer a graph or table _by default_. I needed to prompt specifically to get the workflow to output a graph for me.

I have been using Linux on "bare metal" for quite some time, as my primary operating system on the machines I've owned. When I've needed Windows, I've run it in a virtual machine. This has been my MO on my personal machines for over 10 years.

On my most recent machine however, I've opted to do this the other way around. I'm running Windows 11 Pro, running Linux on Hyper-V.

The experience has been.... Fine! I may actually prefer this setup (time will tell). Everything hardware related "just works". As per another thread on HN, Linux does seem to run very well virtualised compared to Windows. People will get riled up about needing an MS account. But I suppose that hasn't bothered me too much yet (who knows I may change my stance on this).

The reality is, messing around with drivers, the Linux wireless stack, display resolutions, firmware updates (ie the nuances of running Linux on a laptop) offers zero value to cloud workloads.

So I don't think running Linux directly on the hardware is an absolute necessity.

You can achieve similar levels of productivity and knowledge uplift if you: reserve Windows use for only things that require Windows (eg Ms office, and zoom meetings with a Bluetooth stack that won't drive you insane), and do EVERYTHING ELSE in your VMs.

Whilst it doesn't have the mindshare or some features which are tablestakes for enterprise customers, I've found Linode's pricing to be extremely predictable for small projects. Even post Akamai acquisition. I'm sure other smaller players are also just fine.

Couple that with the fact you can achieve quite a bit on simple set-ups that are adequately sized to begin with, you can save quite a bit.

Not all of us need elasticity, or environments being spun up/down on commit.

Makes sense!

What's the current best virtualisation software on Windows in your opinion?

I tried searching online for this. And quickly realised that highly ranked sites targeting Windows users are quite low quality.

> At home, I no longer dual-boot because I vm.

Curious, do you have a Windows host and Linux guest(s)? Or the other way around?

I currently have Linux as my primary with a Windows guest OS for when I need it (e.g. Office - I actually think Excel is great - or if I'm doing any Win32/C++ dev). But, I'm thinking of doing it the other way around on my next PC.

Interesting analysis.

I think it suffices to say that quite a bit of thought and justification would precede striking a hospital in all of these scenarios. I do hope that this level of thought and consideration is standard operating procedure in the retaliations right now. Mainly to restore some morcel of faith I have in humanity. But I, and those disconnected from internal Israeli military comms (ie most of us) can't be sure.

The political optics/rhetoric aside, the images that I see of wounded children are heartbreaking. The recounts I've read about what happened on October 7th are horrifying. If the stats are accurate, they are depressing as hell. This war has amassed almost a fifth of the total civilian death toll of the 20-year long US War in Afghanistan. In. One. Month.

Collectively I think we can agree that this needs to stop. I hope it stops. But given the track record of skirmishes and hostilities in the region, I'm losing faith.

If the statistics of civilian and children deaths are even 50% accurate, even if Israel succeeds in destroying Hamas, I fear the collateral damage and the cost of human life will just create a future generation of armed boys who all lost their parents in air strikeS in October 2023. They might just call themselves something different.

And so the cycle continues.

I know many people on both sides alike want peace. But it will take a truly superhuman person to walk across that border and say "I forgive you."

When that day comes, a person who's death would be mourned by both sides, we may have some hope.

Until such a day, stay safe. I'll go give my kids a hug now.

I'll preface this with the fact that I appreciate the opportunity for discourse without degenerating to our base/tribal/Neanderthal brains. And, also, a chance to converse with someone outside my own echo chambers. Most of my circle is non-Israeli, and non-Jewish.

> I'm literally running to a bomb shelter multiple times a day as rockets are fired at me

I'm sorry to hear this. This must be a terrible way to live, constantly in mortal fear of attacks from the other side. I will be the first to admit that I cannot relate to this, I've always lived in peaceful/stable environments (touch wood).

Can I pose a completely hypothetical counter-question, based on your own question with one variable changed: If it were somehow true that Hamas was firing rockets from _within Tel Aviv_ hospitals and/or using _Tel Aviv_ hospitals as a base of operations, would you consider it justified for the IDF to bomb that hospital?

+1

I've found that, for me anyway, one centered large monitor with enough real estate for your daily tasks is better than N smaller monitors. This is even if "total number of pixels" is larger on the N-monitor setup.

It's one less decision to make 1000 times a day (which monitor should this thing be on?), and reduces neck strain resulting from switching your focus between monitors.

I see your point, but comparing this with an off-line AV scanner with a regularly updated internal database (assuming that's what you meant) is not an apt comparison.

The analog would be an AV scanner that sends a list of your files/hashes to a centralised server somewhere, so that the company can target ads related to your file contents (or sell your data...), in addition to warning you about viruses.

Agreed that % true positive is not a factor in whether or not to have a given security feature. But it is merely convenient that the vast majority of the usage of this "link protection" feature would benefit Google/MS and not the customer/user (assuming that Google/MS are data mining, which is yet unproven in this use case).

Interesting, I wasn't aware Google had actually stated "we don't use this data for tracking, and we only use it for link protection" (does it?).

Assuming true: you are right in that it's basically no-win. The fact that Google draws so much revenue from advertising makes it difficult to reconcile.

Nothing short of a third-party code audit of Google's code against their asserted privacy policy would appease everyone. And even then, there would be doubters.

I'm pretty sure the stated intent of the redirect is to prevent phishing (that is, provide an opportunity for Google to warn users about visiting a known dodgy site). The ability to track is just an added bonus!

Microsoft does this too with Teams. Links that my colleagues and I share with one another to _internal company sites_ get link checked then redirected. Microsoft must have a treasure trove of data about external company employee browsing habits as a result.

I would have infinitely more respect for companies that are upfront about their intentions, no matter how nefarious: "we're doing this to help protect you from phishing. But also, 99% of links are probably not phishing. So this feature really enables us to collect data to track what you do, and perform analytics to improve our bottom line".

Why sugar-coat it?

To be clear: I'm not bashing Excel. Agree that there isn't a viable alternative for explorative table manipulation, and the experience of "think/change/see-results" is second to none. I myself use it for low-stakes tasks such as personal budgeting and quick analysis to validate my assumptions on tabular data.

Key word there is low-stakes. I think Excel gets a lot of heat because it's often found used in contexts where it's wholly inappropriate to use (eg driving critical production decisions from SalesAnalysis_JimVersion_v1.8_FINAL.xlsx). That's not really Excel's fault.

Yep, I've long conjectured that Excel is what sells MS office. Every other product in the Office suite, including PowerPoint, has very viable alternatives.

Excel has a 100% a strong-hold in most finance departments. I've worked with many finance professionals who's very first instinct for any type of work is to open Excel. When interacting with any data outside of Excel, they'll demand a way to get it into Excel.