cagey

25 thousandths would be sloppy, a nominal clearance hole for a 1/4x20 bolt is about that much.

Isn't that 0.250 which would be 250 thousandths?

As an example: Claude Desktop (containing Claude CoWork) is not officially available on Linux, only Windows and macOS.

Obligatory: Rush - The Trees (Live From The Montreal Forum / 1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H0lwRqNF5I

The last [US] BigCorp I worked for deployed (in Outlook) automatic deletion of all emails older than their Records Retention threshold. It was incredibly frustrating to have essentially all design/rationale history (from the key players involved) go into the auto-shredder with nobody but me caring. The only workarounds that could avoid the auto-shredder were enormously labor intensive, and of course, debatably violated Record Retention policy.

My experience is the same. It was agonizing directing Claude Code (Opus 4.7 at that time) to create a (non-mathematical) preso using LaTex. After banging my head against that wall for too long, I asked why this process (placing entities on the output PDF page according to specific requirements) was so error prone, and received the answer "LaTex is really the wrong tool for this job". I chose Typst from among the offered alternatives, and it has been a MUCH better experience. I switched my resume to Typst too.

Well that's not how I heard the fable, and not how the authoritative reference recalls it either[0]. If "every time the boy cried wolf, there actually was a wolf and it ate some people", then it would hardly be a fable about giving a false alarm, would it?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Who_Cried_Wolf

You're right, I won't, and I'm probably not alone. So what's the endgame? A world government that enforces all of those "give-ups" at gunpoint?

So we're re-creating the Apollo 8 Mission 60 years later.

Not even: Apollo 8[0] went into orbit around the moon (orbited 10 times), then left lunar orbit to return to Earth. This required mission-critical rocket burns both to enter (LOI) and exit (TEI) lunar orbit. Artemis II[1] is merely doing a "fly-by"; it'll never enter lunar orbit, a much less challenging/risky mission.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8#Lunar_orbit

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_II#Lunar_flyby

me too; Inoreader was my first/only stop after Google Reader, and is one of the only paid subscriptions I maintain.

Probably > 80% of my RSS feeds are Youtube channels.

Pop!OS (22.04) nearly 2 years ago, after having read generally favorable reviews on HN and getting a sense of "monernity/stability/mainstream'ness of Ubuntu without snap and with closer-to-leading-edge kernels" on an Asus Vivobook 17 (my daily personal/WFH driver).

Later (on repurposed low-spec Chromebooks, then on newer deployments just because I came to like it) Crunchbang++ (12, then 13) which is Debian-based.

I avoid printing like the plague, and keep a long-remaining-AUE Chromebook around almost solely for its ability to WiFi-print to our aging Brother laser printer.

Yes

There's only one way this country can be saved and, regardless of the process to get there, it would culminate in a new constitution.

NYT op-ed from 8/14 agreeing: "Abolish the Senate. End the Electoral College. Pack the Court. Why the left can’t win without a new Constitution."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/opinion/trump-democracy-t... https://archive.is/uNIPL

From a more informative article[1] linked from TFA:

"The expiration of the enhanced [premium] tax credits is expected to cause ACA enrollees’ out-of-pocket premium payments to increase by over 75% on average, with people in some states seeing their payments more than double on average."

"The enhanced premium tax credits were originally passed by Congress in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and extended under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), but they are set to expire at the end of 2025."

[1] https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/how-will-the-2025-budget-re...

Ditto. I installed CrunchBang++ Linux[1] on a couple of out-of-support 4GB-RAM Chromebooks about 6 months ago, and they (with Firefox (w/shared account) and uBlock Origin) basically continue to fill the Chromebook role (my morning before-work lazy web-surfing guided by Inoreader) with aplomb: occasionally I go a little too tab-crazy (or open one too many YouTube tabs) and it freezes, but simply restarting (holding the power button down until it reboots) gets me going again. I save+close excess tabs to OneTab and life goes on. Extremely utilitarian.

[1] https://www.crunchbangplusplus.org/

Technologically simple, was done well on MS-DOS in a few hundred kB of code and data.

Exactly. The outliner feature in Borland's Sidekick Plus was my all-time favorite, but its lifetime was brief (due to the entire product being a TSR), so I used Symantec's Grandview 2.0 sporadically over the decades, even in DOSbox out of desperation (as recently as 5-6 years ago!).

Ebooks and Internet sources of all forms of media have rendered public libraries moot as book providers: every person alive (in the US) has a cell phone, and most have laptops, and can with a modicum of bootstrapping access these sources, without having to travel to a special building (partially) filled with paper books, to obtain a copy of almost any book in existence.

Today’s dangerous librarians are much more. They are part educator, part tech wizard, part data analyst, and part myth-slayer.

They host storytimes, teach kids about misinformation, explain how to 3D print a prosthetic hand, and calmly help a grown man named Todd recover his Gmail password for the seventh time. All before lunch.

[Librarians] are dangerous to: Misinformation, Censorship, Outdated printer settings, Small thinking, apathy, loneliness

Who asked them to play these roles? If the public school system has failed to the extent that people are incapable of using online methods to find books or other resources, or login to their Google account, why is it the role of a librarian to backfill these gaps (and for taxpayers to be forced to fund such a peculiar backfilling approach)?

And some of the touted roles ("dangerous to: Misinformation, Censorship, Small thinking, apathy") are clearly social activist in nature; the meaning of all of these is in the eye of the beholder. So why are taxpayers obligated to (unquestioningly) fund people who clearly perceive their role, at least in part, as activist in nature? IMO you are welcome to engage in activist activities on your own dime, not mine.

So I certainly wonder where the value is in "libraries" since, say, 2010 (and yes, I read the article). If not for "book banning" stories, I doubt librarians would be a topic of conversation. Libraries and librarians are like some weird 20th century anachronism which persists into the 21st century largely because it's part of a (by definition well-established) bureaucracy (and lobby/union).

Interesting and useful information. We've been on an Ambetter ACA plan for the past 1.5 years and have generally been pleased; this info suggests why, and informs our decision to continue with them in 2025 despite receiving random positive anecdata about BCBS.

Among over 1 million men aged 40 or older diagnosed with lower urinary tract symptoms, those treated with tadalafil showed marked reductions in mortality (56%), heart attack (37%), stroke (35%), venous thromboembolism (32%), and dementia (55%) compared to patients who did not receive these medications for lower urinary tract symptoms.

One feature I found rather unique at Fidelity (I too have recently migrated there as my "one stop shop") was free outgoing domestic wires ($100 minimum). Being able to "teleport" money within an hour to another pre-registered account (before 3PM ET on biz days, in my experience) facilitated switching to Fidelity while still keeping old bank/CU accounts minimally active without having to engage in a lot of thinking ahead about balances (and worrying about EFT/ACH hold times) at those now peripheral accounts.

I'm a happy (albeit) infrequent user of https://mataroa.blog/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896661

A few decades ago I refactored a different way:

   // this may be a mistake!  English language is unorthogonal in the extreme!
   const char * Add_es( int count ) { return 1 == count ?  "" : "es"; }
   const char * Add_s(  int count ) { return 1 == count ?  "" : "s" ; }

   Msg( "%d file%s updated when you switched back", updates, Add_s( updates ) );

My favorite source for current MVNO options: https://prepaidcompare.net/

My household of 4 adults independently chooses Visible (cheapest tier, $25/mon which offers unlimited data (and and unlimited hotspot, though capped at 5Mbps)). Due to the slow hotspot speeds I might migrate DW & I to US Mobile which offers high priority high speed hotspot (up to 30GB/month at about the same price when shared across 2 lines) which could be valuable when we're traveling.

The tracks discussed in the article are BNSF.

No. The unique trackage to be used between SFBA and LA is the "Coast Line" which is owned by Union Pacific.

FTA: "Dreamstar signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Union Pacific Railroad, [...] that would allow Dreamstar to operate its trains on the tracks owned by Union Pacific."

Ctrl+F "BNSF" finds no matches in the article.

"The term Axis of Resistance [...] is a label used by pro-Iranian commentators to refer to an informal anti-Israeli and anti-Western political and military coalition led by the Iranian government. It includes the Syrian Arab Republic, Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah and various militant groups in Palestine. Pro-Ba'athist Syrian militias, some of the pro-Iran militias that are a part of the Iraqi PMF, the Houthi movement in Yemen, Cuba, Sandinista Nicaragua, Bolivia as well as Maduro's Venezuela are also considered part of the alliance."

"Despite the alliance's differing ideologies, such as secular Ba'athism, Communism, Shia Khomeinism (a type of Islamist Qutbism), Chavismo, Sandinismo, etc., they are unified by their declared objectives of opposing the activities of pro-Western parties, Israel, Arab Gulf states, Sunni Jihadists and the MEK in the region."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_Resistance

reference annotations elided

  $ V=nada echo "x${V}x"
  xx

Reading this thread reminded me to check my Pixel 5 (primary phone, purchased new just over 3 years ago) for updates. And to my surprise, there was a Android Security Update available which, now that it has been downloaded and installed, is dated Nov 5, 2023! Maybe that'll be the last one this phone gets, but maybe not.

Anyway, I'm perfectly happy with my Pixel 5 (aside from slightly declining battery performance, it's "as good as new"); I even bought a "excellent" refurb'd Pixel 5 9 months ago to use on a second/backup line (I was also thinking to use one or both for anticipated trade-in's on Pixel 8's, but with nominal updates all in the rearview mirror, Google's trade-in value has declined to negligible, so I plan to just keep using the 5's; the cost of the 8 vs it's value add was not compelling). 8GB RAM and 128GB of local storage is plenty for my needs, and I certainly don't want a bigger phone!

... appealing to popularity and cult of personalities are sins I didn't imagine the programming area will suffer from, yet it happens every day. Try criticizing one of Python's many obvious pitfalls [...] and you'll be buried under a mountain of "millions are using it successfully every day, have you considered that you are the problem?". As if the amount of supporters of a thing ever had any correlation at all with quality...

Hear hear. The last 10 years of my career I was surrounded by this attitude (about Python); there was literally no possibility of putting a dent in the groupthink and cult-think surrounding Python (because after all, wasn't it "the most popular programming language in the galaxy"?), which eventually became the corporate-ly mandated language for all software development (and that was that). Yet when I retired in late 2021, my employer's minions were still developing almost entirely in Python 2, having half-heartedly put forth multiple parallel Python 3 migration initiatives which had largely come to naught.

/rant

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

At least one of "those document scanner apps on my phone" immediately uploads scan-generated PDF to a user-designated folder in Google Drive: Genius Scan (on Android), one-time payment "Enterprise" version.

Source: happy user for 3+ years. No affiliation.

Seinfeld: Kramer’s Japanese guests sleep in drawers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvZfb5t8DnA