What if it was never Trump who was mind-controlling people, but the social media influence operations that make up a growing percentage of interactions?
January 20, 2026 at 2:39 PM
What if it was never Trump who was mind-controlling people, but the social media influence operations that make up a growing percentage of interactions?
"Both of you have equally valid points! Let's ban half of the vaccines! Why not just invade a little bit of Greenland?"
January 20, 2026 at 2:13 PM
"Both of you have equally valid points! Let's ban half of the vaccines! Why not just invade a little bit of Greenland?"
I call it Golden Mean-ism. It's a shortcut to an opinion for lazy people who don't actually have one. You don't have to spend decades pondering ethical principles, understanding the material world, and synthesizing that into a well-justified position from the ground up.
January 20, 2026 at 2:13 PM
I call it Golden Mean-ism. It's a shortcut to an opinion for lazy people who don't actually have one. You don't have to spend decades pondering ethical principles, understanding the material world, and synthesizing that into a well-justified position from the ground up.
You are correct, the isomorphism between indexed families and functions is one of the most basic things you use in math.
January 20, 2026 at 12:47 AM
You are correct, the isomorphism between indexed families and functions is one of the most basic things you use in math.
You'll get used to it, and the simple rules around scope too, once you think about variables like real places in memory, instead of names that the interpreter will look up for you and might be null at any point.
January 20, 2026 at 12:39 AM
You'll get used to it, and the simple rules around scope too, once you think about variables like real places in memory, instead of names that the interpreter will look up for you and might be null at any point.
Dynamic allocation means that you allocate something on the heap. It doesn't matter if the stack frame you allocated it from is popped, or even if you're using different threads. You shouldn't use Box if you can do the same thing on the stack.
January 20, 2026 at 12:20 AM
Dynamic allocation means that you allocate something on the heap. It doesn't matter if the stack frame you allocated it from is popped, or even if you're using different threads. You shouldn't use Box if you can do the same thing on the stack.
It's a really obvious point masked in technical language. Instead of seeing the array as a vector (with n elements in order), you see it as a (not necessarily injective) function f: {0,1,2,...n} -> {set of elements in the array}, where f(0) = the 0th element, f(1) = the first element. etc
January 19, 2026 at 6:33 PM
It's a really obvious point masked in technical language. Instead of seeing the array as a vector (with n elements in order), you see it as a (not necessarily injective) function f: {0,1,2,...n} -> {set of elements in the array}, where f(0) = the 0th element, f(1) = the first element. etc
What more pushback are they supposed to give? They're firing on all cylinders, they just don't have very many cylinders. Trump's in complete control of the house, senate, and the supreme court. The supreme court has given him control over private industry, including media and tech.
January 19, 2026 at 1:53 PM
What more pushback are they supposed to give? They're firing on all cylinders, they just don't have very many cylinders. Trump's in complete control of the house, senate, and the supreme court. The supreme court has given him control over private industry, including media and tech.
The hilarious thing is that, out of all democracies, the Brazilian and South Korean democracies have been revealed to be more stable and to have more functional judiciaries. Who would have thought?
January 18, 2026 at 2:43 PM
The hilarious thing is that, out of all democracies, the Brazilian and South Korean democracies have been revealed to be more stable and to have more functional judiciaries. Who would have thought?
Norse people first settled Greenland hundreds of years before the Thule culture arrived. No current inhabitants of Greenland have any genetic relation to the indigenous Dorset population once present in the north-western tip. It was the Thule who wiped out the Dorset.
January 18, 2026 at 12:27 AM
Norse people first settled Greenland hundreds of years before the Thule culture arrived. No current inhabitants of Greenland have any genetic relation to the indigenous Dorset population once present in the north-western tip. It was the Thule who wiped out the Dorset.
ok thanks, i'll put it on the list.
January 17, 2026 at 11:35 AM
ok thanks, i'll put it on the list.
is the waringham series good or meh? because I really need to read something in german again.
January 17, 2026 at 11:22 AM
is the waringham series good or meh? because I really need to read something in german again.
What are you reading? I used to be a Ken Follet guy like 15 years ago.
January 17, 2026 at 11:02 AM
What are you reading? I used to be a Ken Follet guy like 15 years ago.
They didn't happen to stumble upon a couple of shoggoths, did they?
January 17, 2026 at 10:57 AM
They didn't happen to stumble upon a couple of shoggoths, did they?
wait until you hear about middle click
January 17, 2026 at 12:45 AM
wait until you hear about middle click
If the guy has a Iraqi sim card he likely crosses the border often. The cities he mentioned are along the highway. I find it hard to believe that there is zero people who traveled between Iraq and Iran recently.
January 13, 2026 at 11:27 PM
If the guy has a Iraqi sim card he likely crosses the border often. The cities he mentioned are along the highway. I find it hard to believe that there is zero people who traveled between Iraq and Iran recently.
I feel like it's going to be the end of the age of hackers.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
I feel like it's going to be the end of the age of hackers.
Software was the one brilliant market where the rules were different. Copying data is free, so entering the market is free, and scaling from 1 to 1M users is free (compared to the marginal cost of something material). Startups and OSS contributors were out-competing large companies.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Software was the one brilliant market where the rules were different. Copying data is free, so entering the market is free, and scaling from 1 to 1M users is free (compared to the marginal cost of something material). Startups and OSS contributors were out-competing large companies.
This new age is not going to be a paradise of small players with bright ideas vibe coding their way to success. An agent can copy that. It's going to make capital to pay for training and inference the central resource, not ingenuity. There are no startups in the oil industry.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
This new age is not going to be a paradise of small players with bright ideas vibe coding their way to success. An agent can copy that. It's going to make capital to pay for training and inference the central resource, not ingenuity. There are no startups in the oil industry.
The people who wrote FOSS code did not consent to their code being used to establish corporate AI dominance over them. AI companies owe their success entirely to code published freely to collaborate and to give power to others.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
The people who wrote FOSS code did not consent to their code being used to establish corporate AI dominance over them. AI companies owe their success entirely to code published freely to collaborate and to give power to others.
[1] Yes, this is real. Even Amazon ebooks, or subscriptions to Spotify, Netflix, etc. cost more inside iOS apps. You're banned from the App Store if you tell the user about this, or try to nudge them to the website for a purchase.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
[1] Yes, this is real. Even Amazon ebooks, or subscriptions to Spotify, Netflix, etc. cost more inside iOS apps. You're banned from the App Store if you tell the user about this, or try to nudge them to the website for a purchase.
This isn't a fantasy dystopia, this is how the App Store operates. No selling digital goods without paying 20% to Apple[1], no competing with Apple products, no emulators, no browser engines (online privacy?), no p***, nontransparent policies, and arbitrary rejections and bans without explanation.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
This isn't a fantasy dystopia, this is how the App Store operates. No selling digital goods without paying 20% to Apple[1], no competing with Apple products, no emulators, no browser engines (online privacy?), no p***, nontransparent policies, and arbitrary rejections and bans without explanation.
Imagine a compiler, but you need to login with your real name, you need pay monthly fees they can raise, some kinds of uses or programs are forbidden (subject to arbitrary change), and you can be banned without explanation.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Imagine a compiler, but you need to login with your real name, you need pay monthly fees they can raise, some kinds of uses or programs are forbidden (subject to arbitrary change), and you can be banned without explanation.
Millions of people will have to fork out part of their paycheck to US companies with dubious ethics, and their livelihood will depend on them not being banned from Claude Code or whatever.
January 11, 2026 at 3:34 PM
Millions of people will have to fork out part of their paycheck to US companies with dubious ethics, and their livelihood will depend on them not being banned from Claude Code or whatever.