Hackers' Pub is a place for software engineers to share their knowledge and experience with each other. It's also an ActivityPub-enabled social network, so you can follow your favorite hackers in the fediverse and get their latest posts in your feed.
PBS: Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2025 is AI ‘slop’
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/merriam-websters-word-of-the-year-for-2025-is-ais-slop
Of course, many people come to these conversations so convinced that no shared meaningful measurement is ever possible, they would prefer to say: all measures are always going to be subject to goodhart's law
I don't believe that, though. I think for most of us, if you're going to take a medicine you will want to know how many people were helped or died after that medicine was administered. Measurement is necessary. I do understand we may have reasonable disagreements about the when and how
I explicitly think that we should take seriously the way that measurement operates as a social lever and USE THAT
This is not remotely controversial if you're someone who's worked in policy. Here is an example:
I see so much ableism laundered through narratives about people, especially disabled people, not trying hard enough, being "lazy" or doomerist about our capabilities, and failing to adopt a positive outlook toward the expectations heaped on us by abled-normative society.
exploring the range of one's ability is a good thing - and also, the default assumption should be that we're already trying as hard as we can until proven otherwise.
because we probably are.
生まれましたよ
tis the season
Well, you can't say you weren't warned.
"Super secure" MAGA-themed messaging app leaks everyone's phone number https://lobste.rs/s/gtpvpi #security
https://ericdaigle.ca/posts/super-secure-maga-messaging-app-leaks-everyones-phone-number/
We are discontinuing the dark web report
Link: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/16767242?hl=en
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46275316
brigadon (mastodon fork that only federates one day every 100 years)
Sure, I could pay attention to the barrage of emails about my expiring mastodon domain for the last few weeks and not let it expire. but where's the fun in that
寒い！寒すぎる！！！！
Node.jsのセキュリティリリースは18日に変更になったらしい
Node.js — Thursday, December 18, 2025 Security Releases : 👀
---
https://nodejs.org/ja/blog/vulnerability/december-2025-security-releases
The Monster Wants To Eat Me
My entire body is electrified after watching this weird-ass Yuri about a girl who’s all alone and the apparent mermaid who says she is going to eat her…someday.
It’s SOOO soft and suggestive and lesbian. Holy shit. Im watching it like “No! Please eat me now!”
so after being bedridden for 16months due to a hernia, I've finally got my surgery!
now I'm bedridden for recovery, which is at least a great improvement.
I'm still about 2000$ away from paying all my storage bills, so if you've got a couple dollars, it'd help me get through this last stretch. Thanks so much!
AG’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People Cold Case Unit secures first conviction https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-s-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-people-cold-case-unit-secures
Essential Semiconductor Physics [pdf]
Link: https://nanohub.org/resources/43623/download/Essential_Semiconductor_Physics.pdf
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46256643
Get in, loser, we're going shopping. #Cats #CatsOfMastodon
已經要離開了才發現房間有一扇大窗戶 www
Chafa: Terminal Graphics for the 21st Century
Link: https://hpjansson.org/chafa/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46278208
神が爆発している 
Heute bei Hugendubel vorbeigeschaut. Die Bestsellerwand ist uebersät mit Europahass und Kulturkampf. Kann das alles nicht mehr sehen.
Man, the Discord spam problem is getting *bad* lately. Feels like unfortunate design that new members to a server are allowed to send out mentions in every channel…
Lijiang City, #China
A stack composite photo shows the starry sky during the Geminid meteor shower, one of the most spectacular of the year, which reached its peak on Sunday.
Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock
Linfen, #China
An aerial drone photo shows a view of the snow-covered terraces in north China’s Shanxi province.
Photograph: Xinhua/Shutterstock
Nazaré, #Portugal
João Chianca of Brazil rides a wave during a World Surf League big wave challenge session.
Photograph: Filipe Amorim/AFP/Getty Images
Nagaon, #India
A golden langur, a rare monkey species, inside the Burapahar range of Kaziranga national park.
Photograph: Anuwar Hazarika/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Deir al-Balah, Gaza
Displaced Palestinians receive meals distributed by a charity organisation in the Nuseirat camp as the food crisis continues due to restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid.
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
A member of the Palestinian Civil Defence participates in a search and rescue operation in a destroyed house that collapsed amid heavy rains, in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
A drone view shows rainfall creating new waterfalls during Storm Byron in Qumran near the Dead Sea in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
Congolese civilians arrive at a reception center in Gatumba, a police camp near the border post that temporarily shelters people who fled renewed tensions between M23 rebels and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC), in Gatumba, #Burundi. REUTERS/Evrard Ngendakumana
Southeast Asia in World History by Craig Lockard, 2009
Here is a brief, well-written, and lively survey of the history of Southeast Asia from ancient times to the present, paying particular attention to the region's role in world history and the distinctive societies that arose in lands shaped by green fields and forests, blue rivers and seas.
Technology, Energy and Warfare in Evolving Geopolitics by Sandeep Tripathi & Kirill Sablin, 2025
This book puts forward a new conceptual framework for emerging geopolitics through the lens of technology, energy, and warfare. Drawing on rich case studies from across the globe, it illuminates how power dynamics are being fundamentally reshaped across nations, governments, international organizations, and individuals.
#books
#nonfiction
#geopolitics
#technology
#energy
#warfare
The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity by Tim Wu, 2025
Tech platforms manipulate attention, extract wealth, and deepen inequality. In this new book, Tim Wu (The Attention Merchants) explains how we can reclaim control and create a balanced economy that works for everyone.
![“The magic of Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction is its simplicity. Wu deftly breaks down one of the greatest challenges of our age—the unaccountable power of tech platforms—into such digestible pieces that the solutions for what to do become dead obvious. Essential reading.”—Karen Hao, author of Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI
"It’s not just in your head—your online life is draining your wallet.... [The Age of Extraction is] a sharp and eye-opening introduction to how we arrived at platform capitalism—where no good click goes unmonetized.”—Kirkus Reviews](https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/720/611/278/596/798/original/7c70bea2d616b525.jpg)
2/
As tech pundit Jeff Jarvis wrote in 2009, “small is the new big.” He wrote that “a tiny start-up can become a manufacturing company using somebody else’s factory and distribution while selling to a worldwide market. […] Any of us can start a highly specialized and targeted media company using blog software. […] The Lilliputians have triumphed. The economies of scale must now compete with the economies of small.”
Tim Wu
In the spring of 2024, Apple briefly ran an extraordinary advertisement. It depicted various instruments of cultural achievement—books, a record player, an upright piano—all being crushed by a giant press. A trumpet, on its end, was twisted and bent; a piano collapsed, and paint cans exploded. By the end, everything had been magically reduced into a single device—an iPad—which was described as “the thinnest Apple product yet.”
AG’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People Cold Case Unit secures first conviction https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-s-missing-and-murdered-indigenous-women-and-people-cold-case-unit-secures
The Body Digital: A Brief History of Humans and Machines from Cuckoo Clocks to ChatGPT by Vanessa Chang, 2025
A dazzling tour of the history of technology and its complex relationship to the human body
What is the relationship between our bodies and our senses and technology? In today's world of blinding technological change, of artificial intelligence and deepfakes and Chat GPT, it is easy to forget that we have always had complicated relations with technology
#books
#nonfiction
#technology
The Australian Wars by Rachel Perkins et al, 2025
It is estimated up to 100,000 people died in the frontier wars that raged across Australia for more than 150 years. This is equivalent to the combined total of all Australians killed in foreign battles to date. But there are few memorials marking these first, domestic wars.
Setting Up org-pomodoro in Doom Emacs (Hyprland + Fedora)
I've been suffering from distraction lately, so in addition to editing my /etc/hosts file so that I can't visit my distraction sites of preference, I've gone back to using a Pomodoro timer via org-pomodoro.
Let's look at how I set this up.
Note: I use Hyprland and Fedora. There may be some
https://curtismchale.ca/2025/12/15/setting-up-org-pomodoro-in-doom-emacs-hyprland-fedora/
#LinksOfInterest #emacs #orgpomodoro #pomodoro
檀|真弓 [Mayumi]
Euonymus sieboldianus var. sieboldianus
まゆみの実 しのびやかなる 紅さして はぜて幾日 いまだこぼれず
[Mayumi no mi shinobiyaka naru beni sashite hazete ikunichi imada koborezu]
The fruits of Mayumi, which had quietly turned crimson, ripened and split open several days ago, yet they still have not fallen.
By 小宮 良太郎[Komiya Ryōtarō](Tanka poet, 1957-1966)
via konjaku
my eyes — no longer eyes
but stars
finely scattered across the sky
my skin — no longer skin
the snow outside the window
clung softly to the ground
my love — lush
with roots
my deep dark
love
the scorched ground cracks dully
A poem by Halina Poświatowska (translated by Agata Szymańska)
via metamorphesque
In the end,
we are all made of moments
we couldn't keep—
hands we didn’t hold long enough,
words we didn’t say in time,
love we thought would last forever.
But what remains
is softer than memory .
and heavier than pain—
it is the quiet truth that they shaped us
even after they were gone.
—Whispered Ink
via bluelady127
Gemini Meteors over Snow Capped Mountains
Where are all of these meteors coming from? In terms of direction on the sky, the pointed answer is the constellation of Gemini. That is why the major meteor shower in December is known as the #Geminids -- because shower meteors all appear to come from a radiant toward Gemini.
Jeff Atwood
Alice I. Cecile
❄ 
phildini
Tom Casavant
Paul Cantrell
@
