Martin Kleppmann

Still didn’t explain where in your household you might find 4% acetic acid solution though. And if you have to ask an AI anyway, they might as well have just used the word “vinegar”, so at least the English-speakers wouldn’t have to consult the AI

Same photo as before, but now showing the heading above the first panel

It’s the instructions for “drop of liquid above five triangles in random orientations, separated by a horizontal line”, which I can only guess means “cleaning”

My wife teaches chemistry at A-level and she said that they don't cover it in school, it only comes up at undergraduate level

Not an unreasonable guess, given that "AcOH" is like "AlcOHol" with a few letters missing

Even if you search Google, you will be told about acetic acid or ethanoic acid, and it’s still a bit of a step to realise that 4% is the typical concentration of that acid in household vinegar

Photo of instructions for an egg cooker. In the first panel, you are instructed to pour 30ml of “4% AcOH” and 30ml of an unspecified liquid (assumed to be water) into the device.

Our new Philips egg cooker came with no textual instructions, only pictorial ones. How many people without a chemistry degree are likely to figure out what “4% AcOH” means?

(Spoiler: it means “vinegar”)

Interesting, but also the funniest bit is the deadpan “the trigger for the CPU spikes both times was our CEO logging in. We re-deployed to get a clean start, permanently banned him from the service, and moved on.”

We haven't looked into post-quantum options yet, but that would be an interesting next thing to try

What's the "mnemonic" from which it deterministically derives keys? If it's long and random, users will forget and lose it. If it's short and memorable, the keys are insecure because the entropy is too low.

See Section 5.1. It’s quite different — the biggest difference is that iCloud recovery is vulnerable to social engineering, which Kintsugi is not

Yes, it's very similar – we only found out about Juicebox at the end of the project, otherwise we'd have probably just used it

Kintsugi: Decentralized E2EE Key Recovery Kintsugi is a protocol for key recovery, allowing a user to regain access to end-to-end encrypted data after they have lost their device, but still have their (potentially low-entropy) password. Exist...

📄✨ New paper! Emilie Ma (kewbi.sh) and I looked at the problem of users of end-to-end encrypted apps recovering their private keys if their device is lost, broken, or stolen. We found a cryptographic approach that is decentralised and resilient against social engineering arxiv.org/abs/2507.21122

Please don't plug keyboards or other devices into random USB ports, ok?

Nice that the Bluesky firehose is now becoming a live dataset on which to demo streaming databases

Oh yes, those are great. Another:

So don’t shade your eyes
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize
Only to be sure always to call it please “research”

Automerge Community Call · Luma ☀️ Automerge Community Call Kickoff! 🌿🍉 Celebrate the season and kick off something new with our new Automerge Community Call! We’re gathering for a relaxed,…

Monthly @automerge.org community calls start on 20 August, hosted by @patternist.xyz and @expede.wtf lu.ma/zv6tpuu4

(A lyric in “We will all go together when we go” tomlehrersongs.com/we-will-all-...)

“Just sing out a Te Deum / when you see that ICBM” is one of my favourite rhymes of all time

R.I.P. Tom Lehrer

RIP Tom Lehrer: a wonderfully talented lyricist, songwriter and pianist.

In 2022 he released all his songs into the public domain. You want to record them, remix them, even sell them? Go ahead. They're on tomlehrersongs.com - audio, lyrics, PDFs of the sheet music. Free, in every sense of the word.

Automerge TypeScript Maintainer Industrial research lab working on digital tools for creativity and productivity

Do you write TypeScript? Enjoy Automerge? Love building both tools and community? You might be a great fit for our ✨new✨ Automerge TypeScript Maintainer role!

www.inkandswitch.com/jobs/automer...

(Remote role, 🇬🇧 UK-based preferred but not required)

Make our voice heard at Apple’s encryption hearing What's at stake? Your photos of your kids. Your bank statements. Your payslips. Your CV. Should you be able to store these important items safely and securely in the cloud or should the Government be ...

Support @openrightsgroup.bsky.social making a legal intervention at the hearing of the tribunal on the case of Apple's Advanced Data Protection being undermined in the UK action.openrightsgroup.org/make-our-voi...

I first wrote up the idea for this 6 years ago, but it took a huge amount of work to actually turn it into reality. Thank you to Orion for the heavy lifting, and all the other Automerge contributors for making it happen!

Automerge 3 is here: the heart transplant is complete! Huge improvements in memory usage and (in most cases) correspondingly big performance improvements too. Backwards compatible on disk and the network so there's no reason not to upgrade today: automerge.org/blog/automer...

I find it deeply weird seeing “air conditioning will destroy the planet” takes when its usage coincides with high solar generation.

Maybe we could focus on not burning gas - a fuel source that will never coincide with cheap, clean generation - in millions of homes?

Red graffiti that says: “SIR STARMER” IS A TORY IN A RED TIE

Blue graffiti that says: BE PROUD OF WHO YOU ARE ❤️

Orange graffiti that says: STOP LETTING POLITICIANS THAT DONT CARE ABOUT US BACK INTO OFFICE

Surprisingly polite graffiti at the local skate park

I didn't realise our local-first essay (www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-...) has been on Hacker News at least eight times over the years news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4447...

However, it suggests that this characteristic may be a prerequisite for their success (according to that definition). In other words, it might be a necessary, but not sufficient, characteristic. And that is still a useful insight.

Next, regarding survivorship bias. If you look at a bunch of successful people (for some definition of success) and observe that they all have some characteristic, that clearly does not mean this characteristic is some sort of guarantee of success.

On a smaller scale, raising a child to be a kind and responsible adult is success. The author's personal conception of success is having the freedom to homeschool his daughter while making a living writing essays. He's hardly peddling get-rich-quick schemes.