Hacker News Reader

I have started adding a footnote superscript to my first use of an emdash in any document. The footnote is just:

"1. All emdashes on this page were written by me."

StoneAndSkyon US national debt surges past $39 Trillion

I will never forget, and neither should you, that the last time we had a budget surplus, instead of doing _anything_ useful with it, the Republicans decided the best thing to do was to send everyone a check in the mail.

Among the useful suggestions of what to do with it, besides pay down the debt: Keep a slush fund in case of an unexpected war. (This was a few weeks before 9/11.)

StoneAndSkyon Robert Duvall has died

I don't remember it being a "sleeper"; I recall it stirring quite a bit of controversy at the time. It came out in the pre-Columbine "Going Postal" era. But agreed: it's worth a watch.

StoneAndSkyon Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)

In 1995, our art teacher used a full week of class time to screen this for us, for no other reason than she felt it was an incredible film that deserved a wider audience. She was right.

StoneAndSkyon Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections

Agree with everything being said here.

However, it is no longer even remotely paranoid to be concerned that the current administration plans to do one or more of:

1. Put its thumb on the scale by "guarding" urban polling places with paramilitary forces on election day,

2. Declare mail-in ballots illegitimate and seize them,

3. Seize voting machines or attempt to stop vote counts before all votes are counted,

4. Intimidate state legislatures by threats or economic blackmail to disregard results.

I don't see an alternative to trying to figure out how to make online voting secure. That won't solve (4) but it will at least mitigate some of the more direct methods of election fraud.

StoneAndSkyon Presidential Immunity in the United States

Thanks to Roberts and McConnell, the United States has a Presidential "Purge" window:

The President can "officially" suborn the murder of anyone, and as long as there is insufficient time for an impeachment trial or he leaves office before the act is discovered or he is charged with impeachment, cannot be held accountable for it by any means.

StoneAndSkyon Make images smaller using best-in-class codecs, right in the browser

I love Squoosh. I have used it since it launched.

However, IIRC, Squoosh was built largely by Surma and Jake; or maybe they were just the "face" of the project. Either way, at one point it even had a CLI.

Since their departure from Google, the CLI project was abandoned and it feels like the web app is as well.

As is usual Google things, I think it's a matter of time until some PM discovers squoosh.app, and asks "What's this?" and then the thing gets killed.

Perhaps this HN post will be the thing that does it.

StoneAndSkyon CSS now has an if() conditional function

The People have spoken, and they want squircles.

StoneAndSkyon Peter Thiel's Apocalyptic Worldview Is a Dangerous Fantasy

Would that the mainstream press had treated the Gawker episode as the five-alarm free speech fire that it was.

StoneAndSkyon The (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh

It exists: XMAG https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/XMAG/

> The index aims to provide a comprehensive and balanced representation of the U.S. equity market by including the largest 500 publicly traded equity securities, while specifically excluding the seven largest technology companies commonly referred to as the “Magnificent 7”.

Up 12% in the last year. Unfortunately, it's ten times as expensive (0.35%) as a straight S&P 500 ETF (e.g. VOO, 0.03%).