Python’s pre-declared constants are kinda weird
python has 6 pre-declared “constants”: True, False, None, __debug__, Ellipsis (or equivalently …), and NotImplemented. but they all behave slightly differently, for some reason. True, False, and None True, False, and None are keywords. they aren’t identifiers, they’re just straight up their own lexical tokens. which is really weird; nothing else is like this in […]
When str.lower() is a security vulnerability in Python – Seth Larson
Seth Larson @ 2026-08-18 Some internet standards only support ASCII characters, but the world uses much more than the Latin alphabet. Thus, a mapping from Unicode to ASCII for use in domain names is required. NamePrep was part of that solution, defined in RFC 3491 as a profile of StringPrep, and is crucially a component […]
C2PA Cameras Do Not Survive Contact with Reality
By David Buchanan (aka retr0id), 25th August 2026 You might have heard that C2PA is a technology that will miraculously save us from rampant AI forgeries, by having cameras cryptographically sign the images they capture. Hooray for cryptography! Sorry. That’s not going to work. There’s a lot going on here, so I’ll try to get […]
Dolly Parton has died
Dolly Parton, one of the greatest singer-songwriters in country music who was also much cherished for her philanthropy, has died aged 80. Her death was announced by nephew Brian Seaver on Instagram. “I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven’t truly felt it until now,” he said. “It is an honour, an honour […]
Clara (YC P26) is hiring a growth engineer to bring AI doctors to market
You’ll own Clara’s growth engine, supporting our mission by helping more patients discover Clara and turn to it for their day-to-day primary care needs. Landing pages, onboarding funnel, experimentation, attribution, and lifecycle messaging all belong to you. You’ll work across the entire funnel – from the first ad impression or search result, through signup and […]
Run OpenBSD on DigitalOcean for $4/month
My homepage now runs on OpenBSD with httpd(8) and Let’s Encrypt via acme-client(1). I previously hosted it on GitHub Pages and then eventually moved to Cloudflare Pages because both options were free and easy. Free and easy is cool, and I understand that writing software full-time leaves us wanting absolutely nothing to do with computers […]
Nitter project received cease and desist
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Black hole singularity is a surface not a point
Abstract:It is widely repeated in the popular literature and elsewhere that the singularity at the center of a black hole is a point. It is not true. Two observers who free-fall into a spherical black hole along two different angular trajectories at the same time $t$ do not encounter each other at the central singularity; […]
Water Behind the Watts: The Hidden Risk of Powering Data Centers
This report spotlights data centers’ biggest and least visible water use: the power that runs them While data center companies typically focus on the amount of water they use to cool the technology running within their facilities, the water used for power generation to meet their massive energy needs has an even greater impact. Our […]
My Friend Aaron
The following is a short story. ***** This one is about my friend, Aaron. I met him at school, and in our first year when we were eleven years old I told him I wanted to be his best friend but he said he already had a best friend. He was probably the smartest person […]