James Darpinian

Yes. It does take a lot of time! But it's worth the time to do a good job, because the returns are nonlinear with the quality IMO.

You want something good enough to make it on social news sites, not just for the traffic spike but because it will make search engines notice you. I have some posts that are just "here's how I solved this error message" or similar and I'm not posting those on HN but I want people searching that message to find my blog so I can help them. When I get a post on HN then over time those other posts get more search traffic.

I got my most interesting and fun job through my blog, when the CTO of a startup read a post on HN and reached out to hire me. And at that time my blog only had two posts, so it wasn't like I was a prolific regular blogger. I just had one thing interesting enough to make it on HN.

I just moved to self hosting my blog at https://james.darpinian.com and trying to post a little more often. Honestly self hosting is probably not worth the trouble. A hosted platform with a custom domain is probably the sweet spot.

modeless linked to this article earlier today:

https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption/

My current understanding of the facts:

1. Google defaults to encrypted backups of messages, as well as e2e encryption of messages.

2. Apple defaults only to e2ee of messages, leaving a massive backdoor.

3. Closing that backdoor is possible for the consumer, by enabling ADP (advanced data protection) on your device. However, this makes no difference, since 99.9% of the people you communicate will not close the backdoor. Thus, the only way to live is to assume that all the messages you send via iMessage will always be accessible to Apple, no matter what you do.

It's not like overall I think Google is better for privacy than Apple, but this choice by Apple is really at odds with their supposed emphasis on privacy.

There are at least 18 humanoid robots far enough along to have YouTube videos.[1] That's from February 2024. As far as I can tell, none have an order page where you jut enter a credit card number and get the product. It's all "pre-order", "contact sales", or just plain vagueness.

There are a lot of "really great, real soon now" humanoid robot startups.[2][3] As far as I can tell, nobody has yet deployed one in a production environment.

On the mechanical engineering side, it's likely that a drone company will have the first big low-cost product. Drone companies have people who understand sensors, balance, navigation, reliability, and weight/cost/strength tradeoffs.

[1] https://james.darpinian.com/blog/you-havent-seen-these-real-humanoid-robot-demos

[2] https://personainc.ai/

[3] https://gotokepler.com/

I got a chance to see one of the satellite trains shortly after launch, when they had barely had a chance to spread out. It looked like a continuous line of light slowly moving across a section of the sky; really an amazing sight.

Unfortunately I live in an area with a decent amount of light pollution, and haven't been able to catch a glimpse of any of the more recent trains. (Might have something to do with the dark coating they're putting on the newer satellites to reduce reflectivity.)

For those who want to give it a try, this site gives a list of optimal viewing times, complete with an animation of where and when the satellites will appear in the sky at your location: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

You're probably aware but I will just report it anyway.

On that link (https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/), there doesn't seem to be a lower bound limit on the 'polar angle' rotation. So I am able to rotate below the 'horizon' and look up to the earth's 'inner surface' (the concave side of the mesh). The trajectories dashed lines are still rendered and drawn on top of the earth's 'bottom' but are all glitchy and intermitent.

This maybe an issue with this specific implementation and not cesium itself but just thought you should know.