Red_Tarsius

I knew it was coming but I didn't expect my post to age so fast! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027642 Less than a week a go I praised AI chatbots for their lack of intrusive content. It's the number one reason I'm a plus subscriber to ChatGPT. I hope they won't force me to seek out an alternative LLM experience.

Cybersecurity is not my main field but this sounds beyond suspicious.

> Berulis [...] and his colleagues grew even more alarmed when they noticed nearly two dozen login attempts from a Russian Internet address (83.149.30,186) that presented valid login credentials for a DOGE employee account — one that had been created just minutes earlier. Berulis said those attempts were all blocked thanks to rules in place that prohibit logins from non-U.S. locations.

> “Whoever was attempting to log in was using one of the newly created accounts that were used in the other DOGE related activities and it appeared they had the correct username and password due to the authentication flow only stopping them due to our no-out-of-country logins policy activating,” Berulis wrote. “There were more than 20 such attempts, and what is particularly concerning is that many of these login attempts occurred within 15 minutes of the accounts being created by DOGE engineers.”

Somehow each paragraph reveals something even worse than the last.

> Berulis [...] and the associate CIO were informed that “instructions had come down to drop the US-CERT reporting and investigation and we were directed not to move forward or create an official report.” Berulis said it was at this point he decided to go public with his findings.

New readers might enjoy the tale of Emperor Sh and the Traveller: https://sanctum.geek.nz/etc/emperor-sh-and-the-traveller.txt

I feel too many people conflate /pol/ with the whole website. I enjoyed browsing through sfw boards like /tg/ (tabletop media), /ck/ (cooking) and /fit/ (fitness). I had long discussions about the SW sequels on /tv/ back in 2015-19. The readership was surprisingly diverse and the anonymity lead users to provide more focused replies. With bodybuilding.com gone, the blue boards felt like the last bastion of the old internet.

The advancements in medical science alone make the comparison a non-starter. 200 years ago, around 40% of children died before the age of 15±. Any fracture, cold or bruise could devolve into a matter of life and death. And good luck coping with a deteriorating eyesight or tooth pain. Most of your diet consisted of whatever crops didn’t fail that year. Most workers had no rights and only limited ownership: farmers paid rent or labor services to the nobility in exchange for their right to survive off that land! Pre-industrial processing facilities – like a tannery or a forge – were not bound by workplace safety regulations. Before the newspaper and modern means of transportation, you had no way to witness a world different than your immediate sorroundings. Your 'culture' was whatever the village you were born into believed in. If you didn't fit in, you didn't get second chances: your community was your safety net in case of permanent injury or illness. In a way, individualism is a byproduct of the industrial revolution.

± Sweden, 1750-80: https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past

Because the US is the de-facto leader of the Free World, the wealthiest country in the Western hemisphere and the winner of the Cold War. Heavy Lies the Crown. Especially when it's about fighting the deadliest infectious disease known to man.

For context: Tuberculosis treatment requires strict, months-long medication adherence. Even a brief disruption means patients may not complete their courses, allowing drug-resistant TB to emerge. These strains are far harder and more expensive to treat, spreading across borders and undoing decades of progress.

I believe most people feel like this. Don't chalk it up to "the crisis of the 30s". That's media-talk. That's years of movies and tv series teaching you that men looking for purpose after 30 are somehow cringe. If there's one bit I want you to take away is: never gaslight yourself. You feel like your job is fake because IT IS fake. Chances are, your work is boring, repetitive and meaningless just as you described. For all the material comforts and advances in health-care, there's something deeply unsettling about the modern world. My advice is to accept that, on some level, happiness is about taking care about your biological needs. Go back to basics: do you sleep well and long enough? What is your diet comprised of? How often do you have sex? Do you practice any sport? How much time do you spend in nature? When you feel truly alive, you also feel less pressured to find a purpose. At the same time, you will be mentally and emotionally equipped to seek one.

My 20s were a shitshow. My advice might sound trite and obvious but I've seen what happens when you don't optimize your life around those values. Lack of sleep was the worst one bar none and I'm still paying the price for it.

It was a real problem. I used to keep hundreds of bookmarks I felt forced to check out, tag and archive. It was mentally draining and time consuming. I was never satisfied with the way I sorted them and I would often move them around, trying new categories and labeling strategies. Overall, I likely spent more time managing bookmarks than reading their content. It wasn't sustainable and I ended up deleting most of them.

Now I keep it to the bare minimum:

1) Favorites bar: up to 10 websites I visit on daily basis.

2) Inspiration folder: where I put things I like. 330 as of today. Website layouts, painters, dev blogs, Youtube videos, anything that has good vibes. That's the only criteria. I make it an effort not to add any subfolder. The only exception is "Favorite projects" which is my little Hall of Fame for quality content. https://ciechanow.ski/ is up there.

3) Trashcan folder: where I place temporary bookmarks I don't care about and will delete in the next few days.

I periodically export my bookmarks so I don't feel guilty when I delete entries from the browser. You could do the same. Put the exported files in a usb stick and forget about them.

I have used Lua a long time ago and I don't remember ever touching C/C++. You can even make simple games without ever going low level thanks to https://love2d.org/! If I recall, most https://stabyourself.net/ games are based on Love2d.

If you're using Linux/MacOS, you can copy-paste these commands on the terminal and you should be settled:

  curl -L -R -O https://www.lua.org/ftp/lua-5.4.6.tar.gz
  tar zxf lua-5.4.6.tar.gz
  cd lua-5.4.6
  make all test

You should find the lua executable inside the lua-5.4.6/src folder.

Agree on what? OP didn't even know the bare minimum (who's the author, what did the author write) to speak up on the subject. You're saying that a pebble is "more or less" like a mountain. OP dismissed an entire philosophy with a quip while your sources are telling a more nuanced – and actually different – point of view.

That's a complete mischaracterization of the stoic philosophy. I don't even know where to begin and I don't have the time to write a detailed comment now so I just want to make a few points:

1) That quote comes from his private diary. We don't know if he ever meant to share those ideas to total strangers. If you read it, you'll find that many passages are open to misinterpretation because we lack the historical context and it feels like it was written for an audience of one. He didn't choose the title "meditations", it's just what the translators and scholars used to refer to his collected works.

2) Marcus Aurelius likely didn't write that quote from the luxury of his own palace. Those writings come from his time at the frontlines of the Marcomannic Wars which lasted almost as long as his own reign. The bulk of his writing was probably written in modern Serbia.

3) Many stoic role models are anything but quiet. They die for what they believe in. They understand their own role, accept their fate (amor fati) and pursue it to the end. Cato the Younger died as a political martyr against Caesar.

4) Epictetus is another major figure in stoic philosophy. He was a disabled slave from modern Turkey. He shares many of the viewpoints expressed by the emperor, which is why stoicism is such a compelling philosophy. For something to inspire both the rich and poor, the strong and weak, there must be something to it.

I just saw this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT9mrbIxeBE and it sounded like an interesting topic to bring on HN. I didn't know about the "Cancer Alley" in Louisiana, but I figure most countries have their own alleys of death. I live in Italy and Taranto is notorious for this reason. The city was home to one of biggest steel producers in Europe. The local economy revolved around the steel plant, but people from the sorrounding neighbourhoods have suffered from abnormally high rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses for decades. After a trial which shed light on the environmental disaster, the government seized the plant in 2012. Long story short, its fate has been in a limbo since then.

I haven't played the original, but Lode Runner: The Legend Returns is one of my favorite games of all time. The later levels can be very challenging and I don't remember ever reaching the final stage but it was an addicting experience. You can download a faithful remake of Legend Returns here: https://mmr.quarkrobot.com/. Highly recommended!