robaato

Plastic is usable on surface, but doesn't scale well. If you've ever looked at what Plastic does when you use its git fast-export compatible feature, the results for merge commits are horrible to behold, e.g. delete of a directory followed by add of a file into same dir, then delete of it then rename.

There are various language specific wrappers for the API - the Python one is good, and now there is a Go one too.

Which Sqlite library are you using? With or without cgo?

An ex-colleague was among the 800 people laid off yesterday

WSJ: https://archive.is/IB7H2 Missed Funerals and Blocked Toilets: Iran Deployment Takes a Toll on U.S. Sailors The aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford’s lengthy mission is causing strains for crew members and their families

Overtaxed crews can be a problem across the Navy’s fleet, beyond just the Ford. In April and May 2025, near the end of an eight-month deployment, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman lost several jet fighters while countering Houthi rebel attacks in the Red Sea. A Navy investigation blamed the high operational tempo of the mission.

One sailor on board the Ford told the Journal that many crew members are angry and upset, with some saying they want to leave the Navy at the end of the deployment.

Yes very true. Though exposure is also impotent. But active lessons or trying are vital

I realised a step up with going to lunch with Japanese friends where the stream of sounds started to become comprehensible as discrete words. When I understood some of them I at least grasped the topic of the conversation, though not the details. It takes time and patience...

So what do you use now in film industry?

Is it a coincidence that my Amazon (UK) checkout is repeatedly hitting an error page at the moment?!

Follow on from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564552

My aunt lived to 94 and was in a retiremement community outside Boston. She never married (had some long term relationships) but was always interested in people. I used to visit regularly from the UK, and she was always introducing me to people around the community, nurses, helpers, gardeners, whatever. She would invariably give me a potted life history of these people, who she might only have known a few months.

No need for crosswords or other activities to keep her brain active - talking to people and remembering their stories is what kept her going!

Before moving to the community, she had a house in Cambridge (Boston) and let out the upper floor to students, post grads etc - and kept up with many of them long after they had left. Connection was definitly a skill of hers.

This is certainly relevant to aikido, and in particular the somewhat nebulous concept of "aiki". Unnecessary tension in a technique creates a reaction in your partner which tends to block things. Skilled practitioners make things look effortless, and use much less tension - they are more relaxed. It's a fascinating study - and lots of fun. Very different sport - but check Shane Benzies and his books and videos on running and technique - how technique makes a huge difference, with less effort.

Would heartily recommend Toastmasters - get's you lots of practice, encouragement and you can learn from some excellent speakers.

Original paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17033

https://archive.is/M9fyh

https://archive.is/miqey

How believable is this??

Douglas Adams: video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself;

There's the entertaining bit in the film The Imitation Game (the breaking of Enigma code by Alan Turing) where they realised that a weakness was the daily weather report always containing the words "weatherreport" and "heil bloody hitler" (with obvious addition!) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fAsSNjedZWI or longer version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkETN-xENAM

Also a more proper explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4V2bpZlqx8

Curious as to what change broke this?! And why it wasn't caught in QA...

As an aside, a friend in Tokyo only a couple of years ago suddenly realised he had lost his passport. A couple of hours of searching bags later, panic when he realised it was mid afternoon Friday, consulate was going to close soon, and not reopen until Monday - with his flight scheduled Monday early!

Rang the consulate to ask advice: "oh yes, police station XXX rang us to report they had had your passport handed in - please go and pick it up!". So we did!

Lovely country Japan in many ways! It had just dropped out of his bag onto pavement, been found and handed in...

20 years ago I had a somewhat similar experience - a pub off The Strand in central London.

My bag/briefcase was under a (high) table, and in that case the pub was able to view CCTV and work out the guy who sat nearby and hooked his leg to grab my bag - while I was distracted.

Luckily for me, while it contained laptop and passport, I got a call 20 mins later from my wife, who had been contacted by someone 100m away in a different pub. The thief had taken my bag with laptop, not realised there was also a passport in there, gone to another pub, stolen another bag, switched my laptop into said bag, and gone off. The owner of other lost laptop had found my (empty) bag/passport, rang my wife, and we met and at least I got bag (and passport) back...

Net result, lost laptop, but not lost passport. Much less hassle, although still a wake up call...

But they've retired it??

Nice article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/30/orca-k... These supposedly serious cetaceans have been spotted massaging each other with kelp stalks. This is the sort of performative nonsense you’d expect from dolphins

Very nice!

Alternative for attention tracking apps?! Or, "You're not worried enough so you can't be coding!"

No 4 - do like Norway:

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

Somewhat related - remember having to try and source labels that we could stick on Sony Walkmans in an electronic repair shop - sticky enough to stay on reliably (customer name, ID etc), but able to be removed without residue! Took quite a few tries but we got there.

Indeed which is why they are discrediting it ;)

If we then turn to pluralism more closely, it’s perhaps best to start with the definition of economics, because it's a crucial piece in thinking about pluralism. How do you see what economics is—how to define economics?

I define economics as the study of the economy. To put it very simply, how we produce, exchange, consume, and these days waste, our goods and services. I know that many mainstream economists try to define it in terms of methods, essentially defining it as the study of rational choice. I think that's not right, because all other disciplines are defined in terms of the subject matter that is studied. Chemistry is the study of chemical substances; sociology is the study of society. Because these days someone can be a professor of economics in a big university despite not studying what people normally understand to be economic issues. The best example is Steven Levitt and his book Freakonomics, where he basically discusses human behaviour. It’s an interesting book. But is there anything in that book that we normally think of as economics? It's about how sumo wrestlers collude with each other, how American school teachers cheat, and so on. All very interesting, but there's nothing about the economy.

This is a classic way to teach use of a sword. It's also easy to feel what happens. Compare the feeling when gripping with first two fingers vs 3rd and 4th. With first 2, you will feel tension along top of forearm, whereas with the other 2 it is the underneath of forearm. This affects flexibility, softness, and thus ability to manipulate the sword.