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How Royal Navy forgot how to cure scurvy

https://www.bluesci.co.uk/posts/forgotten-knowledge
1•michalpleban•1h ago

Comments

leakycap•1h ago
This loss of knowledge of how to even do basic things is accelerated in tech

Just try to find someone today who knows how to deal with the layers of tech to get something off an optical SCSI WORM drive formatted as Macintosh HFS with invisible resource forks and Type/Creator codes

Nothing about this type of setup was esoteric or unsupported in the 90s, but today finding a technician to support it is like looking someone who can read ancient hieroglyphs.

The ATF was urgently looking for someone to read data off CP/M formatted diskettes some while back. Imagine a huge agency like that desperate for help opening a safe from 30 years ago as a comparison to how hard it is to work with technology after short periods of time.

bigfatkitten•1h ago
We already see companies now who are dissatisfied with their cloud spend, but with no way out because they have absolutely no idea how to operate their own infrastructure anymore.
leakycap•54m ago
A car dealership hired me to help them change systems. Their 20+ year existing vendor suggested screenshots when asked how they could access/export their data.

Anyway, we Did better than Printshots but only had that option because the data was all on-premise.

If export options even exist from cloud providers, the incredibly slow speed and poor reliability of download/restores doesn't help.

pneill•30m ago
The story of scurvy is way more complicated that this article would have you believe. Lind partially shot himself in the foot by attempting to a make lemon juice more portable (and easier to store on a ship). He did that by boiling down the lemon juice to form a "rob." But he never tested his rob and had he done that, he would have realized that the boiling of lemon juice destroyed that vitamin C inside (this is in addition to the issue of copper pots, etc). So folks at sea, used the rob, and it didn't work. And then there is how Captain Cook muddle the issue, but because he had a big reputation and that carried way.

The history here is complex and very unsatisfying due to gaps in the historical record, but it' darn interesting.

Show HN: Chrome extension for structured learning with ChatGPT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvL65pdc16U
1•sridhar87•1m ago•0 comments

Dead Internet Theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
1•RyanShook•1m ago•0 comments

If A.I. Can Diagnose Patients, What Are Doctors For?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/29/if-ai-can-diagnose-patients-what-are-doctors-for
2•pseudolus•4m ago•1 comments

Periodic Table of Cognition

https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-periodic-table-of-cognition/
2•garspin•7m ago•0 comments

Try: Feature flags shouldn't require a separate service

https://atono.io/
2•troy55_yort55•9m ago•1 comments

Amazon is closing all Fresh grocery stores in the UK

https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-closing-all-fresh-grocery-stores-in-the-uk-195200222.html
4•ksec•13m ago•0 comments

Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

https://larian.com/support/faqs/steam-deck-native-version_121
3•_JamesA_•13m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A reaction-diffusion system in an SVG

https://oisinmoran.com/projects/reaction_diffusion.svg
1•OisinMoran•17m ago•0 comments

Solar tax credits are ending. Here's why that could be good for solar

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/23/rooftop-solar-price-energy-tax-cred...
1•thelastgallon•17m ago•0 comments

Community Crime Heat Map

https://communitycrimemap.com/
1•fallinditch•20m ago•1 comments

Psyche asteroid probe uses lasers to phone home from 218M miles away

https://www.space.com/space-exploration/nasa-laser-communication-demo-shows-promise-for-mars-miss...
3•pseudolus•24m ago•0 comments

The Strange Math That Predicts Almost Anything [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZeIEiBrT_w
1•teleforce•28m ago•0 comments

Australian government may require age verification for GitHub access

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-24/digital-dilemna-social-media-age-ban-platforms/105807302
3•yeetosaurusrex•29m ago•2 comments

Why Electric Truck Sales Are Accelerating Quickly

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-09-23/why-electric-truck-sales-are-accelerating-q...
1•toomuchtodo•30m ago•6 comments

Breakfast by Country

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_by_country
2•domofutu•31m ago•0 comments

The Switch 2 version of Borderlands 4 has been delayed

https://www.theverge.com/news/784277/borderlands-4-nintendo-switch-2-delay
1•corvad•31m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Should I quit starting companies?

2•failedagain•32m ago•2 comments

Home – Connect Seattle

https://communityconnectseattle.org/
1•petethomas•34m ago•0 comments

How close are we to having chatbots officially offer counseling?

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/09/how-close-are-we-to-having-chatbots-officially-off...
1•Improvement•36m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Click to copy notes

https://snipcabin.in
1•zerp12•36m ago•0 comments

CF Tunnels Made Easy

https://moley.dev/
2•xonery•36m ago•0 comments

Revisiting DeepSeek's Impact: Half a Year Later

https://www.gmicloud.ai/blog/revisiting-deepseeks-impact-half-a-year-later
1•CKMo•41m ago•1 comments

Phishing campaign impersonates Y Combinator using GitHub issue notifications

https://github.com/yccombinator/-notification/issues
7•thenickdude•45m ago•5 comments

Meshtastic 64 – A meshtastic radio for the Commodore 64

http://64jim64.blogspot.com/2025/09/meshtastic-64-meshtastic-radio-for.html
1•geerlingguy•46m ago•0 comments

Show HN: UUIDv47Sharp

https://github.com/taiseiue/UUIDv47Sharp
1•taiseiue•53m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How Do You Learn to Love Your Job?

2•EmilienCosson•54m ago•2 comments

Five years of tracking 2000 Poops with the Poop Map app

https://cassidoo.co/post/two-thousand-poops/
1•skywhopper•55m ago•1 comments

The Top Programming Languages 2025

https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-programming-languages-2025
15•jnord•58m ago•4 comments

MLB approves robot umpires for 2026 as part of challenge system

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/46357017/mlb-approves-robot-umpires-2026-part-challenge-system
3•pseudolus•59m ago•1 comments

RPM 6.0 Released with OpenPGP Improvements and Signature Checking by Default

https://www.phoronix.com/news/RPM-6.0-Released
1•westurner•1h ago•2 comments