Hacker NewsSaturday, January 3

The internet has deteriorated from a realm of creativity and learning into attention-farming platforms that extract value rather than serve users. Like automobiles, web technologies initially enhanced human capacity but became industrialized systems that society must serve instead. The author advocates for returning to a convivial web that prioritizes human flourishing over corporate extraction.

Ghostty uses GitHub Discussions instead of direct issue creation. Users must start discussions first, which maintainers convert to issues once problems are clearly identified and actionable. This approach stems from experience showing most reported "bugs" are actually misunderstandings or feature requests.

Users debate whether the Reddit whistleblower post is genuine or fabricated fiction. Key skepticism centers on contradictory security measures (burner laptop vs revealing resignation timing), overly convenient access to sensitive financial data for a backend developer, and emotionally charged language that seems designed for engagement rather than authentic disclosure.

A freelance writer realized his comfortable work-from-home life had left him socially isolated despite having friends online. Though previously skeptical of community due to its potential to constrain independent thinking, he recognized he needed local connections. After successfully organizing birthday drinks, he began hosting monthly gatherings for interesting people, creating a regular social community that solved coordination problems and provided consistent face-to-face interaction.

FracturedJson is a family of utilities that format JSON data to be human-readable while remaining compact. It keeps arrays and objects on single lines when they're not too long or complex, aligns similar structures like tables, and writes long arrays with multiple items per line. Available as browser formatter, .NET library, JavaScript package, and VS Code extension.

This Danish study followed 8,659 women vaccinated against HPV as girls from 2017-2024, examining cervical samples for HPV infections. Among vaccinated women, HPV16/18 prevalence remained very low (0.2-0.4%) across three consecutive samples over 7 years, demonstrating stable long-term vaccine protection. However, non-vaccine high-risk HPV types were present in about 30% of samples. The research provides real-world evidence supporting the effectiveness of HPV vaccination and suggests less intensive screening may be appropriate for vaccinated populations.

Finland detained the cargo ship Fitburg and its 14 crew members after a critical undersea telecommunications cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged. The ship, flagged under Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with crew from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, was found with its anchor chain lowered near the damage site. Finnish authorities are investigating the incident as criminal damage and aggravated interference with telecommunications. This follows a pattern of at least 10 undersea cable incidents in the Baltic Sea since 2023, which some officials attribute to Russia's hybrid warfare, though Russia denies involvement.

The author has been using Beancount to track personal finances in plain text files for 10 years, maintaining over 45,000 lines of financial data across 16 files with about 10,000 transactions. They spend 30-45 minutes monthly importing bank statements, created importers for German banks, and wrote a book to help newcomers. They value having financial data in plain text format on their own machine rather than in external services.

On January 1st, Public Domain Day celebrates works entering the public domain due to expired copyrights. This year welcomes notable works including William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying," Langston Hughes' "Not Without Laughter," Agatha Christie's "The Murder at the Vicarage," Hermann Hesse's "Narcissus and Goldmund," and the 1930 film "All Quiet on the Western Front." Different countries have varying copyright terms, with works by authors who died in 1955, 1975, or works published in 1929 now becoming freely available depending on local copyright laws.

This article presents comprehensive performance benchmarks for Python operations, ranging from nanosecond-level basic operations like attribute reads and dictionary lookups to millisecond imports and database operations. It includes memory usage data for various Python objects and data structures, providing developers with essential timing and memory consumption numbers to make informed decisions about performance-sensitive code optimization.