The best thing for me for 2025 is a Costco heated blanket. It is so soft and cozy and rocks my world. We love it so much we got one for my partner, my mother in law and my mom and they all love it. Highly, HIGHLY recommend.

https://www.costco.com/p/-/berkshire-life-heated-throw/40001...

I was very skeptical until my partner plugged it in, turned it on and put it on me and was like holy cow this is amazing.

My best book of 2025 was Dungeon Crawler Carl, the entire serious.

Anyone talking Dungeon Crawler Carl NEEDS to give the audiobooks a listen, the voice acting is better than anything I’ve ever listened to.

As far as I can tell you can't buy the ebooks for Dungeon Crawler Carl on Kobo, they seem to be exclusive to Kindle... unless anyone knows differently?

Otherwise I guess it'll be the seven seas for me which I really don't want to have to do

If you liked dungeon crawler carl, and like dungeons and dragons (or just like the idea of it), I can highly recommend “worth the candle”. It has a surface level similarity as well as some thematic overlap with dungeon crawler carl. it’s one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a long time.

I second Dungeon Crawler Carl. I haven’t been this enthralled with a book series in decades. If you’re looking for a new series, I highly recommend it!

I was skeptical on Dungeon Crawler Carl and resisted reading it for so long and finally people on reddit constantly recommending it wore me down, even though it's not typically a genre I like I gave it a try and am SO GLAD I did, it is fantastic! I love how it looks like dumb, chaotic fun on the surface but the undercurrent and story steadily reveals something much smarter, angrier and emotionally brutal about resistance and survival in an oppressive system. It's a great series!!

I assume you use it as a throw and not as a blanket for sleeping, right?

For sleeping, I have the opposite problem. I always overheat.

> For sleeping, I have the opposite problem. I always overheat.

I find that sticking one leg (and sometimes one arm) out from under the blanket helps to solve that issue.

Me too. For that I highly recommend the Tree Napper from Bearaby.

https://bearaby.com/collections/weighted-blankets

Tree Napper aka TENCEL™ per link above if anyone else was left wondering like me.

> our Tree Napper is the perfect choice for those that sleep hotter than most. It’s made from Tencel

https://bearaby.com/products/tree-napper

Also checkout the Milwaukee heated hoodies!

The blanket seems to have been hugged-to-death (pun intended) and is now sold out in all colors.

Not sure if it’s exactly the same, but here is one on AliExpress for around $20:

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EQ53PCs

The Costco one uses household current (as can be seen in one of the photos that shows a cord and a plug) and the AliExpress uses USB. I doubt that USB can supply enough power to do more than a trivial amount of heating. USB 3.1 has a max of 15W, and I can't imagine that a $25 blanket is going to use the more sophisticated USB Power Delivery connections where even the cable & charger can cost more than $25.

While trying to find the actual power consumption of the Costco model, I found this very useful comment on the Costco site: "The power consumption is not listed anywhere - product packaging, website, or included manual. I went ahead and made the purchase and hooked it up to my battery unit once I got home. I can confirm, the blanket uses an average 99W regardless of which mode it's in. I left it in each mode for about 5 minutes. There's no difference to the touch of the blanket and there's no difference with the power consumption. In other words this blanket has one heat setting and it's not very warm."

So disappointing.

I have a blanket from the same company, purchased this year, and am quite satisfied with it.

Can't speak to the power usage, but levels 1-3 are warm-ish, but level 4 gets nice and toasty.

No kidding, when did America actually start making original Korean light novels? I somehow entirely missed that trend.

I'm currently on audio book 4 of dungeon crawler carl. The narrator is amazing. The first time I heard Donut talk I searched for the name of the female narrator only to be surprised that the male narrator is just that good at female voices.

Woah, I assumed Donut was a female narrator! My mind is literally blown - well done job Dungeon AI ;)

>"A calculator app? Anyone could make that"[0]

Shameless plug: my favorite calculator "app" is wxMaxima. It uses similar techniques[1] as those described in the fantastic article at the top of this 2025 list. Implemented in Lisp[2].

[0] https://chadnauseam.com/coding/random/calculator-app

[1] https://feb.kuleuven.be/public/u0003131/WBT23/wxMaxima/wxM_i...

[2] https://maxima.sourceforge.io/lisp.html

Wow, I’m honored! When I wrote that calculator post, I really only thought two or three people would ever read it haha. I never would have dreamed that so many people would be interested in it

Also, that video is really making me want to get an OP-1 haha.

> Also, that video is really making me want to get an OP-1 haha.

From experience, I get you. There are many videos on the internet that do the same.

I bought one and found it... a little constraining for my taste. My observation was that most of the music creation was 'live' (i.e. you had to play something perfectly, to time, and record that) and for what is fundamentally a computer, it has very limited 'sequencing' ability. Also, a lot of the cutesy interface ideas that are so charming on someone else's video grate over time. Luckily I bought mine second-hand and the residuals on these things are insane, so I made a marginal profit reselling it.

All I'd say is that before pulling the trigger, do some research (YouTube reviews especially) on the term "groove box" - there are many, that come with different abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. The OP-1 is cool but limited, and comes with the Teenage Engineering price tag.

The OP-Z makes sequencing the main focus (rather than OP-1's tape mechanism) and is really fun, and still cheap because it didn't go viral.

Then there's the OP-XY which is even more powerful but unfortunately costs like 4-5x as much so I've not tried it.

Yes, totally agree... and of course you (I) wonder what else there might be (as the OP-Z isn't reviewed super-well, is maybe a bit restricted, and doesn't have the awesome LED buttons of some of its competition) and you get into researching the Deluge, the Syntakt (with a stop-off via the Digitakt if sampling is more your thing), the Circuit Tracks, the Polyend Play, the MC-101, the Seqtrak...

DirtyWave M8? :)

:o

OXI One

It’s still on sale for $1500 if you message the chat bot / support agent on B&H

Congrats! And thanks for taking the time to write it

That 1956 article on the long-distance telephone network is fascinating reading.

The chart on page 24 gives the very first division of the US phone into area codes, many of which have of course remained unchanged today.

From page 82, when discussing automated in-band signaling on the phone lines:

> The signal component is a band about 100 cycles [Hz] wide centering on the signal frequency [2600 Hz]. [...] In the talking condition (tone off in both directions) the guard detector sensitivity is such that almost a pure tone is required to operate the receiver since other than signal frequencies will produce a voltage opposing its operation. The guard feature prevents false operation of the receiver from speech signals.

Of course in hindsight, the flaw in this is obvious. The guard band prevents accidental triggering of the signal mechanism by ordinary speech. It does nothing to stop someone from intentionally playing a pure 2600 Hz tone into the telephone handset, using e.g. a whistle from a cereal box.

I completely forgot to bring up the 2600 section in my post! Reading distance dialing led me down a deep rabbit hole. An interesting path was learning more about Joe Engressia (Joybubbles) who could whistle a 2600hz tone to circumvent the supervisory tone which led him to learn more about the system and further the knowledge of the early phreaking community. Folklore around him was off the charts and eventually painted a picture of a superhero who could whistle his way through the whole phone network and into free calls to anywhere just with his mouth. The document linked in my post gives details about the long-distance signalling and why being a great whistler was not good enough. That said, definitely check out more about Engressia, because while the whistling wasn't superhuman, the curiousity and drive to learn more may have been!

Hey Fogus! A few links or resources you might enjoy:

* Nationwide Operator Toll Dialing, 1945: https://explodingthephone.com/hoppdocs/nootd1945.pdf

* General Switching Plan for Telephone Toll Service, 1930: https://explodingthephone.com/hoppdocs/gspts1930.pdf

* (Book) Engineering and Operations in the Bell System, 1984: https://bitsavers.org/communications/westernElectric/books/E...

* (Shameless plug) My book on the history of phone phreaking, Exploding the Phone, which has a lot of stuff on Engressia in it: https://explodingthephone.com/

Also, there is a documentary film coming up at Sundance about Engressia! https://festival.sundance.org/program/film/6932fad21a5535277... Very excited to see it!

Loosely fitting the bill, but:

The link between gluten and my 2 decade long bad insomnia, on edge mind, and restlessness.

Simply cutting gluten changed many things. Now I sleep so deeply I sometimes need a brief reality check to know what year it is, where I am, and how long I've been asleep.

Probably not for everyone, but if you have similar problems, definitely go gluten free for a few days and check the impact.

I had never even considered gluten, but I've been dealing with those exact issues for years as well. I'm going to give it a try.

Would you say it was actually noticeable in just a few days?

Thank you for posting this, btw. I've been feeling pretty hopeless about it and even if it ultimately doesn't work, at least I have a new avenue to try.

The results will kick in gradually. The second time I started, I knew what to look for, so I noticed in 3 days. But the first time, I mostly noticed after breaking the diet: eating my burger and my date's then trying to sleep.

My mind wanted to jump to the wall, bounce off it to the ceiling, then the other wall, like a scene from a cartoon. Then I remembered this image from childhood.

I had to play beatsaber for half an hour to calm that down.

BTW, I'm not a native English speaker, and heard about "bouncing off the walls" after I told my friends about this mental image.

This is fun to read, but from my personal perspective it all seems quite depressing. About half way through this list of stuff I start to think existentially: would I be happy if my life was constructed like the author’s? I like much of the same sort of stuff after all. But at some point I got bored with reading yet another cool random book or fiddling with an interpreter for a little toy language.

I wonder, does the author really find deep life satisfaction in all this? Presumably the answer is yes, but that doesn’t match my intuition which intrigues me somewhat. Is the satisfaction gained, at least in part, from the performance of making this sort of list and getting external approval from HN, conference audiences, etc? Is the production of this list and the stated desire to speak at conferences a statement that all the journaled activity is not enough, that it cannot be done privately? That if done privately, anonymously, it really is just not that great a way to live your life?

I am happy that I don’t live alone diving so deep into various hobbies that I ultimately start hitting the firmament underneath. What my life would look like had I not gotten married and had children is not so hard to imagine when I read these sorts of blogs, and I smugly think I am better off.

> I wonder, does the author really find deep life satisfaction in all this?

I have no way of knowing (unless they comment yes/no here). If they do, good for them! But also, I don't think that's the claim in the article, it's literally called The best things and stuff in 2025, not The essential meaning of my life in 2025.

That’s a lot of words to pass judgment on someone you’ve never met and know nothing about. The strawman that you’ve created doesn’t resemble my life at all, but you go on feeling smug about being better than the construct in your head. Whatever helps you to sleep at night I guess…

Some people literally just can't let themselves believe others enjoying their own (different) lives at their own pace.

As if every alternative road has to be imagined as a less satisfying road to validate their own chosen path.

As if the diversity and multiplication of "search paths" through "reality space" is somehow sad or worse or less moral or less virtuous.

Which is absurd of course.

As for me, sometimes I take bad paths just for fun because I'm more curious than cautious.

"This is probably terrible, let's check it out."

And boy is it fun for those of use who like to explore the edges, and I like to imagine that all those taking more traveled paths are also enjoying themselves and the life they have!

That guy was denigrating somebody who did nothing more than share a list of stuff they thought was cool this year. He came at @fogus (the author) with, essentially, “I’d come across all that cool stuff too if I didn’t have my much better life of wife and kids, I bet he’s existentially unfulfilled.”

Reflective or not, it seems really personal and unfair to swing at a stranger like that. For all he knows, @fogus has the same number of partners and kids as he does, or is just as happy with whatever way their life is organized. I don’t think it’s fair to come at @fogus as “insecure” for reacting to derogatory assumptions.

Maybe everyone else here knows stuff I don’t about @fogus’ life, but I just read somebody being generous enough to share their internal thinking in public and, in exchange, getting shit on for no reason.

And as to gp—I agree the intention seems thoughtful and self-reflective; thank you for sharing those sentiments. I’m glad you’ve found happiness and fulfillment, and I think your point would stand just as strong without swinging at a stranger.

This could also be an investment in future happiness. Part of the point of journaling and documenting is to later revisit and unlocking memories one might have not accessed in some time. This is part of the reason Spotify Wrapped and similar "recaps" are enjoyable. People enjoy seeing what they were like. In many ways we are the product of things we do (whether that be consuming or creating) and exploring those things at a future date is to be in conversation with ourselves.

Things like this are also a way of expressing and sharing gratitude, which is a cathartic exercise to engage in periodically. Putting into words "these are things I enjoyed" is worthwhile, in my experience, and sharing it is a small extra step. Additionally, sharing it can be a gift to the future. I can't tell you how much I appreciate effort my parents took to document parts of my childhood (vacations, accomplishments, daily life, etc.) and I know other children feel the same. It's the kind of window to the past that is only open through efforts like this.

> Part of the point of journaling and documenting is to later revisit and unlocking memories one might have not accessed in some time. This is part of the reason Spotify Wrapped and similar "recaps" are enjoyable.

Wow. I hate that. I was doing diary when I was like 10 years old and when I was actually reading that after few weeks it was terrible. Pure cringe and whinings. With music it is not that visible but there are still few bands I cannot stand anymore, and I was litnening to them extensively few years back, like Neurosis.

But as a pure informational referrence... Sure!

I switch from journaling to writing poetry at night maybe 9 years ago. I'll go through phases where I write no poems and phases where I'll write 10-15 poems at night, I rarely revise and I rarely revisit. I've written probably 10k poems and they're all just in a log somewhere.

I personally think poetry is at its best as a medium for writing and feeling and not consuming or sharing. I think everyone should write poetry and only a small number should probably share it, I certainly don't like being surprised by a poetry reading.

Journaling and poetry is what our future selves stand on and not really for your future self to look back on, it's a meditation where you let your internal self flow out instead of getting stuck in loops or living an unexamined life, it helps give shape to the internal nebulous.

I personally prefer poetry over journaling, it's simultaneously terrible poetry and my best, highest utility writing.

> What my life would look like had I not gotten married and had children

For every person that feels better off in that situation, there’s another person who feels trapped and tied down and unable to pursue their passions.

Different things make different people happy. And that’s okay.

This remark always comes from people who do not have children. I have never seen a parent express regret over building a family.

I firmly believe this is because it'd be incredibly socially unacceptable to do so.

Most of the parents I'm close to are in the "wow, this actually kind of sucks" category.

Against what I hear about parenting, I'm mostly left feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled, but what am I going to do? Maybe it'll come later.

Presumably, outside of accidental pregnancy, people who would be unhappy with children don't have them and people who would be happy with children do have them. It's not really that surprising if people who choose a particular life path tend to be happy with it.

I have. Very much I have but I'm also a safe person to share with generally so I find myself the holder of many other peoples secrets.

I've never heard of a millionaire express regret over making millions of dollars.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to be happy without a million dollars.

I like when people explore deep interests and share them. Especially, someone who has been doing it for 15 years, consistently. A pre-AI window of humanity. This stuff is more important now, than it ever was.

Thank you for sharing with us how you are happy that you have a wife and kids.

Different people like different things

Using "performative" as a pejorative is dismissive. I like to read and I like to write. These are my hobbies and as a result posts like this come out. I will not apologize for finding certain topics exciting and being excited by a desire to share my excitement with the world. You say that the "Internet would be a better place if it'd be full of content like this post." I agree, and so I share.

By the way. I don't like beer.

Apologies: "performative" was a poor word choice and I can no longer edit the comment. I didn't mean to suggest the enthusiasm isn't genuine. What I was trying to say (clumsily) is that the post is clearly crafted with care for how it lands, which isn't a bad thing.

It strikes me as a little disappointing the way commenters seem to think they know you, and seem to respond to your thoughtful work by picking at you personally.

From the root comment that speculates about your existential happiness (he chose a partner and kids instead, and is happier that way than whatever he assumes your life is like!), to the gp comment that passes judgment on your intentions in writing at all.

I’m not really sure what to make of that, but that kind of behavior is the reason I keep my writing to myself (and specific people I email directly) and never share it. I don’t have the patience to deal with the uninvited judgment, and I worry that I’d respond to the unjustified demands by internalizing them.

My life is richer as a result of you being able and willing to deal with all this, and sharing what stimulated you this year. If I didn’t like it, I’d go read something else and politely abstain from judgment. As it happens, I liked it very much, and I did not go read something else. Thank you.

Thank you for that, thank you for not letting various ancillary grumps dissuade you, and a healthy and stimulating and prosperous new year to you!

The comments are so often people just telling on themselves, it's really wild to see. I'm glad people still create in spite of this instead of letting misanthropic "tastemakers" get their way, the creators are literally increasing the amount of meaning in the world and that is valuable.

Pages like this are why I love Firefox reader mode. It doesn't matter what font crimes the author commits, with a single click it becomes legible again! Good content should never be missed because of an author trying to stab you in the eyeballs.

Agreed. I just wish it could fix these crappy fixed width layouts.

Honestly I don't even try to read pages that have some super narrow 400px layout any more. Time was I would screw around editing the CSS with dev tools, but I just don't have the patience these days. It's a lot of work to try to alter the CSS and it's unpleasant as heck to read something that narrow (anything less than 1000px is awful to read and I prefer 1200), so I just move on.

Pro tip for web designers out there: if someone wants a narrow layout they can always make their browser window smaller, but if you force it to be narrow that screws over the users who find that unpleasant. A wider layout can thus work for both types of reader, while a narrow layout only works for one.

Death & Vanilla sounds more like Portishead to me than Dead Can Dance, but solid either way, and thanks. I had a similar musical year, except switch the Cocteaus with Stereolab (helps that they released their best album in decades this year).

I am befuddled. How do are you hearing Portishead (and DCD is even more bizarre)? I hear a touch of Beach House on older releases when there are vocals. But yeah, agree that it is a good addition to my library. Stereolab still hasn’t clicked for me, but I’ll give it another try. Along these lines, Yndling was my cool find this year

Hey, it's the original article that compares it to Dead Can Dance. On the plus side, that suggestion did get me to put DCD on while me and my kids played Fishspan last night. They wanted to know why I was playing "spooky dungeon music" and kept saying things like "oh we just got to the desert level boss fight" when new tracks started playing.

Then it’s time to show them some dungeon synth! https://youtu.be/M9HLrbRCq2U

Reading glasses that fold up and fit on a keychain, for when you forgot yours:

https://www.thinoptics.com/products/readers-black-keychain-c...

This is good. I should also blog about stuff that I found interesting. Just to myself as a reminder. I am not active blogger but it actually happen to me that I was looking for something l, used web search and did found my own blog in the results. Also I could just go to my own blog for this 'interesting link/stuff I found few days ago'.

Worst things and Stuff of 2025: The Legend of the Galactic Heroes themed cafe in Tokyo closed down the month before I visited for the first time.

My favorite part about this is how it shows how different people's lives can be even while existing in the same space. I haven't heard of a single thing in this list -- books, music, games, etc.

His coloured task planning system reminds me of https://www.hyperplan.com .

David Lindsay's _A Voyage to Arcturus_ is notable for having been one of the earliest available ebooks on Project Gutenberg, netting a few wider exposure than it might have had otherwise.

Highly recommended.

I found my love back in the Cure, 2025 kind of bit like the Cure, sad but happy at the same times

I really like the aesthetic! I also enjoyed the content.

Related. Others? (and how did we miss 2023, 2018, and 2016?)

Fogus: Things and Stuff of 2024 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42495077 - Dec 2024 (44 comments)

The best things and stuff of 2022 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33969300 - Dec 2022 (47 comments)

The Best Things and Stuff of 2021 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29702698 - Dec 2021 (23 comments)

The best things and stuff of 2020 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25593828 - Dec 2020 (37 comments)

Things and Stuff of 2019 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21932647 - Jan 2020 (11 comments)

Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc in 2017 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16075626 - Jan 2018 (24 comments)

Best things and stuff of 2015 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10807501 - Dec 2015 (85 comments)

The best things and stuff of 2014 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8809710 - Dec 2014 (26 comments)

The best things and stuff of 2013 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6971351 - Dec 2013 (29 comments)

The best things and stuff of 2012 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4969569 - Dec 2012 (13 comments)

The best things and stuff of 2011 by Fogus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3410990 - Dec 2011 (20 comments)

2023, 2018, and 2016 were all submitted, just with very few comments.

Yup. Those count as misses IMO!

I’m intrigued by that Japanese calendar stamp. Does anyone know where to get it?

JetPens in the US has a variety such. Not quite the one here, though.

https://www.jetpens.com/search?q=stamp&v=2

https://www.jetpens.com/Midori-Paintable-Stamp-Pre-Inked-Pla...

https://www.jetpens.com/Nombre-Mizushima-Stamp-Schedule-Week...

https://www.jetpens.com/Shachihata-Daily-Log-Stamp-Weather-a...

Found it here: https://shopfivenine.com/products/rubber-stamp-week

If you do a search for Shimaenaga Weekly Calendar then you’ll find something that’s very similar and may be able to similar ones that work better for you.

I got mine in Japan at a store called Loft, but I suspect that you’d have to pay a substantial mark up to get the same thing elsewhere.

you could get one made for a few bucks.

I think it was the year before last, I found a new band that's been rocking my socks off: Uranium Club.

(I am a big fan of egg punk and a true devo-tee)

Last year they came to Australia, which I didn't know about, and it's the first time I've ever felt like I missed out on a musical event.

Then they released a new album this year, " infants under the bulb" which has been growing on me.

I also started Warhammer this year, and one of my frigates is driven by a small grey man

Thanks for this! Some of these are really interesting.

The Dream Factory was a great book this year on Shakespeare.

heh, google calculator gets it wrong

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=%2810%5...

You have a typo in there. You want https://www.google.com/search?q=%2810%5E100%29%2B1-%2810%5E1... . Google also gets the "wrong answer" for this expression, 0 instead of 1.

This feels like it needs its own post. Just had to check my goto, Qalculate, which similarly gives -10^200

Interesting, my favorite one on Android - HiPER Calc - does it correctly and returns 1.