jimmar

AWS already documents a solution to self-host a NAT instance: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/work-with-n...

People might be fleeing public schooling because lawmakers are dictating what happens in the classroom. There are lots of good teachers who struggle with the resources given to them and the constraints imposed on them.

At home, parents can be flexible. They can let their kids use AI when appropriate or discourage its use. They don't have to wait for legislators to get involved. If there is a great math book, parents can just buy it instead of waiting for some committee to evaluate it.

> IBM anticipates that the first cases of verified quantum advantage will be confirmed by the wider community by the end of 2026.

In 2019, Google claimed quantum supremacy [1]. I'm truly confused about what quantum computing can do today, or what it's likely to be able to do in the next decade.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/technology/computing/google-and-nasa-ac...

I installed it, entered one prompt, clicked the "Proceed" button, and got "Model quota limit exceeded."

Those quota limits brought me back down to earth quickly.

I respect Troy Hunt's work. I searched for my email address on https://haveibeenpwned.com/, and my email was in the latest breach data set. But the site does not give me any way to take action. haveibeenpwned knows what passwords were breached, the people who breached the data knows what passwords were breached, but there does not seem to be any way for _me_, the person affected, to know what password were breached. The takeaway message is basically, "Yeah, you're at risk. Use good password practices."

There is no perfect solution. Obviously, we don't want to give everybody an easy form where you can enter an email address and see all of the password it found. But I'm not going to reset 500+ password because one of them might have been compromised. It seems like we must rely on our password managers (BitWarden, 1Password, Chrome's built-in manager, etc.) to tell us if individual passwords have been compromised.

Per https://www.truthwave.com/legal/terms-of-service

> 8.6 Indemnification. If you behave in a way that gets us in legal trouble, we may exercise legal recourse against you. You agree to indemnify, defend (if we so request), and hold harmless TruthWave and our officers, directors, suppliers, partners, and agents from and against any third-party claims, demands, losses, damages, or expenses (including reasonable attorney fees) arising from (a) the content you post or submit, (b) your use of the Services (c) your violation of these Terms, or (d) your violation of any rights of a third party. Your indemnification obligation will survive the termination of these Terms and your use of the Services.

So if I submit a tip to TruthWave, and they get sued, I'm on the line to pay for TruthWave's legal defense? Yeah...no.

Conservatives want to cut taxes to force liberals to cut spending. Liberals want to increase spending to force the conservatives to increase taxes. But voters don't like increased taxes (on themselves) or decreased spending. So we end up with the worst of both worlds--higher spending without the tax revenue to afford it. Then we get to watch each side win the war of opinion on cable news. They throw each other under the bus, eventually come to a deal, and both sides claim victory. Rinse. Repeat.

U.S. government debt is the safest investment you can make today. If you "write if off" by simply telling debt holders you won't pay them, you'd make U.S. government debt the most unsafe investment possible. Nobody would ever buy U.S. government debt. That, and peoples' pensions and other retirement accounts that hold U.S. government debt would be hammered.

Gateway timeout, 504 host error. I can't access the article about an outage because of an outage. Reliability is hard, apparently.

My company has been ahead of all of this by causing outages in our own data center without waiting for the cloud to do it for them.

On a serious note, resiliency takes effort and investment no matter where you host your content.

> What's the point of this story? Bad actors win?

Know your contracts. Read the fine print. Be careful who you do business with. Not all companies selling services for open source software embrace the ethos that we assume they do.

After reading the story, I can understand why somebody would not name and shame. The author could be inviting lawsuits from a company that clearly has no qualms playing dirty.

> there is no information in a rejection.

The most helpful job interview I had was when the interviewer broke script and just leveled with me about how I wasn't presenting myself well. There was a shared connection (our alma mater) that must have convinced him to be straight with me instead of hiding how poorly I was doing behind a mask. The HR handbooks say that you should never let a candidate know why they were not selected, but that information can be extremely helpful.

If you're not getting offers, I strongly recommend that you find somebody you trust to do a mock interview. Let them critique your resume, cover letter, posture, awkwardness, lame handshake, etc.

> Until about 20 years ago, very little civilian communications were encrypted. Ten years before that, virtually no civilian communications were encrypted.

It does not feel like the world is a more dangerous place than 30 years ago. I need to see evidence that crime is increasing because of encryption before taking arguments against encryption seriously.

The article compares 2025 prices to 2019 prices. We've had high inflation building upon high inflation for the past several years, so I'm not shocked that prices are higher. We might as well ask where the $1 menu went at fast food restaurants. Yesterday's prices are long gone.

I suppose your target audience knows what “bending” means, but I had to google it after visiting your site. Maybe a sentence or two on your site explaining what bending is, or a demonstration on your intro video, would be helpful.

I don't think transparency requires additional bureaucracy. I would also be a fan of removing requirements that the NSF align its mission with whichever political party is in power.

In 2023, the NSF said it gave 9,400 research awards at an average of $239,700 each [1]. That's $2.25 billion. That year, the NSF has a budget of $10.5 billion [2]. Can somebody with more insight into the NSF explain where the NSF money goes?

My PhD was largely funded through government grants, though not the NSF. To put it mildly, our government contacts were not the most competent people and were frequently roadblocks rather than enablers. There were many opportunities to streamline processes that would help researchers spend more time researching and less time on bureaucratic overhead.

[1] https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/04_fy2025.pdf?Versio...

[2] https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2023/appropriations

I entered "meat" and it matched "chicken" as a correct answer. "Ham" was also a correct answer that I failed to guess. In my mind, both "chicken" and "ham" fall under the "meat" category. If a guess is not specific enough to differentiate between two possible correct responses, I think you should mark it incorrect.

> and requires officers to legally certify that the report was checked for accuracy.

I think that part of the bill should be enough. I'm fine with policy officers using AI to pull in details about locations, check for accuracy, etc. But officers must be accountable for the accuracy of what ends up in the report.

1. US GDP estimated GDP in 2024 is $29 trillion. According to your first source, U.S. Federal Spending was 23% of GDP. If that were reduced to the 2014-2019 average of 20%, that would trim $870 billion from federal spending. That seems like good progress toward avoiding a potential debt crisis.

2. Reduce defense overall and make the process of getting money to the needy more efficient.

3. No comment. Healthcare is mess.

4. Taxes on corporations, like tariffs, are just passed onto consumers. I'm in favor of tax reform, but thinking that taxing corporations is a way to stick it to rich people is shortsighted, IMO.

> Wow. So hard power -- literally killing others -- is OK

I'm not sure where you read that in my comment. That's not something I wrote, and it's not something I believe.

There's a big difference between sending a foreign country vaccines and organizing protests in foreign countries to further a political or economic agenda. I'm all for the former, not the latter.

> the US completely destroyed its soft power this week

Soft power sounds like manipulation to me. So if we destroyed our manipulation, great. The United States has put its fingers on too many scales rather than respecting the rights of individuals in other countries to manage their affairs the way they see fit.

I welcome tech competition from Europe. Let the best products and services win.

Apparently 18 years old is old enough to be handed a rifle and sent into war but not access a database.

Anybody have the actual source of the list? It purports to be from a program officer, but how do we know?

I visited St. Peter's Basilica a few years ago. I highly recommend it.

I had to exit the experience because my laptop (admittedly a few years old) could only give me 1-2 frames per second. I love the idea, but in the current state, viewing hi-res pictures would give you a better experience than this virtual 3d tour, IMO.

I was a middle schooler in the 1990s when I first used QModem. My dad found a list of BBSs from the local newspaper and I dialed them up with my trusty 14.4 modem. It felt like unlocking a secret world.

My pet theory is that buying drugs requires a level of personal interaction that many young people now avoid.

I taught a college class this year and asked students to recall their first memory of using a computer. With very few exceptions, their first experience was gaming. It was eye opening for me to see how important gaming is to get people introduced to technology. And in my opinion, more effort should be made to gamify the learning math, reading comprehension, critical thinking, etc.

I talked to an ROTC cadet about recruiting this past week and I mentioned how easy it was to be disqualified. She told me it comes down to the military not wanting to be responsible for your death. E.g., if a soldier with depression enlists, there's a much higher chance of that solider taking their own life. Basically, poor health (mental or physical) means poor metrics.

Like in many things in life, follow the incentives. Recruiters tell people to lie on the medical forms because that boosts the recruiters' metrics. But somebody with a high rank doesn't want unhealthy troops because they'll be grilled if those troops aren't fit for battle, or worse, take their own lives, so they may keep arguing for stringent health screening criteria.