Ian Duncan

The way tech companies constantly do stuff that nobody asked for really tells you a lot about their bigger ideology. They tell themselves that you will like it over time. What they mean is you’ll learn to endure it, or you’ll give up. quality of UI is not actually anywhere on their radar

Is pinsa pizza?

The 12 Weirdest Pizzas in Japan Sausage? Peperoni? What’s...

Yeah I mean, after living in Japan, anything is pizza now bondlingo.tv/blog/the-12-...

if you can't observe it, it isn't actually impure.

Obviously, treating tomato as a vegetable here for sake of argument

Swedish banana pizza and Hawaiian pizza: two northern countries independently decided fruit belongs on pizza, with Sweden going absolutely feral (banana, curry powder, peanuts). At least Canada's Hawaiian used a vaguely pizza-adjacent flavor profile.

Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz Amnesty International, interviewing migrant detainees, identifies use of the confinement box. There can be no denying it is a torture prison

They're using the confinement box, one of the most horrific methods of CIA torture in the post-9/11 black sites, against migrants now. This is the direct result of the lack of consequences for the architects of the torture program. Either there will be criminal penalties for this or it will expand.

As an American living outside of the U.S.A., I am legally obligated but truly don’t want to pay taxes, so…

Anyways, truly not trying to argue, just saying that seems like it would muddy the waters quite a bit.

That seems counterintuitive to me. My understanding of political donations (when limited to to a certain amount per person or corporations,) is that the purpose is to either solidify or unseat current political power. If your group is incumbent and you're meanwhile giving 2x to the current govt...

For example, if anti-trans or anti-immigration legislation is passed... or major increases to the budget of the military occurred, it might disincentivize making political donations?

Just seems like it really muddies the waters regarding whether or not donations are a good idea?

At risk of being overly negative here, doesn't that discourage donating when a party you strongly disagree with currently controls the budget?

Yeah but don’t you remember the time that the Nazis spent a lot of money with IBM????

Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted

Would you support nazis or just let it slip

theonion.com/aunt-on-face...

‘End-to-end encrypted’ smart toilet camera is not actually end-to-end encrypted | TechCrunch Kohler, the makers of a smart toilet camera, can access customers' data stored on its servers, and can use customers’ bowl pictures to train AI.

‘End-to-end encrypted’ smart toilet camera is not actually end-to-end encrypted techcrunch.com/2025/12/03/e...

You’re absolutely right — you are Pagliacci. It would certainly be difficult for you to attend your own performance! I should not have given such paradoxical advice, and I apologize deeply for the error. There is no excuse for my failure.

Not a bad idea!

LMAO this is like if the McCarthy trials targeted Marilyn Monroe

Ha, well this is our 3rd child, so I think we have an idea of how it goes. I have quite a long leave, too.

T-Minus 10 days until the baby is supposedly due. My wife, understanding me deeply as a person knows that I will end up working on programming projects despite being on parental leave from work.

What would be the coolest thing to build for the Haskell ecosystem that doesn't exist yet or is bad?

4 panel comic Panel 1: Red Guy looking way way too happy yells “Hey Guys! Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?” Blue Guy next to him calmly says “Shhh” Panel 2: Blue Guy tenderly puts his arms around Red Guy and says “You don’t have to do this” Panel 3: Blue Guy still holds Red Guy tightly and repeats “You don’t have to do this every year”. Red Guy begins to break. Panel 4: Red Guy dissolves into Blue Guy’s embrace, sobbing. He finally feels the weight of Christmas Discourse lifting from his shoulders. He is finally free.

i’m setting you free. i’m releasing you from the discourse

I just don't need to know what the Telegraph has written about Dungeons & Dragons. It's a newspaper for people who are frightened of samosas.

I'm now going to tell you about why it's so clever: www.iankduncan.com/engineering/...

“But people would simply not read the FAQ,” said Toad.

“That is true,” said Frog.

Why did nobody ever tell me how cool the Punycode algorithm is. It’s so frickin clever.

I’m not in it, but Facebook likes to push a group as a recommendation called “The Dull Men’s Club”. It’s men who ascribe to being dull posting things they think are interesting. I find some of it interesting.🧐

Thanks, will give it a look!

Pretty pleased to have a few of my blog posts from the last few weeks turn up on the front page of Hacker news in the same day!

Ahead of launching a war on Venezuela, the US would like to announce that no one in Venezuela should help US forces, it'd be stupid to do so, the US will denigrate you and screw you over no matter how much you help, and blame you if even one Venezuelan who also helped the US ever does something bad.

CRDTs are the data structures that make “Google Docs-style collaboration, but for arbitrary data” possible. I've had a lasting fascination with them for about 11 years.

So, I wrote up a field guide that is hopefully a handy introduction. With interactive examples!

iankduncan.com/engineering/...