Heroin Addicts Often Seem Normal
At least, they did to me ten years ago I recently saw an online suggestion that to treat hard drug addiction, you could provide drugs publicly at government facilities, conditional on (inpatient) treatment afterward. The idea being that (extreme) drug addicts have very high time preference, and so will accept a hit now at any […]
Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?
Google Wave. Edit: you asked why. I first saw it at SELF where Chris DiBona showed it to me and a close friend. It was awesome. Real time translation, integration of various types of messaging, tons of cool capabilities, and it was fully open source. What made it out of Google was a stripped down […]
Datastar response to allegations
Next → Context # A recent blog post titled HTMX, Datastar, greedy developer and several Hacker News threads raised concerns about Datastar Pro, pricing, and whether features were “moved behind a paywall”. Here’s what has changed, who Pro is for, and how to achieve some of the same things with the free version. The facts […]
ElementaryOS – The thoughtful, capable and ethical replacement for Windows/macOS
The thoughtful, capable, and ethical replacement for Windows and macOS Pay What You Can: What’s New in elementary OS 8 Carefree because you’re cared for. OS 8 brings a Secure Session that ensures apps respect your privacy and require your consent, a brand new Dock with productive multitasking and window management features, and empowers our […]
How much revenue is needed to justify the current AI spend?
Think about the railroads in the second half of the 19th century. When they failed, it wasn’t just the collapsing bonds held by investors, often pledged as collateral for other loans, that pulled down the economy. It was also the inability of the railroads to raise additional capital to order new steel and railroad ties, […]
MIT physicists improve the precision of atomic clocks
Every time you check the time on your phone, make an online transaction, or use a navigation app, you are depending on the precision of atomic clocks. An atomic clock keeps time by relying on the “ticks” of atoms as they naturally oscillate at rock-steady frequencies. Today’s atomic clocks operate by tracking cesium atoms, which […]
Is Odin Just a More Boring C?
15 min read Saturday, October 4, 2025 Exploring Odin Through a Tiny Key-Value Store with Pub/Sub Why I Tried Odin Background My recent posts have been diving deep into Zig and C, a shift from my earlier focus on React and JavaScript. This isn’t a pivot but a return to my roots. I started programming […]
Discord hack shows risks of online age checks
Messaging platform Discord has said the official ID photos of around 70,000 users have been stolen by hackers. The app, which is popular with gamers and teenagers, said the hackers targeted a firm responsible for verifying the ages of its users. Discord said its own platform was not breached. The stolen data could include personal […]
Microsoft only lets you opt out of AI photo scanning 3x a year
I uploaded a photo on my phone to Microsoft’s “OneDrive” file-hosting app — and there was a surprise waiting under Privacy and Permissions. “OneDrive uses AI to recognize faces in your photos…” And… “You can only turn off this setting 3 times a year.” If I moved the slidebar for that setting to the left […]
Rating 26 years of Java changes
I first started programming Java at IBM back in 1999 as a Pre-University Employee. If I remember correctly, we had Java 1.1.8 installed at that time, but were moving to Java 1.2 (“Java 2”), which was a massive release—I remember engineers at the time grumbling that the ever-present “Java in a Nutshell” book had grown […]