The Bee That Everyone Wants to Save My neighbour has 50 hives, the road has 30 more. That's 4 million honeybees, and not one of them is the bee that actually needs saving.

Fascinating – and alarming 🐝:

“The Bee That Everyone Wants To Save”, ‘The Naturalist’ (naturalist.bearblog.dev/the-bee-that...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752...

#Bees #HoneyBees #BumbleBees #Insects #Environment #Pollination #BeeKeeping #BeeHives #BeesColonies #Flora

More interesting discussion in the HN comments:

“Why Are Executives Enamored With AI But ICs Aren’t?”, John Wang (johnjwang.com/post/2026/03...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4754...

#AI #LLMs #SoftwareEngineering #Executives #Management #Business #ICs #Leaders #Quality

“An Incoherent Rust”, ‘BoxyUwU’ (www.boxyuwu.blog/posts/an-inc...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4749...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/i0cskl/inc...

#Programming #PLDI #Rust #Traits #Compilers #Syntax

The Math That Explains Why Bell Curves Are Everywhere | Quanta Magazine The central limit theorem started as a bar trick for 18th-century gamblers. Now scientists rely on it every day.

This 👇🏽 doesn’t actually try to explain the Central Limit Theorem – bummer:

“The Math That Explains Why Bell Curves Are Everywhere”, Quanta (www.quantamagazine.org/the-math-tha...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4740...

#Mathematics #Probability #Statistics #Math #BellCurves

“Wayland Set The Linux Desktop Back By 10 Years”, Omar Roth (omar.yt/posts/waylan...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4744...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/5pkjai/way...

#Linux #Wayland #X11 #XOrg #Graphics #Desktop #Unix #Display #Rants #X #Compositor #LinuxDesktop

A nice survey of #ProgrammingLanguages that allow you to omit semicolons:

“No Semicolons Needed”, Terts Diepraam (terts.dev/blog/no-semi...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4747...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/09wmcz/no_...

#Programming #PLDI #Parsing #Lexing #Syntax #Grammar #Compilers

More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use.

Goodhart’s Law in action 🙄:

“More! More! More! Tech Workers Max Out Their A.I. Use.”, The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2026/03/20/t...).

H/T: Dare Obasanjo

#AI #AITokenUsage #GoodhartsLaw #Metric #TokenMaxing #LLMs #Measure #FakeProductivity #Waste #Dashboard #Leaderboard #Work

“Why Craft-Lovers Are Losing Their Craft”, Hong Minhee (writings.hongminhee.org/2026/03/craf...).

Via Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/vxsjiv/why...

On HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4747...

#Craft #Capitalism #Programming #AI #LLMs #AIAssistedCoding #Productivity #Tedium #Craftsmanship #Quality

I'm OK being left behind, thanks! Many years ago, someone tried to get me into cryptocurrencies. "They're the future of money!" they said. I replied saying that I'd rather wait until they were more useful, less volatile, easier to use...

💯:

“I’m OK Being Left Behind, Thanks!”, Terence Eden (shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/03...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4745...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/ghtnpx/i_m...

#FOMO #JOMO #Career #Work #LLMs #AI #Grift #TrendChasing

An ode to bzip The story goes like this. ComputerCraft is a mod that adds programming to Minecraft. You write Lua code that gets executed by a bespoke interpreter with access to world APIs, and now you’re writing co...

“And Ode To Bzip”, Alisa Sireneva (purplesyringa.moe/blog/an-ode-...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4737...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/ub7a5k/ode...

On /r/programming: old.reddit.com/r/programmin...

#Bzip #Compression #BWT #BurrowsWheelerTransform #LZ77 #Gzip #Text #Raves

Wonderful:

“Celebrating Tony Hoare’s Mark On Computer Science”, Bertrand Meyer (bertrandmeyer.com/2026/03/16/c...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4742...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/tr5qdg/cel...

#RIP #Obituary #ComputerScience #TonyHoare #CARHoare #CompSci #CS

#Instagram not even bothering to explain *why* they’re retiring end-to-end encryption for messages is the real #WTF part 🧐:

help.instagram.com/491565145294...

#AI training? #Ads targeting? Govt snooping? WHAT? 😠

On HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4736...

#E2EE #Privacy #Meta #Messaging

Impressive:

“Writing My Own Text Editor, And Daily-Driving It”, Joshua Barretto (blog.jsbarretto.com/post/text-ed...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4733...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/ufczx8/wri...

#Programming #Projects #Editor #TextEditor

Willingness to look stupid is a genuine moat in creative work Looking foolish is underrated.

I’m good at the first part, but not the second – help! 😩

“Willingness To Look Stupid Is A Genuine Moat In Creative Work”, Sharif Shameem (sharif.io/looking-stupid).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4730...

#Advice #Reputation #Inhibition #Life #Creativity #SelfHelp

Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It

“Coding After Coders: The End Of Computer Programming As We Know It”, The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/m...).

On HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4734...

#Programming #Coding #AI #LLMs #VibeCoding #AIAssistedCoding #Work #Productivity

Tony Hoare (1934-2026) Turing Award winner and former Oxford professor  Tony Hoare passed away last Thursday at the age of 92. Hoare is famous for quicksort, ALGO...

R.I.P. C.A.R. Hoare 😢:

“Tony Hoare (1934-2026)”, Computational Complexity (blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2026/03/tony...).

On HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4732...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/lyktdk/ton...

#Hoare #RIP #Obituary #ComputerScience #CS #CARHoare #TonyHoare

Grief and the AI Split TL;DR: AI-assisted coding is revealing a split among developers that was always there but invisible when we all worked the same way. I've felt the grief too—but mine resolved differently than I expect...

“Grief And The AI Split”, Les Orchard (blog.lmorchard.com/2026/03/11/g...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4735...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/wssz9m/gri...

#AI #Craft #LLMs #Programming #Career #Work #Craft #Grief #Loss #Coding

We mourn our craft I didn’t ask for this and neither did you. I didn’t ask for a robot to consume every blog post and piece of code I ever wrote and parrot it back so that some hack could make money off o…

Being a software engineer is about more than just writing code, but that’s the funnest part 😕:

“We Mourn Our Craft”, Nolan Lawson (nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/w...).

On HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692...

#Programming #LLMs #GenAI #Obsolescence #AI #SoftwareEngineering #Career

A Venerable and Time-Tested Guide | Los Angeles Review of Books Peter B. Kaufman reviews the 18th edition of “The Chicago Manual of Style.”

A #review of the 18th edition of the venerable “Chicago Manual Of Style”:

“A Venerable And Time-Tested Guide” [2024], The Los Angeles Review Of Books (lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-ve...).

#Books #BookReviews #Style #StyleGuide #Writing #ChicagoManualOfStyle

Font Rendering from First Principles Learn what it takes to build a font renderer from scratch in C.

Whatay deep-dive 👌🏽👇🏽:

“Font Rendering From First Principles”, Brendan McCloskey (mccloskeybr.com/articles/fon...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4693...

#Fonts #Typography #FreeType #FontRendering #Text #ComputerGraphics #Graphics #Splines #BezierCurves

A well-balanced take (contrast with breathless paeans or vicious takedowns of AI):

“My AI Adoption Journey”, Mitchell Hashimoto (mitchellh.com/writing/my-a...).

On HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4690...

On Lobsters: lobste.rs/s/87rudf/my_...

#AI #AgenticCoding #AIAssistedCoding #Programming

I *so* want to travel once again across Japan. 😩

What happened to Fry's Electronics Fry's had been struggling for years but it was still a bit of a surprise to see it go

I’ve spent several hours a day in the Fry’s in Sunnyvale 🥲 – these days, the Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara comes close 🤩:

“What Happened To Fry’s Electronics”, Dave Farquhar (dfarq.homeip.net/what-happene...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4714...

#Frys #Electronics #Nostalgia #Stores

An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published Imagine you could talk to Hieronymus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Revelation, or of the Voynich Manuscript—a bizarre 15th century text written in an uncrackable code; that you could solve centuri...

The “Codex Seraphinianus” by Luigi Serafini has fascinated me for 3+ decades now:

“An Introduction To The Codex Seraphinianus, The Strangest Book Ever Published”, Open Culture (www.openculture.com/2026/02/an-i...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4712...

#Books #CodexSeraphinianus

The yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan As loneliness deepens in one of the world's fastest-ageing nations, a network of women delivering probiotic milk drinks has become a vital source of routine, connection and care.

Fascinating:

“The Yoghurt Delivery Women Combatting Loneliness In Japan”, BBC (www.bbc.com/travel/artic...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728...

#Japan #OldAge #Yakult #Loneliness #Yoghurt #Curd #Probiotic #GutHealth #Women

A trip down a memory lane 😎:

“DOS Memory Management”, Michal Necasek (www.os2museum.com/wp/dos-memor...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4719...

#DOS #MSDOS #RetroComputing #MemoryManagement #PC #IBMPC #OldSkool #Nostalgia

Reading English from 1000 AD The past was not as foreign as we think.

“Reading English From 1000 AD”, Lewis Campbell (lewiscampbell.tech/blog/260224....).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4713...

#English #Language #History #Writing #OldEnglish #Linguistics #AngloSaxons #England

A comment in the ensuing HN discussion (news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4710...), made me subscribe 🎧 to the excellent 👌🏽 “The History Of English” #podcast by Kevin Stroud:

historyofenglishpodcast.com

An amazing exploration of the #history of the #English #language and speakers.

How far back in time can you understand English? An experiment in language change

What a ride down #English language #History 🤩:

“How Far Back In Time Can You Understand English?”, Colin Gorrie (www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4706...

#Languages #Linguistics #Writing #OldEnglish #MiddleEnglish #England

Don't become an Engineering Manager Over drinks a few weeks ago, a friend told me he'd been offered a promotion, to an Engineering Manager role.

Hmm…🧐:

“Don’t Become An Engineering Manager”, Anton Zaides (newsletter.manager.dev/p/dont-becom...).

Via HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4723...

#Career #Manager #EM #EngineeringManager #Work #ProjectManager #Management #Tech