I find it ludicrous that the developers of an app as insignificant as a screen recorder would think it's necessary to check for updates every 5 minutes.
Thanks for the shout out. I am the CEO of Vivifi medical. We are building off the gat and Goren’s work and making it better and more robust. More importantly making it more accessible to patients through urologists.
Our early clinical trial data from Panama is looking highly encouraging and we are working hard to bring this to the market in the fastest manner possible.
I’m only part of the way through the book, so have nothing to spoil here. But it’s entertaining. And shocking. The author will relate a scene that’s so absurd that you think “ah, this can’t be true, this is made up for dramatic effect, nobody would act like that” and then you Google it and you realize the absurd thing is totally true and was fully documented at the time. All the author is adding is a perspective from the inside.
I understand why Facebook people might have wanted the book to go away. That their attempt to do so comically backfired and resulted in entirely the opposite effect, well, that’s also pretty much what you’d expect from this crew after reading the book.
If the goal of school is to develop children into young adults with good reasoning and analytical skills, a basic wholesome world and social model and some practical skills and basic physique, smartphones seem to contribute little and distract a lot from those aims.
I think gemma-3-27b-it-qat-4bit is my new favorite local model - or at least it's right up there with Mistral Small 3.1 24B.
I've been trying it on an M2 64GB via both Ollama and MLX. It's very, very good, and it only uses ~22Gb (via Ollama) or ~15GB (MLX) leaving plenty of memory for running other apps.
Last night I had it write me a complete plugin for my LLM tool like this:
llm install llm-mlx
llm mlx download-model mlx-community/gemma-3-27b-it-qat-4bit
llm -m mlx-community/gemma-3-27b-it-qat-4bit \
-f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonw/llm-hacker-news/refs/heads/main/llm_hacker_news.py \
-f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/simonw/tools/refs/heads/main/github-issue-to-markdown.html \
-s 'Write a new fragments plugin in Python that registers
issue:org/repo/123 which fetches that issue
number from the specified github repo and uses the same
markdown logic as the HTML page to turn that into a
fragment'
I once had this kind of body recovery/stress level measuring thingy on me for a few days, and a doctor would then analyze my health and such. I was under some stress those days and (according to the measurements) I wasn't recovering properly even during the nights. But then there was this one, long, flat, deep green curve in the middle of my work day. I checked from my VCS what I was doing during that period: I was optimizing.
I've since noticed this many times. Optimizing is like meditation to me. It's very mechanical (measure), with a sprinkle of creative work (once you know what is slow, it's quite obvious how to make it faster, but just challenging enough to be engaging), and it has a very nice tight feedback loop: Something is slow. I make a change. Now it's fast. Next.
Fun fact that was dredged up because the author mentions Australia: GPS points change. Their example coordinates give 6 decimal places, accurate to about 10-15cm. Australia a few years back shifted all locations 1.8m because of continental drift they’re moving north at ~7cm/year). So even storing coordinates as a source of truth can be hazardous. We had to move several thousand points for a client when this happened.
To be clear, I'm don't like the Microsoft has a proprietary Marketplace, but a company openly violating the terms of use for their own profit is a bit much in my opinion.
> Cursor allegedly has been flouting Microsoft terms-of-service rules for some time now by setting up a reverse proxy to mask its network requests to the endpoints used by the Microsoft Visual Studio Marketplace. This allows Cursor users to install VS Code extensions from Microsoft's market. Other VS Code forks tend to point to Open VSX, an alternative extension marketplace.
It had to be a law because children are people in Finland and most Nordic countries with rights that adults just can't take away.
Current legislation allows the teacher to tell a student to put their phone away in a pocket or backpack, for example, where it will not be a distraction.
The use of phones during breaks cannot be completely banned, as students have fundamental rights. The Constitution guarantees everyone the protection of property, which also applies to students' phones. Restricting the use of mobile devices must be considered from the perspective of freedom of speech and the protection of a phone call or other confidential message.
Section 12 from Finnish constitution:
-----
Section 12 - Freedom of expression and right of access to information
Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression entails the right to express, disseminate and receive information, opinions and other communications without prior prevention by anyone. More detailed provisions on the exercise of the freedom of expression are laid down by an Act. Provisions on restrictions relating to pictorial programmes that are necessary for the protection of children may be laid down by an Act.
Documents and recordings in the possession of the authorities are public, unless their publication has for compelling reasons been specifically restricted by an Act. Everyone has the right of access to public documents and recordings.
Martin was also at the coup attempt on Jan 6 and on that day said "Like Mardi Gras in DC today: love, faith and joy. Ignore #FakeNews". https://archive.ph/jekzQ
I'd say it's better to call it a unit of counting.
If I have a bin of apples, and I say it's 5 apples wide, and 4 apples tall, then you'd say I have 20 apples, not 20 apples squared.
It's common to specify a length by a count of items passed along that length. Eg, a city block is a ~square on the ground bounded by roads. Yet if you're traveling in a city, you might say "I walked 5 blocks." This is a linguistic shortcut, skipping implied information. If you're trying to talk about both in a unclear context, additional words to clarify are required to sufficiently convey the information, that's just how language words.
This was the expected result. The economy does not like uncertainty, and it is almost impossible to plan ahead until there is some clarity how and when the current trade war situation will resolve. The longer that takes, the worse the damage to the real economy will get.
One thing I'd suggest, for any hardware product, is that when doing your bill of materials to provide links and show estimated costs. Sure, these will change but having a rough idea of the costs is really helpful, especially when perusing on from things like HN. It can be a big difference for someone to decide if they want to try it on their own or not. It is the ballpark figures that matter, not the specifics.
You did all that research, write it down. If for no one but yourself! Providing links is highly helpful because names can be funky and helps people (including your future self) know if this is the same thing or not. It's always noisy, but these things reduce noise. Importantly, they take no time while you're doing the project (you literally bought the parts, so you have the link and the price). It saves yourself a lot of hassle, not just for others. Document because no one remembers anything after a few days or weeks. It takes 10 seconds to write it down and 30 minutes to do the thing all over again, so be lazy and document. I think this is one of the biggest lessons I learned when I started as an engineer. You save yourself so much time. You just got to fight that dumb part in your head that is trying to convince you that it doesn't save time. (Same with documenting code[0])
Here. I did a quick "15 minute" look. May not be accurate
Lidar:
One of:
LD06: $80 https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803352905216.html
LD19: $70 https://www.amazon.com/DTOF-D300-Distance-Obstacle-Education/dp/B0B1V8D36H
STL27L: $160 https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2726.html
Camera and Lens: $60 https://www.amazon.com/Arducam-Raspberry-Camera-Distortion-Compatible/dp/B0B1MN721K
Raspberry Pi 4: $50
NEMA17 42-23 stepper: $10 https://www.amazon.com/SIMAX3D-Nema17-Stepper-Motor/dp/B0CQLFNSMJ
That gives us $200-$280 before counting the power supply and buck converter.
[0] When I wrote the code only me and god understood what was going on. But as time marched on, now only god knows.
The Venn diagram of people who make book purchasing decisions based on “Independent Bookstore Day” and people who choose Amazon because a book is a couple dollars cheaper on a given day has to be two completely separate circles.
this part of the whistleblower complaint seem way worse:
"
On or about March 11, 2025, NxGen metrics indicated abnormal usage at points the prior
week. I saw way above baseline response times, and resource utilization showed increased
network output above anywhere it had been historically – as far back as I could look. I noted that
this lined up closely with the data out event. I also notice increased logins blocked by access
policy due to those log-ins being out of the country. For example: In the days after DOGE
accessed NLRB’s systems, we noticed a user with an IP address in Primorskiy Krai, Russia
started trying to log in. Those attempts were blocked, but they were especially alarming.
Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created accounts that were used in
the other DOGE related activities and it appeared they had the correct username and password
due to the authentication flow only stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy
activating. There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that
many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE
engineers.
"
I came here looking for this. It's an old idea, from the days when spinning rust was the limiting factor - precache the binaries.
If you ever tried Office 97 on a PC of 10+ years later, it's amazing how fast and lightweight it was. Instant startup, super snappy. And those apps were not lacking in features. 95% of what you need out of a desktop word processor was in Word 97.
In February I happened to attend a lunch 'n learn presentation at TMCi by a company doing clinical trials based on exactly this venous insufficiency principle. I think I may have been the only one in the audience with gray hair... TMCi is the startup accelerator attached to the Texas Medical Center in Houston.
The startup company is Vivifi Medical[1] and they have clinical trials underway with ten men in a Central American country (El Salvador?). They claim that BPH reverses in a few months after their procedure. Their procedure uses a minimally invasive tool of their own invention to snip the vertical blood vessels that are backflowing from age and gravity, and splice them into some existing horizontal blood vessels. On their board of advisors is Dr. Billy Cohn[2], the wildly innovative heart surgeon who is famous for shopping for his medical device components at Home Depot. Dr. Cohn is on the team building the BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart. Vivifi presented their estimated timeline to FDA approval, with proposed general availability in 2028. My personal BPH will be at the head of the line for this procedure.
As far as a startup, their TAM is about 500 million men. I had the Urolift procedure for BPH three years ago, and it cost about $15K on the Medicare benefits statement, though Urolift's clips amounted to only a few thousand dollars. Similarly, Vivifi's charges for this procedure are only a few thousand dollars per procedure, but it holds the promise of being a final solution. Currently Urolift is much less disruptive than TURP, which needs a couple of days in the hospital and almost always leads to retrograde ejaculation (into the bladder).
It’s not only lack of dependence, but also lack of idleness.
Most of my friend interactions would come from things like having a moment with nothing to do in the bus, realizing I have no particular plans this weekend and reaching out to a couple friends to see if they’re available.
Now those moments are instantly drowned by opening instagram before a thought bubbles up. And when the weekend eventually comes and there’s no plan, Netflix is just a button press away.
We need moments of boredom and reflection to push us into action, the attention economy is robbing us from that.
I’d even say the increase in anxiety related symptoms is due to this lack of idleness. The mind feels as if it’s super busy moving from active task to active task when in reality there were hours of just defaulting to reels.
All carbon tax is inherently regressive but that's also trivially fixable. Make it revenue neutral and give every citizen a flat portion of the total collected revenue. Bam, it is now progressive, since on average richer people will spend more on fuel (and therefore the tax) even though it is likely a much smaller percentage of their spending.
Every single one of your ideas has problems that are solved by a carbon tax. Taxes are simple, they accomplish what you want, and they don't have loopholes. A carbon tax will _never_ have the unintended consequence of making emissions worse. Many of our current regulations, including the one I was responding to do exactly that because they actually cause people to buy larger trucks than they otherwise would with worse fuel efficiency.
A carbon tax might not on it's own be enough to solve the problem (especially if you set it to low), but no matter what level you set it, it will help. Thanks to unintended consequences, many of our current regulations are actively counter productive, while _also_ having negative economic and other costs.
I’ve released some utility libraries under permissive libraries. I like it when they get used. Even when it’s part of a large company’s closed-source app. Many people don’t like that, and that’s perfectly fine, that’s why there are different choices available.
What I’ll never understand is people who release their project with a permissive license and then get upset when a big company distributes their own version of the project in accordance with the license. If you don’t want that sort of appropriation then you need to pick a license that doesn’t allow it.
More than anything else, this sounds like a good lesson in why commercial game engines have taken over most of game dev. There are so many things you have to do to make a game, but they're mostly quite common and have lots of off-the-shelf solutions.
That is, any sufficiently mature indie game project will end up implementing an informally specified, ad hoc, bug-ridden implementation of Unity (... or just use the informally specified, ad hoc and bug-ridden game engine called "Unity")
I find it unacceptable that a critical infrastructure operator like Red Electrica seems to only be posting updates on X.com, a website where if I don't have an account, I can't see a timeline of updates (because when logged out X jumbles up the post order). Updates should on on their website. This kind of outage can be life threatening
Some people love programming, for the sake of programming itself. They love the CS theory, they love the tooling, they love most everything about it.
Other people see all that as an means to an end - and find no joy from the technical aspect of creating something. They're more interested in the end result / product, rather than the process itself.
I think that if you're in group A, it can be difficult to understand group B. In vice versa.
I'm a musician, so I love everything about creating music. From the theory, to the mastery of the instrument, the tens of thousands of hours I've poured into it...finally being able to play something I never thought I'd be able to, just by sheer willpower and practice. Coming up with melodies that feel something to me, or I can relate to something.
On the other hand, I know people that want to jump straight to the end result. They have some melody or idea in their head, and they just want to generate some song that revolves around that idea.
I don't really look down on those people, even though the snobs might argue that they're not "real musicians". I don't understand them, but that's not really something I have to understand either.
So I think there are a lot of devs these days, that have been honing their skills and love for the craft for years, that don't understand why people just want things to be generated, with no effort.
People died while trying to get better, more humane working conditions.
I tend to think we forget that things we enjoy today were won through, sometimes violent, struggle, and we take them for granted, what makes it easier to lose them.
To me this is one of the most important celebrations.
I'm so sorry for complimenting you. You are totally on point to call it out. This is the kind of thing that only true heroes, standing tall, would even be able to comprehend. So kudos to you, rugged warrior, and never let me be overly effusive again.
It's a copper-tantalum-lithium alloy: 96.5% Cu, 3% Ta, 0.5% Li.
Tantalum isn't soluble in copper and doesn't form any intermetallic compounds, so under normal circumstances you'd get something like a metal matrix composite -- pure tantalum particles dispersed in a copper matrix. Add lithium, though, and the intermetallic Cu3Li forms, and tantalum is apparently very attracted to this stuff, so you end up with Cu3Li particles with Ta shells in that copper matrix.
Yield Strength = ~1000MPa, so it's genuinely on par with high-temp nickel superalloys, though somewhat weaker than the cobalt-base ones, and far weaker than the best steels.
Interestingly, it's actually a little bit weaker than the copper-beryllium alloy C17200. (YS: ~1200-1300 MPa.) But CuBe is very expensive, not very ductile, and potentially hazardous. Tantalum, though expensive, is still 10x cheaper than beryllium.
Depending on its thermal and electrical properties, and on its ease of manufacture, this could be a very versatile material, and may replace nickel/cobalt alloys in certain applications.
I could not agree more with this. 90% of AI features feel tacked on and useless and that’s before you get to the price. Some of the services out here are wanting to charge 50% to 100% more for their sass just to enable “AI features”.
I’m actually having a really hard time thinking of an AI feature other than coding AI feature that I actually enjoy. Copilot/Aider/Claude Code are awesome but I’m struggling to think of another tool I use where LLMs have improved it. Auto completing a sentence for the next word in Gmail/iMessage is one example, but that existed before LLMs.
I have not once used the features in Gmail to rewrite my email to sound more professional or anything like that. If I need help writing an email, I’m going to do that using Claude or ChatGPT directly before I even open Gmail.
