divbzero

> A decade ago, Apple began switching from trackpads with mechanical clicking mechanisms to Magic Trackpads, where clicks are simulated via haptic feedback (in Apple’s parlance, the Taptic Engine).... The Neo’s trackpad is mechanical. It actually clicks, even when the machine is powered off.

I wonder if the real clicks on mechanical trackpad will actually feel better than the simulated clicks on the Magic Trackpad.

Oh yes, typing two hyphens (--) to represent an em dash (—) is something I’ve definitely seen and used. I’ve just never seen anyone type an em dash (—) but display it as two hyphens (--).

I’ve never seen anyone intentionally render em dash (—) as two hyphens (--). The code OP used to modify Roboto is surprisingly short, almost as concise as the Norvig spellchecker that OP references. https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

> even though he specifically was looking for it

The historian was looking for conceptual connections between Ptolemy and Galileo, but the discovery of Galileo’s handwriting in Ptolemy’s book seemed to be a surprise.

There doesn’t seem to be an ulterior motive beyond “Muahaha, see the trouble I can cause!”

> The S, K combinators defined by Moses Schönfinkel on December 7, 1920, are together known to be computation universal. On December 7, 2020, Stephen Wolfram made the suggestion that S alone might also be universal.

I wonder how long in advance Stephen Wolfram first had this thought and waited until the centennial to publicize the suggestion.

So wonderful that someone at WED Enterprises chose to reply encouragingly to a 10-year-old kid. “They rejected it straight away, they don't accept unsolicited ideas” or ignoring altogether seems to be the standard legally-defensive response.

Adding the obligatory disclaimer: Berkshire Hathaway selling $1.7B of Amazon stock is likely a decision by Ted Weschler or Todd Combs, still notable but not necessarily Warren Buffett himself.

Thanks for contributing to research.

What was the “experimental season”? Why was there an experimental season vs. running RHIC all year?

An HN post earlier this week declared that “AI is killing B2B SaaS”:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46888441

Developers and businesses with that attitude could experience a similarly rude awakening.

I wonder if locals have always known about the tomb, but never realized it could be of interest on an international level.

This xkcd is featured as the maintainer’s user icon on GitHub:

https://github.com/millert

But, on the whole, the server seems to be doing well enough for something near the top of HN. The website is served by nginx and appears to be mostly static pages.

“Machine Room Temperature” from Todd C. Miller’s website:

https://www.millert.dev/therm/

Server exhaust fan temperature was typically 94°F (ranged 92°F to 96°F) over the previous week and has climbed to 97°F.

This anecdote from history feels timely given the recent shift of Apple’s iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) from being bundled with Macs to being a freemium subscription.

https://www.macrumors.com/2026/01/28/apple-updates-keynote-n...

Instead of trying to think of just any animal, I found it easier to add a constraint…

1. Animal that starts with A

2. Animal that starts with B

3. Animal that starts with C

…

(I also appreciated the easter eggs: “Are you Australian?” and “You listed both dingos and dogs, so I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but there's disagreement on whether the dingo is its own species of canid, a subspecies of grey wolf, or simply a breed of dog.”)

In another half century, will this sound like “How compilers impact the formation of assembly coding skills” sounds today?

What we could do is increase the number of IP addresses available. Just imagine if we enlarged the IP address space from 32 bits to 128 bits: Every device on the Internet could have a unique IP address!

They should have left it as “Amazon 5-Star” with nearly 5-star products.

The local Amazon Fresh is closed this afternoon with a sign reading:

  We are closed
  for the
  remainder of 
  the day.

  We apologize for any
  inconvenience. Please come
  back tomorrow during our
  normal business hours.

The extant Tower of Hercules is based on the original plans for Pharos. The Tower of Hercules stands 55 meters tall—half the height of Pharos—and has remained intact for about 2,000 years.

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

> Primary sources:

> Maskelyne’s notes: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1775.0050

> Hutton’s notes: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1778.0034

> Cavendish’s notes on his own experiment: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1798.0022

I got to reproduce Cavendish’s experiment when I was a student. Love that we can easily read the primary source today, archived and indexed by DOI.

The most avid members of the Cartographers Guilds had even proposed a Map of the Empire several times larger than the Empire itself to depict microscopic details that would otherwise be invisible. Such proposals were considered the peak of academic excess after the Study of Cartography fell out of favor.

> Want to help? Iowa land leads, ag expertise, vibe coders welcome: [email at proofofcorn dot com]

To make this a full AI experiment, emails to this inbox should be fielded by Claude as well.

My instinct is that effective AI agent orchestration will resemble human agile software development more than Steve Yegge’s formulation:

> “It will be like kubernetes, but for agents,” I said.

> “It will have to have multiple levels of agents supervising other agents,” I said.

> “It will have a Merge Queue,” I said.

> “It will orchestrate workflows,” I said.

> “It will have plugins and quality gates,” I said.

More “agile for agents” than “Kubernetes for agents”.

This looks like a marketing campaign to me too. It makes sense to just give users an option: In fact, users can already turn off AI in DDG search results by clicking the settings icon on the top right corner of the Search Assist panel.

One of Wikipedia’s greatest contributions is collecting records like this that wouldn’t appear in a traditional encyclopedia.

The article also mentions a 50% subsidy up to $310,000. The details aren’t spelled out, but subsidies like this often phase out gradually to avoid a cliff at the threshold.

Or alternatively:

> I would UDP joke tell you a… but you get it might not.

The game dynamic feels a bit like Wordle: One puzzle per day and different solutions that you can compare with others.