📰 What Americans Die From vs. What the News Talks About
A sharp reminder that attention economics distorts our sense of danger — data journalists and policymakers alike can learn much from this contrast between statistics and storytelling.
An Our World in Data study reveals a striking mismatch between U.S. media coverage and real causes of death. While heart disease and cancer are the leading killers, they receive little attention compared to rare events like terrorism or homicide. The analysis shows how media bias shapes public fears, emphasizing sensational but uncommon risks over chronic health issues.
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⚙️ Why Is Everything So Scalable?
A refreshing defense of simplicity in an age of needless architectural complexity — a must-read for engineers who value clarity over trendiness.
Stavros critiques the tech industry’s obsession with hyper-scalable, over-engineered systems. He argues that most startups don’t need microservices or FAANG-level infrastructure and would benefit more from clean, modular monoliths. The essay advocates delaying scalability work until necessary, emphasizing maintainability, development speed, and reduced cost.
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📱 FSF Launches the Librephone Project for Mobile Freedom
A milestone for digital autonomy — Librephone could become the open-source community’s answer to decades of mobile lock-in by tech giants.
The Free Software Foundation has unveiled Librephone, a bold initiative to create a fully free and open mobile operating system. Led by veteran developer Rob Savoye and funded by FSF board member John Gilmore, the project will replace proprietary firmware with open-source components. Its goal is to extend software freedom to smartphones, one of the most tightly controlled computing domains.
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🤖 Why Push for Agentic AI When Models Still Struggle with Basics?
A grounded perspective cutting through AI marketing noise — a reminder to design around current capabilities rather than futuristic aspirations.
A post on the Cursor forum challenges the hype around ‘agentic’ AI, arguing that most models can’t yet handle simple, consistent instruction-following. The author notes that while models lack true memory, tools like Cursor can emulate persistence through reference files and structured workflows.
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🩺 Ultrasound Opens a New Era of Surgery-Free Cancer Treatment
An exciting glimpse into the future of oncology — where precision physics may replace scalpels and radiation as the next frontier of cancer care.
Scientists are pioneering ultrasound therapies that destroy tumors without surgical intervention. Techniques such as histotripsy use focused sound waves to break cancerous cells apart, offering a gentler alternative to conventional treatment. Early studies combining ultrasound with immunotherapy show encouraging, though still preliminary, results.
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🧩 The DHH Problem — A Timeline of Changing Opinions
A fascinating reminder that even strong opinions in tech communities evolve with time — documentation of discourse as much as dissent.
Tom Stuart’s retrospective revisits his fluctuating views of developer David Heinemeier Hansson. Written in 2014 and revised over the years, it charts shifts in perception as DHH’s behavior evolved, serving more as a record of changing attitudes than an active critique.
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🧠 Meta Update: Lix Evolves Its Governance and Infrastructure
A strong sign of organizational maturity — Lix is setting a thoughtful precedent for open-source governance that balances agility with accountability.
The Lix team’s October 2025 update introduces a new governance model with defined contributor roles and a transition to Zulip for structured collaboration. Now hosted under AFNix, the project also addresses CI bottlenecks on macOS and calls for community participation to enhance cross-platform support. The changes aim to build transparency and long-term sustainability in the Nix ecosystem.
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💻 Drawing Text Isn’t Simple — Console vs. Graphics Performance Benchmark
A gem for performance enthusiasts — concise, data-driven insights that challenge assumptions about text rendering efficiency on Windows.
A developer benchmarks multiple text-rendering approaches on Windows, comparing console and graphical APIs such as WriteConsole, GDI, DirectX, and Vulkan. DirectX emerges as the most efficient balance between speed and flexibility. The study shows that font rendering, not the graphics API, is often the true performance bottleneck.
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