Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Popular：

Virtualization DNS security formal verification reachability analysis compiler errors macro conflict web extension development framework Bitmap Graphics API inconsistencies All Tags

Machine Learning Textbook: Patterns, Predictions, and Actions

2025-09-06

Moritz Hardt and Benjamin Recht's "Patterns, Predictions, and Actions: Foundations of Machine Learning" is now available from Princeton University Press. This comprehensive textbook covers a wide range of machine learning topics, from foundational prediction to deep learning, causal inference, and reinforcement learning. Supplementary problem sets and a PDF preprint are also available. The book is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0.

(mlstory.org)

AI

Rare Kimsuky Leak Reveals Tactics and Infrastructure of North Korean-Linked APT

2025-09-07

Rare Kimsuky Leak Reveals Tactics and Infrastructure of North Korean-Linked APT

A rare security incident involving a data breach attributed to a North Korean-affiliated actor, dubbed “Kim,” offers unprecedented insights into Kimsuky (APT43) tactics, techniques, and infrastructure. The group focuses on credential-centric intrusions targeting South Korean and Taiwanese networks, blending Chinese-language tooling, infrastructure, and potential logistical support. The “Kim” dump, containing bash histories, phishing domains, OCR workflows, compiled stagers, and rootkit evidence, reveals a hybrid operation between DPRK attribution and Chinese resource utilization. The leaked data includes malware development, OCR parsing of Korean PKI and VPN documents, and reconnaissance targeting Taiwanese government and academic institutions. Analysts uncovered an advanced Linux rootkit employing syscall hooking and stealth persistence. The incident highlights the evolving capabilities of North Korean threat actors and their potential connections to Chinese resources.

(dti.domaintools.com)

Tech

Troubleshooting ZFS: From Checksum Errors to Key Re-Parenting

2025-09-07

Troubleshooting ZFS: From Checksum Errors to Key Re-Parenting

This article serves as a troubleshooting guide for ZFS, covering common issues such as checksum errors, disk failures, snapshot recovery, and encrypted dataset manipulation. It details how to use `zpool status`, `smartctl`, and `zfs scrub` to detect and repair checksum errors; `zpool offline` and `zpool replace` to replace failed disks; `zfs rollback`, `cp`, and `zfs clone` for data recovery; and `zfs change-key` to change encryption keys, including explanations of encrypted dataset replication and key re-parenting. This guide empowers users to better understand and handle common ZFS problems, ensuring data safety and system stability.

(klarasystems.com)

Development

A Life-Changing Lecture: Frameworks for History, Engineering, and Life

2025-09-06

A Life-Changing Lecture: Frameworks for History, Engineering, and Life

The author attended a lecture on the Cold War where the professor's analytical framework—thesis, counter-argument, rebuttal—proved insightful. Applying this framework to software engineering and personal life, the author seeks optimal states through research and experimentation. The article explores building sustainable systems and improving well-being through lifestyle adjustments and reflection, highlighting continuous learning and self-assessment.

(www.valstech.blog)

Misc learning frameworks

PianoReader: Browser-Based Piano Tutorial Parser

2025-09-06

PianoReader: Browser-Based Piano Tutorial Parser

Tired of flashy piano tutorial videos? Meet PianoReader, a browser-based tool that parses piano tutorial videos and outputs sheet music and chords – all without server-side processing. Leveraging HTML canvas for video frame processing, it uses user-defined key positions and image analysis to detect pressed keys. The result? Readable sheet music. While currently limited to white keys and processing speed is dependent on frame rate, it's already useful for learning simpler songs.

(www.heyraviteja.com)

Development

Google Hit with $425M Verdict for Privacy Violations

2025-09-06

Google Hit with $425M Verdict for Privacy Violations

A federal jury has ordered Google to pay $425.7 million for illegally tracking users' smartphones over nearly a decade. The class-action lawsuit covered approximately 98 million devices in the US, resulting in roughly $4 per device in damages. Google denies wrongdoing and plans to appeal. Plaintiffs argued Google used the collected data for targeted advertising, generating billions in profit. While significantly less than the $30 billion+ sought, the plaintiffs celebrated the verdict as a win for privacy.

(apnews.com)

Tech

5000-Year-Old Database: More Reliable Than Modern Ones?

2025-09-06

A picture of a 5000-year-old Sumerian database sparked the author's reflection on the upper limit of date storage in databases. The image shows a database from 3100 BC recording accounts of malt and barley, boasting reliability far exceeding modern databases. Tests revealed that MySQL can't store dates before 4713 BC, while PostgreSQL and SQLite can. This prompted the author to ponder how to store even older dates, such as museum artifact records, suggesting solutions like using epoch timestamps or custom systems.

(avi.im)

Development

AI Chatbots: Privacy Concerns Mirror Online Tracking, But Worse

2025-09-06

AI Chatbots: Privacy Concerns Mirror Online Tracking, But Worse

AI chatbots present even greater privacy risks than online tracking. Conversations reveal intimate details, including thought processes and communication styles, vulnerable to commercial and ideological manipulation. Unlike search engines, AI chatbots are more persuasive and can lead users into delusional spirals. While DuckDuckGo offers Duck.ai for protected conversations, the industry largely lacks privacy safeguards, with data breaches rampant. The article urges Congress to quickly legislate to protect user privacy, preventing a repeat of online tracking's history and the unchecked proliferation of AI surveillance.

(gabrielweinberg.com)

Tech privacy legislation

996 Work Culture: A Debate on Efficiency vs. Well-being

2025-09-06

996 Work Culture: A Debate on Efficiency vs. Well-being

This article reflects on the prevalent "996" work culture (9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week) in the tech industry. The author uses personal experience to argue that while loving work and occasional late nights are fine, this shouldn't be the foundation of company culture. Long hours negatively impact personal life and don't guarantee efficiency, often leading to burnout and reduced productivity. The author advocates for prioritizing employee well-being and avoiding the use of "996" as a measure of success.

(lucumr.pocoo.org)

Startup

Listen Labs' Viral Growth Hack: A Tale of AI Collaboration and Optimization

2025-09-06

Listen Labs' Viral Growth Hack: A Tale of AI Collaboration and Optimization

Listen Labs launched a viral marketing campaign with a cryptic billboard in San Francisco, leading to a complex optimization puzzle: simulating the entrance selection of Berlin's Berghain nightclub. This puzzle attracted 30,000 engineers, unexpectedly creating a massive distributed computing experiment. The author and his AI partner, Claude, participated, progressing from simple greedy algorithms to a Lagrangian multiplier-based RBCR algorithm, achieving impressive results. However, they also experienced the failure of deep learning models, ultimately learning that in problems with clear mathematical structure, simple principled algorithms often outperform complex machine learning models. The story showcases the immense potential of AI-assisted programming and the perfect blend of human insight and AI execution.

(www.nibzard.com)

Startup viral marketing

Plateshapez: A Tool for Generating Adversarial License Plate Datasets

2025-09-06

Plateshapez: A Tool for Generating Adversarial License Plate Datasets

Plateshapez is a research tool for generating datasets of adversarially perturbed license plate images. Designed with a user-first, safe-by-default, and expert-hackable philosophy, it offers a CLI and Python API to create reproducible, transparent, and ethically sound structured datasets. Users can customize configurations, adding various perturbations (shapes, noise, textures, warping), and controlling the scope of the perturbation (license plate region or the entire image). The tool is intended for research into the adversarial robustness of OCR and ALPR systems and includes comprehensive documentation and ethical guidelines.

(github.com)

Development adversarial examples license plate recognition data augmentation

Apple's Clone Wars: A Story of Brand Identity and Licensing Gone Wrong

2025-09-06

This article recounts the dramatic history of Apple's relationship with Mac clone manufacturers. From initial crackdowns to a brief period of licensing and eventual abandonment, the story of Apple's clone program reflects the fragility of brand identity and the complexities of licensing strategies. The article examines numerous clone manufacturers, including Unitron, Power Computing, and UMAX, and their intertwined relationships with Apple. It analyzes the reasons behind the failure of Apple's clone program, ultimately attributing it to factors such as unclear market positioning, profit conflicts, and poor timing. This article is not just a piece of tech history, but a case study in business decisions and brand management.

(tedium.co)

Tech Clones

Massive Security Flaw Exposes Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons' Global Systems

2025-09-06

Massive Security Flaw Exposes Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons' Global Systems

Security researchers discovered critical vulnerabilities in the global ordering systems of Restaurant Brands International (RBI), impacting Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons. Attackers could access data from every store without authentication, including employee information, internal IDs, configuration details, and thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of customer voice recordings containing personally identifiable information (PII). The vulnerabilities stemmed from easily exploitable APIs allowing unauthorized user registration and admin access. RBI responded swiftly to patch the vulnerabilities after the report.

(bobdahacker.com)

Tech

Building a Space Flight Sim in Clojure: A 5-Year Odyssey

2025-09-06

Building a Space Flight Sim in Clojure: A 5-Year Odyssey

This post details a five-year journey building a space flight simulator using Clojure. The author tackled challenging 3D rendering aspects first (planets, atmosphere, shadows, volumetric clouds), drawing inspiration from the open-sourced Orbiter simulator. The project leverages numerous libraries, including the LWJGL suite for graphics and input, Jolt Physics for the physics engine, and Clojure's strengths like immutable values and safe parallelism. The author delves into atmospheric rendering, planet rendering techniques using NASA data, OpenGL shader templating, performance optimization, build processes, and Steam deployment. While core features are complete, future plans include adding cockpits, moons, and space stations.

(www.wedesoft.de)

Game Space Flight Simulator

Slashing CI Time with AI-Powered E2E Test Selection

2025-09-06

Slashing CI Time with AI-Powered E2E Test Selection

End-to-end (E2E) tests are slow, fragile, and expensive, often run nightly due to CI bottlenecks. This leads to bugs slipping into production. This article details a solution using Claude Code to intelligently select only the relevant E2E tests for a given PR. By analyzing code changes and test files, Claude Code predicts which tests need to run, reducing testing time from 44 minutes to under 7 minutes. This significantly improves CI efficiency and prevents production bugs. While slightly costly, the savings in developer time and bug fixes make it a cost-effective solution.

(jampauchoa.substack.com)

Development

Baby's First Type Checker: A 350-Line Python Adventure

2025-09-06

Baby's First Type Checker: A 350-Line Python Adventure

This article details the creation of a basic type checker for Python in just 350 lines of code. The author walks through the process, from parsing Python code and finding type annotations to checking type compatibility, handling function calls and return types, supporting lists, dictionaries, and union types, and implementing type narrowing. While limited in scope, the resulting type checker successfully catches several type errors in real-world Python code, providing a clear and accessible example of how type checkers work.

(austinhenley.com)

Development type checker

Massive European Paper Mill Exposed: Over 1500 Fake Research Papers Discovered

2025-09-06

Massive European Paper Mill Exposed: Over 1500 Fake Research Papers Discovered

An investigation uncovered a vast network of Ukrainian companies, potentially Europe's largest paper mill, churning out fake or low-quality research papers and selling authorships. Researchers traced over 60 suspicious email domains linked to 1517 published papers, involving over 4500 researchers from 460 universities across 46 countries. The papers exhibited hallmarks of paper mills: fabricated data, plagiarism, irrelevant citations, and peer review manipulation. While the mill claims to offer legitimate services, website wording suggests papers are produced to order or authorships are sold. This highlights the urgent need to combat academic paper mills.

(www.nature.com)

Tech fake research paper mill

Retro Robot Collection: A Treasure Trove for Robot Enthusiasts

2025-09-06

This website showcases a meticulously curated collection of robots from a passionate enthusiast. It features educational robots, Tomy toy robots, Omnibots, and a wide variety of other robotic creations, all neatly categorized for easy browsing. The last update date (January 14, 2008) hints at a time capsule of robotic history, offering a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of robotics.

(www.theoldrobots.com)

Misc robot collection retro robots

GitHub Copilot Backlash: Developers Fleeing to Alternatives

2025-09-06

GitHub Copilot Backlash: Developers Fleeing to Alternatives

Despite boasting 20 million users, Microsoft's GitHub Copilot AI code assistant is facing a major backlash from developers. Widespread complaints cite forced bundling, potential license violations, and questionable code quality. Numerous developers are requesting Copilot's disablement on GitHub, with many migrating to alternatives like Codeberg. Microsoft's aggressive Copilot integration and disregard for user feedback are accelerating this exodus. Developers express concerns about Copilot infringing on their rights and raising code quality and copyright issues, highlighting the importance of user experience and respecting open-source principles in AI tool deployment.

(www.theregister.com)

Development

Gut Bacteria Leakage Exacerbates Liver Damage in Chronic Alcohol Use: A New Mechanism

2025-09-06

Gut Bacteria Leakage Exacerbates Liver Damage in Chronic Alcohol Use: A New Mechanism

A new study uncovers a previously unknown mechanism by which chronic alcohol consumption worsens liver damage. Research reveals that chronic alcohol use impairs the production of the cellular signaling protein mAChR4 in the small intestine. This protein is crucial for the formation of goblet cell-associated antigen passages (GAPs), which help the immune system identify and respond to gut bacteria escaping into other parts of the body. Lower mAChR4 levels weaken GAP formation, allowing gut bacteria to leak into the liver, exacerbating alcohol-related liver damage. Fortunately, restoring mAChR4 function can repair the immune response and lessen liver damage. Published in Nature, this research offers a potential new therapeutic target for alcoholic liver disease and may also offer insights into treating alcohol use disorder.

(www.sciencealert.com)

Tech alcoholic liver disease mAChR4 protein

The Subtle Art of Animation in UI Design

2025-09-06

The Subtle Art of Animation in UI Design

This article delves into the art of using animation effectively in user interface design. Well-executed animations can make an interface feel faster, more enjoyable, and even memorable. However, poorly implemented animations can have the opposite effect. The key takeaway is that animations should always serve a purpose – explaining a feature, improving responsiveness, or adding a touch of delight. Crucially, the frequency and speed of animations are critical; high-frequency interactions should generally avoid animation, and animations should aim for speeds under 300ms to maintain responsiveness. The article concludes that great UI design isn't about animating everything; sometimes, the best animation is no animation at all.

(emilkowal.ski)

Design animation design

US-Funded International Broadcasters Under Threat

2025-09-06

US-Funded International Broadcasters Under Threat

For decades, the U.S. government has funded international broadcasters, providing news and information to authoritarian countries and countering censorship. However, a new appointee in the Trump administration is attempting to defund and dismantle these outlets, leading to legal battles. This move not only threatens the survival of these broadcasters but also allows countries like China and Russia to fill the information void with their propaganda, posing a threat to U.S. national security. The cuts also jeopardize America's efforts to combat censorship and disinformation globally.

(www.theatlantic.com)

Tech international broadcasting

Taming the AI Beast: A Disciplined Approach to Collaborative Software Development

2025-09-06

Taming the AI Beast: A Disciplined Approach to Collaborative Software Development

This article presents a structured methodology for collaborative AI software development, addressing common pitfalls like code bloat, architectural drift, and context dilution through systematic constraints. The four-stage process involves AI configuration, collaborative planning, systematic implementation, and data-driven iteration. Each stage incorporates systematic constraints and validation checkpoints, emphasizing empirical data over assumptions. The core strategy is decomposing large tasks into small, manageable components, querying the AI with focused, specific requests, and enforcing code quality and architectural consistency via strict guidelines (e.g., max 150 lines per file) and performance benchmarking. A tool, `project_extract.py`, aids project management. A DiscordJS bot example showcases its application.

(github.com)

Development

Rust Foundation Launches Innovation Lab to Boost Secure Programming Language

2025-09-06

Rust Foundation Launches Innovation Lab to Boost Secure Programming Language

To strengthen the ecosystem surrounding the secure Rust programming language, the Rust Foundation unveiled the Rust Innovation Lab at RustConf 2025. This initiative provides a stable, neutral environment for select Rust projects, offering governance, legal and administrative support, and fiscal sponsorship. The inaugural project is Rustls, a secure TLS library. The lab aims to address sustainability challenges in open-source development and promote Rust's use in systems programming and web infrastructure, ultimately driving the future of secure software.

(www.webpronews.com)

Development Secure Programming

DIY Website Font: A Calligraphr Success Story

2025-09-06

DIY Website Font: A Calligraphr Success Story

To personalize his website, the author embarked on a quest to create a custom handwritten font. Initial attempts using open-source tools like Inkscape and FontForge proved frustrating due to their clunky UIs. He switched to the paid service Calligraphr, which uses a print-write-scan workflow. Calligraphr's intuitive interface and powerful features enabled efficient font creation. The author praises Calligraphr's fair pricing and user-friendly data handling, contrasting it favorably with other services.

(chameth.com)

Design website personalization

Optimizing UTF-8 Decoding with a Lookup Table: Branchless Approach

2025-09-06

Optimizing UTF-8 Decoding with a Lookup Table: Branchless Approach

This article explores optimizing UTF-8 decoding by using a lookup table to avoid branch prediction overhead. The author details creating a 256-byte lookup table that maps the lead byte of a UTF-8 sequence to its length. This replaces branching with simple array access, improving decoding efficiency. While adding a 256-byte memory cost, this approach can significantly boost performance in many scenarios.

(nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com)

Development Decoding Lookup Table

Building LLMs from Scratch: Vectors, Matrices, and High-Dimensional Spaces

2025-09-06

Building LLMs from Scratch: Vectors, Matrices, and High-Dimensional Spaces

This article, the second in a three-part series, demystifies the workings of Large Language Models (LLMs) for technically inclined readers with limited AI expertise. Building on part 19 of a series based on Sebastian Raschka's book "Build a Large Language Model (from Scratch)", it explains the use of vectors, matrices, and high-dimensional spaces (vocab space and embedding space) within LLMs. The author argues that understanding LLM inference requires only high-school level math, while training requires more advanced mathematics. The article details how vectors represent meaning in high-dimensional spaces and how matrix multiplication projects between these spaces, connecting this to linear layers in neural networks.

(www.gilesthomas.com)

AI Vectors Matrices

Visual Look Up on Apple Silicon Macs: A Power and Energy Analysis

2025-09-06

Visual Look Up on Apple Silicon Macs: A Power and Energy Analysis

This study analyzes the power and energy consumption of a single Visual Look Up (VLU) on Apple silicon Macs using Powermetrics and LogUI. Results show that the CPU performs the vast majority of the work (93%), with the GPU and Neural Engine (ANE) contributing only 4.6% and 2.2% respectively. While the ANE contributes to performance improvements during model execution, its overall energy consumption is low. The conclusion is that VLU, despite its impressive functionality, is not particularly demanding on the hardware.

(eclecticlight.co)

Hardware Visual Look Up Power Efficiency

LA Highway Guardrail Thefts Surge: AI Surveillance Offers a Potential Solution

2025-09-06

LA Highway Guardrail Thefts Surge: AI Surveillance Offers a Potential Solution

A surge in guardrail thefts on Los Angeles freeways is jeopardizing public safety. Over the past two years, repairs have cost over $62,000. Thieves target aluminum guardrails due to rising aluminum prices and ease of resale at scrap yards. Caltrans' attempts to deter theft by welding bolts have failed, leading them to consider fiberglass composite materials. Beyond guardrails, copper wire and cable theft also plagues the city, disrupting essential infrastructure like power and transit. AI surveillance systems are being deployed in some areas to detect and predict suspicious activity, offering a new approach to combating metal theft.

(laist.com)

Tech metal theft infrastructure security

The Secret History of Pigments: From Prehistoric Cave Paintings to Contemporary Art

2025-09-06

This article explores the origins, creation processes, and cultural significance of various pigments, tracing their journey from prehistoric humans using ochre in cave paintings to modern artists' exploration of color. It delves into pigments like ochre, bone black, ultramarine, Tyrian purple, Venetian ceruse, and the Pantone system, revealing their historical narratives, societal impact, and artistic value, along with the symbolic meaning of color in different cultures. The engaging storytelling reveals the hidden darkness and light behind colors, and humankind's enduring pursuit of them.

(emergencemagazine.org)

Design pigments

← Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 564 565 Next →