MilnerRoute

The weirdest part is it says Epstein was "found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead shortly thereafter." That just doesn't seem like the words you'd use to describe a hanging suicide. (Would you really write that the dangling body was "found unresponsive...")

That tweet has been removed.

This week Bruce Perens (who wrote the original Open Source definition) remembered talking to Steve Jobs about Open Source back in 2000.

https://thenewstack.io/50-years-ago-a-young-bill-gates-took-...

Perens had accepted a position as senior Linux/Open Source Global Strategist for Hewlett-Packard, which he describes as leaving Apple “to work on Open Source. So I asked Steve: ‘You still don’t believe in this Linux stuff, do you?'” And Perens still remembers how Steve Jobs had responded.

“I’ve had a lot to do with building two of the world’s three great operating systems” — which Jobs considered to be NeXT OS, MacOS and Windows. “‘And it took a billion-dollar lab to make each one. So no, I don’t think you can do this.'”

Perens says he later "won that argument" when Jobs stood onstage in front of a slide that said ‘Open Source: We Think It’s Great!’ as he introduced the Safari browser."

Yeah, I came here to say: Python.

Mostly because I just know it's widely used in the AI industry, and the Python community also has a lot of tools and libraries for AI functionality...

But it matches your criteria -- it's mature, easy learning curve, fast development speed...

I wrote a blog post where I'd transcribed a conversation with a non-native speaker. Someone on Reddit was convinced the mangled syntax of the written-out words meant it must be AI-generated. (I'd also used some emdashes...)

I think the real problem is people being sure they can correctly identify AI (while they're actually just guessing wrong). Honestly, I do appreciate the efforts to weed out AI-generated content. Maybe someday we'll come up with more fool-proof detectors.

In the mean time, those weren't meaningful consequences for me. But one of the big newspapers ran an article about college students wrongfully accused of using AI, and then facing academic discipline for cheating.

That link didn't work for me. But I found the same article on MSN...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/movies/there-s-no-ha...

Here's another take.

https://www.noemamag.com/the-politics-of-superintelligence/

It's mostly about AGI predictions, but it made the point that talking about "inevitability" of AI apocalypses ultimately moves resources to AI companies.

That said, I'm all in favor of tech companies offering useful retraining to the masses. (It's just that I've always seen predictions that AI will also create jobs, so I'm not ready to concede that mass displacements are inevitable...)

From that discussion...

"Unless your cat lived a significant part of it's life as an outdoor cat, it is very unlikely to have the parasite (like any parasite). Most cat to human transmission (again, minority of total transmissions) comes from stray cats infecting gardens with their feces."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45947121

There were reports this week that Tesla might actually be running fewer cars in Austin than people think.

https://electrek.co/2025/12/22/tesla-robotaxi-project-austin...

I always recommend Harvard's CS50 class. (It's online, and free - and it covers a lot of key concepts and exposes you to a lot of different languages.) Most of all, it'll give you some really good experience and the confidence that goes with it.

At some point you should start uploading your code to GitHub, and maybe trying to contribute to other Open Source projects. (I assume your goal isn't just to learn programming, but to learn it well enough to get a job?) There used to be lots of good Meetups where you could meet other programmers and network and learn new things...

The U.S. military actually promoted UFO sightings for years, as a way to cover military testing. Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal published an investigative history of it through the decades...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-fueled-ufo-rumors-decade...

The gains may be low, but they do still hold most of their value. So it's one way to at least "lock in" big gains from the last few years, and also to "wait out" and survive a major stock market drop so you can "buy the dip."

Money market funds? International indexes?

I came back today, and finally beat it. (It was fun seeing what were the final unguessed words -- like WALTZ, AFFIX, SQUAD, BAYOU. Words with anomalous patterns.)

It took 97 guesses.

I enjoyed this!

One thing you might want to take a look at. If you type in a word that it doesn't know... the game crashes.

An interesting alternative scenario...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-fueled-ufo-rumors-decade...

Roger Ebert once said that even when successful people try to focus on what advice they'd give to others, they usually just end up telling them to do what they did.

And the problem with that is they leave out how they stumbled into a lucky break -- a fluke others won't be able to repeat. (Right-place-at-the-right-time moments, unique confluences of events...) Maybe the lesson here is that people giving advice have filters they're not aware of.

I just saw Peter Thiel on TV...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgfHt52vys8&t=74s

Yeah, I'd meant to say "You don't pay taxes on that money (now)" -- so it's nice to see a lower tax bill. And when you do finally pay some taxes (in retirement), your tax rate should be much, much lower...

Set aside a few thousand bucks in an IRA.

You don't pay taxes on that money -- but also, since you're young, you can let it sit there earning interest. It'll double in value roughly every 10 years, so if you start with, say, $8,000, it'll be $128,000 by the time you're 65. (And you can also tap the money for medical emergencies or college expenses.)

Kelley Blue Book says "On average, new cars depreciate about 30% over the first 2 years, and continue to depreciate 8-12% each year after that."

https://www.kbb.com/car-depreciation/

When you factor that in, the difference between EVs and internal combustion engines looks like it's just a few thousand dollars...

Over the years I've seen cases like this where a company was unresponsive to a single account's breach.

- One user took it to the media. The bad publicity got the attention of top executives, who pressured the accounts team to resolve the situation.

- One user actually just made contact with a well-placed executive and explained the situation. (In your case, that might even be a moderator.)

Also, you're not the only person I've heard who's had trouble with Reddit's account policy. If you could find others like yourself, it'd be a more interesting story for the media, or more likely to get an executive's attention.

I wondered if it could be an "inside job". (Someone disabling 2FA just long enough to log in?) Reddit ticked off its moderators earlier this month, though I'm not sure they'd have have the power to do this.

Their graph shows a six-year period (from 2009 through 2015) where first-time job hunters had even more trouble finding jobs.

He's there signing books.

The FSF unanimously elected a new president today (their senior system administrator) who spoke earlier. They also have an executive director who spoke today...

Best advice I ever got: try to set aside a few thousand dollars in an IRA (a mutual fund for your retirement). Because you'll have 50 years for it to double, double, double, and double. Contributions are even tax-deductible -- and you can withdraw them penalty-free for medical expenses, education, and first home purchases.

Also, keep in touch with friends from college/high school. For career reasons, they can help you find jobs -- but it's also good for your mental health.

These days there's a lot of "burnout" going around. (And also "dopamine depletion".) That can make you feel mentally tired.

People usually recommend a break from work -- get offline, touch grass, maybe take a vacation. Make sure you're getting enough sleep and exercising (and eating well). And find someone you can talk to. Doing things all on your own, without talking it out with some friends, can sometimes warp perspective...

This is a lot of fun.

I'm surprised how much more difficult it is when there's three than two... They never seem to all be in the same place!