An SVG is all you need
SVGs are pretty cool – vector graphics in a simple XML format. They are supported on just about every device and platform, are crisp on every display, and can have embedded scripts in to make them interactive. They’re way more capable than many people realise, and I think we can capitalise on some of that […]
We built a resource hub to fight back against age verification
Age verification laws are proliferating fast across the United States and around the world, creating a dangerous and confusing tangle of rules about what we’re all allowed to see and do online. Though these mandates claim to protect children, in practice they create harmful censorship and surveillance regimes that put everyone—adults and young people alike—at risk. […]
Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1
We are building a comprehensive archive and analysis project examining published documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Our methodology involves systematically reviewing each available document with particular attention to small details and information that has received little or no public attention since the initial 2013 disclosures. Throughout this process, we will publish posts highlighting interesting previously […]
Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free
RJ opened the first ever Autonomy and AI Day explaining why Rivian believes it is positioned to lead in this next phase of the industry. The company is leaning hard into compute, custom hardware, large scale AI systems, and a shared data foundation that touches every part of the ownership experience. Let’s break it all […]
Litestream VFS
Image by Annie Ruygt I’m Ben Johnson, and I work on Litestream at Fly.io. Litestream is the missing backup/restore system for SQLite. It’s free, open-source software that should run anywhere, and you can read more about it here. Again with the sandwiches: assume we’ve got a SQLite database of sandwich ratings, and we’ve backed it […]
Things I want to say to my boss
I’m sitting down to write this in a gap between jobs. The downtime is strange, like the world has stopped moving but my thoughts haven’t caught up. Other than replaying the shit that went down during the last six months – or to put it more bluntly, the reasons I left, I don’t quite know […]
Deprecate Like You Mean It
Seth Larson noticed that people don’t act on deprecation warnings. The response.getheader method in urllib has been deprecated since 2023 because the response.headers dictionary is what should be used instead. When the method was eventually removed, lots of code broke. Deprecation warnings try to solve the fat step function associated with backwards-incompatible api changes, by […]
iPhone Typos? It’s Not Just You – The iOS Keyboard Is Broken [video]
Launch HN: BrowserBook (YC F24) – IDE for deterministic browser automation
Hey HN! We’re Chris, Jorrie, and Evan of BrowserBook, an IDE for writing and debugging Playwright-based web automations. You can download it as a Mac app here: https://browserbook.com, and there’s a demo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODGJBCNqGUI. Why we built this: When we were going through YC, we were a company that automated back-office healthcare workflows. Since […]
An Orbital House of Cards: Frequent Megaconstellation Close Conjunctions
Abstract:The number of objects in orbit is rapidly increasing, primarily driven by the launch of megaconstellations, an approach to satellite constellation design that involves large numbers of satellites paired with their rapid launch and disposal. While satellites provide many benefits to society, their use comes with challenges, including the growth of space debris, collisions, ground […]