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The Hidden Engineering of Niagara Falls — Practical Engineering

The Hidden Engineering of Niagara Falls — Practical Engineering

✨ Read this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: 💡 Key idea: [Note that this article is a transcript of the video embedded above.]Niagara Falls is one of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world. With a vertical drop of more than 50 meters or 164 feet and a flow rate that often exceeds 2800 cubic meters per second or 100,000 cubic feet per second, it’s one of North America’s crown jewels. Roughly ten million people visit the falls every year just to catch a glimpse of the curtains of water pouring over the edge and the constant…
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cdb: Download

💥 Read this trending post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: 💡 Key idea: cdb: Download To download and unpack the latest version of cdb: wget -m https://cdb.cr.yp.to/cdb-latest-version.txt version=$(cat cdb.cr.yp.to/cdb-latest-version.txt) wget -m https://cdb.cr.yp.to/cdb-$version.tar.gz tar -xzf cdb.cr.yp.to/cdb-$version.tar.gz cd cdb-$version Then install and test. Archives and changelog (reverse chronological) cdb-20251021.tar.gz browse Add support for cdb64 (at least on 64-bit platforms). Support ./configure, ./configure --prefix=..., and make install. Switch almost all internal integers to num, defined as long long. Replace various uint32, fmt, scan functions with num functions. For tests, avoid depending on csh; depend on ulimit instead of softlimit; increase limit to…
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Anti-science bills hit statehouses, stripping away public health protections built over a century – National

Anti-science bills hit statehouses, stripping away public health protections built over a century – National

🔥 Discover this trending post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: 📌 Here’s what you’ll learn: More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year, part of an organized, politically savvy campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law. An Associated Press investigation found that the wave of legislation has cropped up in most states, pushed by people with close ties to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The effort would strip away protections that have been built…
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“Butt breathing” might soon be a real medical treatment

“Butt breathing” might soon be a real medical treatment

✨ Read this awesome post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: ✅ Here’s what you’ll learn: And Oxycyte was ideal for the group’s 2021 Ig Nobel-winning efforts. The experiments involved intra-anally administering oxygen gas or a liquid oxygenated perfluorocarbon to the unfortunate rodents and porcines. Yes, they gave the animals enemas. They then induced respiratory failure and evaluated the effectiveness of the intra-anal treatment. The result: Both treatments were pretty darned effective at staving off respiratory failure with no major complications. Credit: Cincinnati Children's/Med So far, so good. The next logical step was to determine if EVA could work in…
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How we rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres

How we rewrote OpenFGA in pure Postgres

🚀 Explore this must-read post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: ✅ Here’s what you’ll learn: TL;DR: We rewrote parts of OpenFGA in pure Postgres to make it easier to keep our authorization system up-to-date with our main database. Everything is available on GitHub.In software engineering, ‘auth’ is a bit of a loaded term. It’s generally used to describe the process of both authenticating users (determining who a user is) and authorizing users (determining what they’re allowed to do).Authentication (often referred to as ‘authn’) is pretty much a solved problem when you’re writing a user-facing application. There are cookie-cutter solutions…
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“Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.” | Lawfare

“Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.” | Lawfare

✨ Read this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: 💡 Key idea: Watch Anna Bower discuss this article with Lawfare Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Wittes on Lawfare's YouTube here.It was 1:20 p.m. on the afternoon of Saturday, Oct. 11. I was lounging in my pajamas, idly scrolling through Netflix, having spent the morning reading news stories, occasionally tweeting, and watching TV. It was a rare day off.Then my phone lit up with a notification. I glanced down at the message.“Anna, Lindsey Halligan here,” it began. Lindsey Halligan—the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia—was texting me. As it turned out, she was texting me…
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The Greatness of Text Adventures

🚀 Check out this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: 📌 Main takeaway: I have played a few text adventures the past months, and here’s a brief excerpt from one4 The Dreamhold; Andrew Plotkin; self-published; 2004. Playable online.. This transcript begins when we have exited the starting area, and just begun to explore what lies beyond. CURVING HALL, WEST END The curving corridor ends here, in a blank plaster wall relieved by a single window. The window looks out on a strange subterranean prospect to the west. You can return east, pass through the archway to the north,…
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The Programmer Identity Crisis ❈ Simon Højberg ❈ Principal Frontend Engineer

The Programmer Identity Crisis ❈ Simon Højberg ❈ Principal Frontend Engineer

🔥 Explore this insightful post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: 📌 Here’s what you’ll learn: I am a programmer. A coder. A keyboard cowboy. A hacker. My day is spent punching keys; catalyzing code. It’s fun; it’s my identity. The editor, Vim, is my workshop, my sanctum1. Here, I hone my craft, sharpen my tools, expand my capabilities through curiosity, and for a while, escape into a trance-like flow. A full-screen terminal window with nothing between me and thought but INSERT mode. At the altar of Bram2, I spin reality’s yarn out of thin air into bits beaming through…
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heiwiper’s website

heiwiper’s website

💥 Explore this trending post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: ✅ Key idea: heiwiper's website I was reading a post about Jujutsu version control system the other day and that just made me realize how awesome is Magit! Published Oct 15, 2025, Updated Oct 15, 2025 I’ve been hearing a lot about Jujutsu VCS lately, and when I say a lot I mean maybe 5 times this year. But that is a lot for a new VCS I would say. The article I came across mostly goes through the flexibility of Jujutsu VCS over Git , or at least…
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Smart Mattresses Go Rogue and Ruin Sleep Worldwide

Smart Mattresses Go Rogue and Ruin Sleep Worldwide

✨ Check out this trending post from Hacker News 📖 📂 Category: 💡 Key idea: In the grand tradition of tech outages turning everyday life into a farce, Monday's massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) disruption didn't just take down Snapchat, Roblox, and Fortnite - it left thousands of sleep-deprived users sweating bullets in their own beds. While the world scrambled to reload their feeds, owners of Eight Sleep's high-tech Pod3 mattress covers discovered a chilling reality: their "smart" sleep sanctuaries had no offline mode. Zero. Zilch. In a world where even your fridge can survive a Wi-Fi blackout, who knew…
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