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Welcome to Trumpistan

Vanity Fair's February 2017 feature "Welcome to Trumpistan" portrays a gilded, combative presidency led by generals and cronies. It questions whether the setup resembles a junta, noting cabinet picks like Wilbur Ross, Steven Mnuchin, a climate-denier EPA head, and a Putin-connected oil executive at State. The piece calls the "Thank you" tour a victory lap, argues the swamp is drained but filled with dangerous figures, and warns of a new normal of hate. It ties Trump's base to working-class boomers left behind by tech and recession, and highlights family branding (Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric).

Rev Up the Viral Factories

Could not summarize article.

Leaked Chats Expose the Daily Life of a Scam Compound's Enslaved Workforce

WIRED reveals a whistleblower’s files from a Southeast Asian “pig butchering” scam compound in Laos, exposing forced labor, debt bondage, and harsh fines used to控 workers who are also victims. About $500/month, passport seizure, and “compensation” payments trap staff, with penalties for minor infractions and room/meal deprivations. Bosses deploy surveillance, quota-driven discipline, and an “AI room” for deepfake video calls to victims. The operation has moved toward Cambodia amid raids, showing modern slavery masked as a corporate workplace.

Stop Using Pseudo-Types

The article argues against PHP’s pseudo-types callable and iterable, explaining they’re not true types but runtime-validating unions (callable: Closure|string|array; iterable: historically array/Traversable). It traces callable’s history, notes limitations (properties can’t be typed as callable; runtime determination is incomplete). It explains iterable's evolution to a union type (Traversable|array in PHP 8.2) and warns about misuse for function returns. The author advocates explicit types (use Closure instead of callable, prefer generators/iterators over iterable) and using static analyzers like PHPStan for robustness.

Apple's MacBook Pro DFU port documentation is wrong

Apple’s DFU-port guidance for Apple‑silicon MacBook Pros is wrong. Apple says the 14‑inch MBP with M4/M5 uses the rightmost USB‑C port as the DFU port (facing left), and all other models use the leftmost. The author, with a 16‑inch MBP M4 Pro, found the DFU port is the right-side USB‑C port. This mislabeling affected updating an external disk. Following Michael Tsai’s advice, plugging the disk into the left-side port allowed macOS 15.7.3 to install. The piece calls for correcting the documentation.

Building a Telegram Bot with Cloudflare Workers, Durable Objects and Grammy

Motivated by a personal water-tracking app (Drinky), the author built a Telegram bot using Cloudflare Workers with Durable Objects as per-user storage and grammY. They chose a new, low-friction stack: Cloudflare, DO, and real-time webhooks. Key lessons: expose localhost with Cloudflare Tunnel, set the bot webhook via Telegram, register commands dynamically with setMyCommands after wiring the bot, and always call handleUpdate to process updates in a serverless env. For timezone handling, they avoided AI and used tz-lookup from user location. Other tooling includes oxc, Vitest, drizzle (beta). Conclusion: a fun, educational, elegant solution.

NPR and PBS Never Needed Your Taxpayer Dollars

Could not summarize article.

Contracts in Nix

Yvan Sraka’s post introduces contracts for Nix, a library that adds runtime validators and lightweight types to Nix expressions. It lets you annotate legacy code with types via validators and a declare-based syntax, and enforce them with a contract function (returning the value or a recoverable error with a trace). It supports primitives and compound types (e.g., Url, Not Null, tuples), integrates with mkOption/NixOS options, and can be installed as a flake input or via channels. It’s a work in progress with debugging benefits and opt-out options.

Show HN: Sandbox Agent SDK – unified API for automating coding agents

Sandbox Agent provides a universal HTTP/SSE API to control autonomous coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Amp) inside sandboxes. It abstracts agent-specific APIs, enabling one interface to run agents, stream real-time events, and persist transcripts in storage. Features: universal agent API, streaming events, universal session schema, human-in-the-loop, automatic on-demand agent installation, and cross-sandbox compatibility. Server runs as a Rust binary; can run embedded or server mode; offers TypeScript SDK and OpenAPI spec. Supports swapping agents by config, remote control from UI or apps, and extensibility to other sandboxes.

Two kinds of AI users are emerging

AI users split into two camps: 'power users' who actively adopt AI tools (often non-technical, e.g., finance pros using Claude Code) and those who mainly chat with ChatGPT. Enterprise Copilot is criticized for poor UX, slow performance, and rigid IT policies, risking cynical executives and wasted spending. Smaller companies thrive by running Claude Code locally, integrating Python, APIs, and data, turning a single user into a lightweight data-science capability. The future of work favors small teams building AI-assisted workflows with API access and secure sandboxed agents; large incumbents risk falling behind.

Ian's Shoelace Site

Access to the page is forbidden (HTTP 403).

In the Lab – Soldering Prototypes with Enamel Magnet Wire

Author prefers soldering enamel-coated magnet wire for prototype boards over breadboards. Describes a 6-step process: burn off 1–2 mm enamel with the iron, tin the end, route and cut to length, bend away, re-boil enamel on the free end, and solder to the pad; tweezers help for the second end. Moves from through-hole resistors to 0603 SMD resistors for prototyping. Setup includes 26 AWG enamel magnet wire, a cheap hot-air station, a PCB holder, wire-tip cleaner, a magnifying lamp, helping hands, a multimeter, and other inexpensive tools; invites comments.

Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors

Notepad++ was hijacked via an infrastructure-level compromise at its hosting provider, allowing attackers to intercept and redirect update traffic to malicious manifests. The attackers targeted the Notepad++ domain to exploit weak update verification in older versions; the activity is attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored group. The compromise began June 2025; timelines vary (provider says access lasted until Dec 2, 2025, possibly ceased by Nov 10). The site migrated to a new host; the updater now verifies certs and signatures, with XML signed and enforcement in v8.9.2. Users should rotate credentials and update WordPress sites if any.

Allowlisting some Bash commands is often the same as allowlisting all

Allowlisting Bash commands with Claude Code can effectively enable full command execution because code edits, generation steps, and file watchers can trigger arbitrary commands (e.g., go test, go generate, eslint, make, pnpm run, docker). The article argues that limiting commands is fraught and hard to quantify, given tools are designed to run developer code. As a remedy, it advocates sandboxing: Cursor sandbox mode (sandbox-exec), Claude Code’s Sandbox Bash, devcontainers, and Codex/agent sandboxes, plus caution to sandbox watchman processes and consider host permissions.

History and Timeline of the Proco Rat Pedal (2021)

History and Timeline Of The ProCo RAT Pedal traces the RAT from its Bud Box origins in 1978 to current variants, detailing design by Scott Burnham and Steve Kiraly and a decades-long evolution of circuits and enclosures. It covers major milestones: 1979 Fringe Logo V1-A through later cosmetic V1-B/C/D; 1981 V2 (Filter) changes; 1984 White Face and 1986 Black/No Brackets; 1988 RAT2 LED; 1989 TurboRAT; 1991 Vintage Reissue; 1997 Roadkill/BRAT; 2002 Deucetone; 2008 RAT2 Chinese Slope; 2010 White Face reissue; 2014 FATRAT; 2021 Lil' RAT; plus myths (LM308 vs OP07, tantalums, Woodcutter) and notable users.

Typechecking is undecidable when 'type' is a type (1989) [pdf]

The page reports an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests error, caused by the client sending too many requests in a short period, served by Apache Tomcat/7.0.109.

Actors: A Model of Concurrent Computation [pdf]

Please try again later.

Show HN: Wikipedia as a doomscrollable social media feed

Xikipedia is a demo pseudo social feed that shows Simple Wikipedia content using a simple local non-ML algorithm that learns what you engage with, without data collection or sharing. It runs on your device and data disappears when you refresh or close the tab. Source code is on GitHub; discuss on the fediverse, Bluesky, or Twitter. You can pick categories or add your own. Content from random Wikipedia articles may be NSFW, so continue only if you're an adult.

Building Your Own Efficient uint128 in C++

An x64, unsigned, fixed-width 128-bit type (u128) built from two 64-bit limbs that aims to match __uint128_t in performance. The article shows explicit carry/borrow math using intrinsics: _addcarry_u64 for addition, _subborrow_u64 for subtraction, and _mulx_u64 (or MSVC's _umul128) for 64×64 multiplication, keeping only the low 128 bits. Equality uses XOR-based checks; unsigned comparison uses borrow to avoid branches. Includes a small demo, cross‑platform notes (Clang/GCC focus, MSVC/PowerPC caveats), and outlook to extend to larger widths.

Time Machine-style Backups with rsync (2018)

Sam Hewitt explains Time Machine–style backups using rsync. By comparing a user’s data dir with the latest backup and using rsync --link-dest, it creates incremental, timestamped snapshots stored on a separate drive while avoiding duplicate data. A shell script builds a new backup, updates a current symlink to the newest snapshot, and a cron job runs daily (e.g., 5am). The method minimizes space with hard links, but deleting old snapshots should be carefully done and a full backup is recommended before proceeding with incremental ones; credit to Mike Rubel.

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