Hacker News Reader

the__alchemiston Uranium cubes reveal why the German nuclear project failed

Holy shit this is out? I went to the book tour for Polostan. Ordered; ty!

the__alchemiston Microsoft Researcher John Langford Exits. AI Frontiers Group Declared Finished

I have been shorting most of the Quantum Computing startups for about a year. They have been printing. Missed out on Fusion! (?) These were one of few examples of the market leaving money on the table. Others examples have been Nikola. Usually the scammyiest companies don't IPO.

the__alchemiston Rune: A native GPU-rendered Rust UI framework for macOS, Windows, Linux and web

This checks out. My leading mental model to explain this mismatch is that the critique has been from people who are expecting Mac idioms, which I can't speak to. Window and Linux GUI look/feel are fragmented as-is.

the__alchemiston Every Windows 11 app should kill Electron, and Discord just showed why

I have seen this assumption in recent GUI threads here (More so your upper post): Building a PC application is not equivalent to building a web browser. A web browser is a type of PC application built for a specific (But very broad!) use. I didn't think I would need to write this statement/distinction, but I have here. Web languages, culture, and syntax have not been a value add to PC application development. Electron is the clearest example why. My model is that is the value add of Electron: Appealing to web devs through language and culture.

Regarding "not doing what you can do with HTML/CSS/JS". Doubt. I varied and complex stuff and have never felt I needed to overload document rendering langs for this.

I will go a step further: I don't think Electron is a symptom of HTML/CSS/JS: I suspect it's more from the Node + Framework culture.

the__alchemiston Every Windows 11 app should kill Electron, and Discord just showed why

Are you a web dev?

the__alchemiston Every Windows 11 app should kill Electron, and Discord just showed why

Tauri's value prop over EGUI and GPUI is that its syntax is familiar to web devs.

the__alchemiston Rune: A native GPU-rendered Rust UI framework for macOS, Windows, Linux and web

Could you please explain why? For example: Is it colors? A je-ne-sais-quoi? Widget rounding size and fonts? Performance reasons? Keyboard shortcuts? Do you really find it's easier to maintain 3 separate frontends using an LLM than using EGUI, GPUI, QT etc?

I have seen this suggestion several times recently regarding GUI framework threads on HN in the past week (There has been a surge!), but they are always described in the way you did: With no explanation of why. Just an assertion that native UI kits (of which you need a separate one for each OS family) are superior; cross-platform kids are an "inferior experience" etc. I have asked at 3 times and received no answer. I say this as someone who uses both Windows and Linux regularly, and find they are functionally equivalent once you have an application launched. There are ABI differences, driver differences, file system differences, etc which need to be smoothed over with feature gates for certain application functionality, if you're using certain functionality.

I want my applications to have the required functionality, run fast, and have a good UI. I don't care if the widgets look the same as on my other applications or the ones built in to the OS; this isn't even a thing because there is so little standardization broadly. Maybe on Macs it's standardized and cross-platform kits look out of place?

The proposed approach of "Use LLMs to vibe-code a system of 3 native kits" has cons to weigh. Or making your program Windows only or w/e for a look-and-feel reason or whatever it is has cons too. IMO all our OSes are so similar, PC software should almost all be cross-platform. Exceptions are mostly drivers and driver-adjacent code.

the__alchemiston Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.1T

Great insights! And I'm kicking myself for not buying a 4090 3 years ago for $1600, shipped direct from nvidia... it seemed like too much to pay for a GPU at the time!

the__alchemiston Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.1T

Of interest:

  - 4090: Going for $7500
  - 64GB M5 Max: Starts at $3,800
  - R9700: $2700

Compared to $20 or $100 per month. My thought process reading this thread:

Baseline of $20 or $100/month Claude or OpenAI subscriptions. Alternative posed of running models locally. A guy says he did it and results are lackluster on a 12GB video card. A number of people post that that card is insufficient; use 32GB+ cards. I look up prices of 32GB cards, and they are all very expensive. So from a practical perspective, people are suggesting you spend thousands of dollars on a video card to get results that are almost as good as the subscription plan they are on. It doesn't add up, unless one of my assumptions is incorrect.

the__alchemiston Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.1T

> 128-256GB unified memory systems running MOE models is the "cheap"

I'm not familiar with these. How much does one cost, and from what store / what product name?

the__alchemiston Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.1T

Great point. And, 3 years ago, a 4090 cost $1600, so maybe that will happen again some day. (Same/similar card, or a future card. I remember when GPUs used to get better every few years instead of staying roughly the same but costing several times the original amount!)

the__alchemiston Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.1T

What graphics cards have more than 12GB, and how much does it cost to buy one? What about for others saying you ideally want 32GB? (That split will determine if a 5080 will do it)

the__alchemiston Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.1T

Given we're discussing a cost comparison (i.e. cutting a Claude subscription in lieu of running locally), how many months of claude $100 or $20/month plans would it cost to buy a 5090? I am showing it as 88 and 440 respectively. I.e. a 7 and 36 year payoff. Not even close to being worth it.

the__alchemiston Anthropic IPO buyers see valuation as low as $1.1T

That is a shift of comparisons though, right? This thread was about running locally, explicitly as an alternative to cloud services. I would guess few people have graphics cards with > 12GB ram.

the__alchemiston Rune: A native GPU-rendered Rust UI framework for macOS, Windows, Linux and web

You're not kidding - that README is not readable.

the__alchemiston Rune: A native GPU-rendered Rust UI framework for macOS, Windows, Linux and web

Broadly: In what circumstances, use cases, preferences etc would I use this instead of EGUI or GPUI?

The double-edged sword of choice!

the__alchemiston Blender's UI and Runtime: Much Faster Than GPUI

Most software is not GPL. When comparing this to alternatives like EGUI and GPUI for building a new app, this cannot be considered, while the others can.

GPL makes sense for applications like Blender. For a general purpose library, it's a dealbreaker.

the__alchemiston Blender's UI and Runtime: Much Faster Than GPUI

Missed this - this is a deal breaker for many (most?) potential applications. GPL is fine for applications like Blender, but is limiting for libs.

the__alchemiston Blender's UI and Runtime: Much Faster Than GPUI

I'm excited, and will try this! Its provenance speaks loads, as Blender is a beacon of software design, open-source or otherwise.

I'm an EGUI fanboy, but am looking to truly compare it to other things, especially non-immediate mode. I have no gripes with EGUI, other than it seems to create an application size floor, and I suspect memory use could be better. It has never blocked me, including for complex applications with GPU rendering etc.

Blender is peak OSS. I'm in! Will give this a shot for my next limited-scope application. I'm also experimenting with GPUUI.

I will try Slint if I ever do embedded with a full GUI.

I will poke at this, because I saw the same sentiment in a HN thread yesterday: >" You write Rust or React and want a native desktop UI without shipping a browser." You don't need to ship a browser to do GUIs in rust. Some people do, and justify it through comparisons to Electron (Tauri) - I suspect this is a pushback against that?

Another thing I will poke at from comments: If you're going to dismiss this as a non-native UI and therefor inferior: Post specifically what features your OS-native toolkit or OS conventions have that won't work here. (Is it hotkeys, color scheme, a Je-ne-sais quoi? What OS specifically? My pet theory is these are all MacOS users, but I'm not sure)

the__alchemiston Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM

https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/38109

Opened a year ago. Still comments this week.

the__alchemiston Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM

This is one angle. I do not see it as a deal breaker in the way you phrase it. I suppose we all have our own. If everyone's had to be satisfied, we'd have no software!

I think in the specific case of Discord, I.e. from a big company, I agree they should handle this properly. As a broader standard, I am not as concerned.

the__alchemiston Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM

Could you please explain why? In the context of a PC application. What OS-specific features do you think should be included (keyboard shortcuts?) that can't be copmile-time feature-gated by OS? I would guess the vast majority of functionality is not OS-specific, between Windows, Linux, and Mac.

the__alchemiston Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM

What you posted doesn't match my experience, so I curious how you arrived at the conclusion that building a GUI application is like building a web browser, and why the abstraction layers you described are necessary as a baseline. I am asking you to post links to the rust GUI applications you've built where you ran into this.

the__alchemiston Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM

Could you please link to some GUI applications you've built in rust, and/or describe why you added those abstractions and built a browser? This doesn't match my experience.

the__alchemiston Discord is ditching Electron and its new app uses less RAM

I had trouble reading more than the opening volley of the article due to popups. Am a Discord user, and rust application programmer: What GUI framework are they using? EGUI? GPUI? Something custom?

GPUI from comments? I meant to try GPUI, but backed off after an announcement pending its maintenance would be in question (?) a few months ago, and Zed broadly ending up being a false messiah, for my uses. (Not on the tier of JetBrains IDEs, a bug with a long thread they closed which (still I believe?) causes it to open cached versions of files, then clobber edits made since the cache, e.g. by other programs. I.e. the sort of bug which renders software too dangerous to use. I will not switch to a GUI framework from a group that ignores bugs of that severity reported by many people)

the__alchemiston Verification Is Not Knowledge: Science needs more than answers

> thanks to his invention of Calculus

Nonsense! It was pilfered.

the__alchemiston Microsoft fixes a Windows 11 annoyance as PC revenue declines

Sorry - I think you're right. I had a hard time telling with several of the early comments in this thread. (The new ones are more serious) What's that rule about it being tough to tell on the internet?

the__alchemiston Microsoft fixes a Windows 11 annoyance as PC revenue declines

This is a broad generalization, and inconsistent with my experience. Especially notable as Linux refers to a diverse family of operating systems.

the__alchemiston How I use AI (Oct 2026)

I still don't know. Use Claude and OpenAI all the time, but still manually code, esp regard to setting up modules and data structures.

the__alchemiston Supermarket freezers across Europe hit by second suspected cyber-attack

Yo I'm not a bot (Is that what a bot would say?) Flattered someboty on reddit copied this?