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> Most software, once mature, is mostly done.

The caveat being that most software never matures. Maybe it's a cynical take, but virtually all software I use regularly is updated at least once a month. Right now, I'm using Chrome, and I see the "Relaunch to update" button waiting for me to press it. I see the arrow on the Ollama icon telling me I have to relaunch it to apply updates. I have Visual Studio Code running next to my browser, and two extensions need to be restarted to apply updates.

But at least somebody is maintaining that software.

jimmaron The Rise and Fall of the Plasma Screen

I have a 20-year-old 46" Panasonic plasma TV that still works great. My favorite thing about it is the perfect picture no matter the viewing angle. I was reluctant to buy a new TV for years because for many LED TVs, the picture faded as soon as you move away from being directly in front of the TV.

jimmaron 1 in 8 cancer cases worldwide are caused by infections, study finds

> And the rise of far-right contrarian governments that use fear to destroy trust in institutions and gain votes are the main cause. Billionaires financing far-right governments end costing the lives of their citizens that will have poorer physical health.

I'm old enough to remember when Trump was recommending the Covid vaccine and democrats were fear mongering about it. Trump was even booed at his own rallies for promoting the vaccine.

jimmaron Fed hikes rates as inflation worries push up bond yields

So, you're aligned with President Trump who wants to cut rates, then?

jimmaron Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

The sad truth is that many citizens want a closely surveilled world. Flock delivers the product they want.

Imagine a shooting took place in the downtown area of a major city next week that lacked cameras. Do you think people would praise that city's respect for their citizens' privacy? Or would people blame the city leaders for not keeping the citizens safe?

jimmaron AI boosted homework scores, then exam scores dropped: study

In my professional career, my employers give me a lot more assignments than exams.

jimmaron Being ambitious and being a dad

I like the sentiment from Hitchens that we choose our regrets. Being an absent father was not something I was willing to regret. I know it has cost me some degree of earning potential and career progression. I wouldn't change anything.

jimmaron Hop.earth – OpenStreetMap based car racing game

Nice! I flew by my childhood home a few times. My request would be to let it fly slower. I wanted to look around but passed by everything too quickly.

jimmaron Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

I searched for "ophthalmologist," got a list of results, and made an appointment. Only later did I discover that my search engine had shown me results for "optometrist" instead of the term I searched for. It was not helpful. The optometrist could not provide the care I needed and it was a waste of time and money. That experience added to my distrust of search results.

jimmaron Show HN: Bento - An entire PowerPoint in one HTML file (edit+view+data+collab)

Nice work!

But...I added an image to see what options it gave me. There was no way to add alt text, which leads me to believe that accessibility was not a priority. Unless passing accessibility checks is a feature, this isn't something I could use.

jimmaron Podman v6.0.0

Quadlets and rootless containers are two major reasons I'll be switching from Docker to Podman.

jimmaron Project Glasswing: An Initial Update

People predict that in 50 years, no human will be driving a car, and people will be shocked that we let humans drive cars manually. Coding may be the same. So many vulnerabilities in code written by very competent programmers. Manually building large, complex systems without major bugs or security vulnerabilities seems to be a nearly impossible challenge.

jimmaron Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare

Don't we all inherently know that government surveillance will constantly increase over time if we give in? In theory, we could achieve a "happy medium," but the same access used by a thoughtful law enforcement agency are the same tools that a fascist government would use to suppress dissent or other "wrong" thinking.

jimmaron Palantir employees are starting to wonder if they're the bad guys

Seems analogous to employees of a missile manufacturer being upset that their missiles were used for their intended purpose.

jimmaron NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist

I'm not disputing the designation.

Per the US Code [1]:

> The term "supply chain risk" means the risk that an adversary may sabotage, maliciously introduce unwanted function, or otherwise subvert the design, integrity, manufacturing, production, distribution, installation, operation, or maintenance of a covered system so as to surveil, deny, disrupt, or otherwise degrade the function, use, or operation of such system.

My reading of the situation is that the relevant parts of that statute would be the "distribution" or "operation" of their systems as to "deny" or "disrupt" the "operation of such system." I.e., the Pentagon is afraid that Anthropic won't let them use their stuff.

[1] https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim...

jimmaron NSA is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist

First of all, what "blacklist?" The article puts that in the title, but never explains anything about a blacklist.

> The National Security Agency is using Anthropic's most powerful model yet, Mythos Preview, despite top officials at the Department of Defense — which oversees the NSA — insisting the company is a "supply chain risk," two sources tell Axios.

I find the article confusing. My impression of the "supply chain risk" wasn't that Anthropic's products themselves were risky, but that the Department of Defense would be at risk if they could not use Anthropic's products. Like, of course the NSA wants to use it. They are fearful about not being able to use it.

jimmaron Stop Flock

I followed the shooting at Brown University last year very closely. Brown's leadership was heavily criticized for having camera blind spots and not being able to track the shooter's exact movements through campus. I can understand why people with stewardship over the safety of their students/customers/constituents would make decisions to err on the side of tracking. I'm not saying I agree with it, but I understand it.

jimmaron EFF is leaving X

So just talk to the people who you think already agree with you?

jimmaron Alzheimer's disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers (2024)

One of the first signs that a somebody has Alzheimer's is that they'll get lost. E.g., they've been attending church on Thursdays nights at the same chapel for 15 years, but suddenly they forgot how to get home after a recent service. Part of the reason for the findings in the current study is that people quit those professions when they feel themselves starting to struggle.

jimmaron Go hard on agents, not on your filesystem

From the home page:

> Stop trusting blindly

> One-line installer scripts,

Here are the manual install instructions from the "Install / Build page:

> curl -L https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/snapshot/jai.tar.gz | tar xzf -

> cd jai

> makepkg -i

So, trust their jai tool, but not _other_ installer scripts?

jimmaron Lego's 0.002mm specification and its implications for manufacturing (2025)

I've never regretted buying Legos for my kids. Yeah, the kits can be expensive, but they last forever. We've thrown out or donated lots of old toys, but the Legos will never be given away.

jimmaron Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, interactive worlds

As a kid in the early 1980s, I spent a lot of time experimenting with computers by playing basic games and drawing with crude applications. And it was fun. I would have loved to have something like Google's Genie to play with. Even if it never evolved, the product in the demos looks good enough for people to get value from.

jimmaron Prism

I've wasted hours of my life trying to get Latex to format my journal articles to different journals' specifications. That's tedious typesetting that wastes my time. I'm all for AI tools that help me produce my thoughts with as little friction as possible.

I'm not in favor of letting AI do my thinking for me. Time will tell where Prism sits.

jimmaron Comma openpilot – Open source driver-assistance

Seeing things like, "<h2 id="new-driving-model">New driving model</h2>" on their list of latest releases does not inspire a lot of confidence. Yes, the HTML tags are displayed on the page. Some basic quality assurance on the website would help me trust the quality assurance applied to their product offering.

https://comma.ai/openpilot

jimmaron Exercise can be nearly as effective as therapy for depression

I took meds for depression a few years ago. I don't know that they did anything other than signal to myself that I wasn't ready to give up. They may have served as a kind of "dumbo's feather" that helped me get through a rough patch. Exercise might be similar. People who choose to exercise make the statement to themselves that they are worth doing something positive for. Some mental health problems resolve with time and without medication, and in those cases, exercise might be a great way to address them. But if you're struggling, call your doctor and make and appointment. Medication is sometimes the answer.

jimmaron Sugar industry influenced researchers and blamed fat for CVD (2016)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7598063/

> Carbohydrate overfeeding produced progressive increases in carbohydrate oxidation and total energy expenditure resulting in 75-85% of excess energy being stored. Alternatively, fat overfeeding had minimal effects on fat oxidation and total energy expenditure, leading to storage of 90-95% of excess energy.

Also, it's just not true that consumed fat must be turned into sugar before entering the bloodstream. See https://med.libretexts.org/Courses/American_Public_Universit...

jimmaron Databases in 2025: A Year in Review

> "The Dominance of PostgreSQL Continues"

It seems like the author is more focused on database features than user base. Every metric I can find online says that MySQL/MariaDB is more popular than PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL seems "better" (more features, better standards compliance) but MySQL/MariaDB works fine for many people. Am I living in a bubble?

jimmaron Linux is good now

I'm slowly de-Microsofting my computing. I've traded OneDrive for Syncthing. I ditched one PC for a Mac. I have the technical skills to run Linux effectively, but the biggest obstacle for my Linux adoption is distro fatigue. Run Ubuntu? Debian? Fedora? PopOS? Kubuntu? Arch? The article introduced yet another one to consider--Bazzite.

The Linux world is amazing for its experimentation and collaboration. But the fragmentation makes it hard for even technical people like me who just want to get work done to embrace it for the desktop.

Ubuntu LTS is probably the right choice. But it's just one more thing I have to go research.

jimmaron IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off

I don't know that I'd trust IBM when they are pitching their own stuff. But if anybody has experience with the difficulty of making money off of cutting-edge technology, it's IBM. They were early to AI, early to cloud computing, etc. And yet they failed to capture market share and grow revenues sufficiently in those areas. Cool tech demos (like the Watson Jeopardy) mimic some AI demos today (6-second videos). Yeah, it's cool tech, but what's the product that people will actually pay money for?

I attended a presentation in the early 2000s where an IBM executive was trying to explain to us how big software-as-a-service was going to be and how IBM was investing hundreds of millions into it. IBM was right, but it just wasn't IBM's software that people ended up buying.

jimmaron Markdown is holding you back

Markdown is the minimum viable product. It’s easy to learn and still readable if not rendered in an alternate format. It’s great.

For making PDFs, I’ve recently moved from AsciiDoc to Typst. I couldn’t find a good way to get AsciiDoc to make accessible PDFs, and I found myself struggling to control the output. Typst solves all of AsciiDoc’s problems for me.

But in the end, no markup language will make you write better. It’s kind of like saying that ballpoint pens are limiting your writing, so you should switch to mechanical pencils.