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Global Operation Takes Down 27 DDoS-for-Hire Sites

2024-12-17

Europol coordinated a 15-country operation, PowerOFF, shutting down 27 major DDoS-for-hire platforms ('booters' and 'stressers'). These platforms enabled cybercriminals and hacktivists to flood targets with illegal traffic, crippling websites and online services. The operation disrupted attacks targeting US government agencies, including the Department of Justice and FBI. While a significant victory, experts caution that criminals will adapt, necessitating ongoing efforts to combat DDoS attacks.

(www.scworld.com)

Tech DDoS attacks international cooperation

Open-Source 5-Band Equalizer a5eq.lv2 Released

2024-12-18

ashafq has released a5eq.lv2, an open-source 5-band equalizer LV2 plugin. This plugin features a low shelf, three peaking filters, and a high shelf, designed for precise audio sculpting by both amateur and professional audio engineers. It boasts high-precision filter coefficients, stereo processing, and a user-friendly interface. Compatible with any LV2-supporting host software such as Ardour and Audacity, it's easily installed and used via command line. Users can submit issues or contribute code via GitHub.

(github.com)

Development audio processing equalizer

ISO 8583: The Secret Language of Credit Cards

2024-12-18

Every time you tap your card or pay online, you're interacting with the ISO 8583 protocol. This 1987 standard defines the format of real-time transaction messages between banking networks. It includes core fields like message type indicators, bitmaps, and data elements, but networks vary in their extensions and serialization, leading to compatibility challenges. This article delves into the complexities of ISO 8583's structure, field encoding, nested message handling, and demonstrates building a robust ISO 8583 parser to handle network variations and error scenarios.

(increase.com)

Development credit card payments data parsing

Adaptable Text Editor 'ad': Blending Vim and Acme

2024-12-18

ad is a novel text editor that combines the modal editing interface of Vim and Kakoune with the extensibility approach of Plan9's Acme. ad allows users to execute text and serves as a playground for experimenting with implementing various text editor features. Currently, ad is stable enough and feature-complete enough to try out, though documentation is sparse and bugs may exist. ad's design philosophy blends Vim's modal editing, Emacs's mini-buffer, and Acme's editing commands and extensibility, aiming for a comfortable editing environment that supports direct interaction with external tools and programs.

(github.com)

Development text editor modal editing extensibility

Frankfurt Silver Amulet Rewrites Early Christian History

2024-12-18

Archaeologists unearthed a groundbreaking artifact in a 3rd-century Roman grave near Frankfurt, Germany: a silver amulet, the "Frankfurt Silver Inscription." Dating back to 230-270 CE, this amulet predates previously known Christian artifacts in the region by almost 50 years. Its inscription, deciphered using advanced technology, contains exclusively Christian content, including invocations to Jesus Christ and biblical quotations. This discovery significantly pushes back the timeline of Christianity's presence north of the Alps, shedding light on its early spread and influence in Roman Germania. The find has major implications for archaeology, theology, and Roman history.

(archaeologymag.com)

Misc Christianity Archaeological Discovery Roman Empire

Network Protocols: A Seemingly Simple Miracle

2024-12-17

This article provides a clear explanation of the network protocol stack, from reliable data transmission to the intricacies of the physical layer hardware, revealing its surprising complexity and ingenuity. Using an 88.5MB video download as an example, it illustrates how protocols like IP, TCP, and Ethernet work together to overcome network instability and packet loss, ultimately achieving reliable and efficient data transmission. The author reveals the complex routing algorithms, congestion control, and packet reassembly techniques hidden behind seemingly simple network operations, as well as the interdependencies and constraints between various protocols, and explains why the Ethernet packet size is set to 1500 bytes and other historical issues.

(www.destroyallsoftware.com)

Tech network protocols network architecture

No More Adam: Learning Rate Scaling at Initialization is All You Need

2024-12-18

Researchers introduce SGD-SaI, a novel optimizer improving stochastic gradient descent. SGD-SaI addresses training imbalances by scaling learning rates at initialization for different parameter groups based on their gradient signal-to-noise ratios. Significantly more memory-efficient than AdamW, SGD-SaI matches or surpasses AdamW's performance across various Transformer-based tasks, including ImageNet classification and LLM pretraining. Its robustness and practicality are demonstrated across diverse applications, making it a compelling alternative.

(arxiv.org)

AI

ImPlot3D: A High-Performance Immediate Mode 3D Plotting Library Based on Dear ImGui

2024-12-18

ImPlot3D is an open-source library built on top of Dear ImGui, offering developers an easy-to-use, high-performance way to create 3D plots. Independent of ImPlot, ImPlot3D supports various 3D plot types, including line plots, scatter plots, surface plots, and mesh plots, with interactive rotation, panning, and zooming. Its intuitive API, similar to Dear ImGui and ImPlot, allows for quick integration and customization of markers, lines, surfaces, and mesh styles, with options for built-in or custom colormaps. A comprehensive demo application aids users in learning and utilizing its features.

(github.com)

Development 3D plotting

Cerbos Leverages CRDTs for Collaborative Playground

2024-12-17

Cerbos built a collaborative IDE and testing environment, the "Playground," to simplify complex authorization logic. To enable seamless collaboration, they utilize Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs), which automatically resolve conflicts in distributed systems. The article explores CRDTs, comparing popular libraries like Yjs and Automerge, and discusses the challenges and possibilities of building a custom CRDT. Cerbos integrates CRDTs with a backend-for-frontend (BFF) architecture, using WebSockets for data transfer and IndexedDB for local persistence, creating a robust collaborative platform. The challenges of global collaboration and data persistence are also addressed.

(www.cerbos.dev)

Development Collaborative Development Authorization System

The Moon: A Captivating Cosmic Journey

2024-12-17

This article takes a captivating journey through the intricacies of the Moon's motion, the Earth-Moon system, and the dynamics of a three-body system within our solar system. Using interactive demonstrations, the author explains phenomena like lunar orbits, tides, solar and lunar eclipses, and reveals the formation of lunar surface features and the reasons behind the Moon's brightness. Covering concepts such as gravity and the conservation of angular momentum, the article explains complex astronomical phenomena in an accessible way, making it a scientifically engaging and entertaining read.

(ciechanow.ski)

Misc Moon Cosmos

Cultural Evolution of Cooperation Among LLM Agents

2024-12-18

Researchers investigated whether a 'society' of Large Language Model (LLM) agents can learn mutually beneficial social norms despite incentives to defect. Experiments revealed significant differences in the evolution of cooperation across base models, with Claude 3.5 Sonnet significantly outperforming Gemini 1.5 Flash and GPT-4o. Furthermore, Claude 3.5 Sonnet leveraged a costly punishment mechanism to achieve even higher scores, a feat not replicated by the other models. This study proposes a new benchmark for LLMs focused on the societal implications of LLM agent deployment, offering insights into building more robust and cooperative AI agents.

(arxiv.org)

AI Cooperation Social Norms

RTO Mandates Lead to Tech Talent Exodus, Study Finds

2024-12-17

A study tracking over 3 million employees at 54 S&P 500 high-tech and financial firms reveals that return-to-office (RTO) mandates are causing companies to lose top talent and struggle to find replacements. The research found a 14 percent average increase in employee turnover after RTO policies were implemented, with senior and skilled employees more likely to leave. Women experienced nearly three times the attrition rate of men. Furthermore, RTO mandates prolonged hiring times and increased costs. Companies' attempts to enforce RTO policies through surveillance tactics, such as VPN tracking and badge swipe monitoring, fueled employee resentment and furthered the exodus. The study suggests that RTO mandates reflect a culture of distrust and ineffective management, leading to decreased employee engagement.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech RTO mandates talent loss employee turnover

Modular Unveils MAX 24.6: A Native GPU Generative AI Platform

2024-12-17

Modular has released MAX 24.6, a native GPU generative AI platform designed to redefine how AI is developed and deployed. At its core is MAX GPU, a vertically integrated generative AI serving stack eliminating reliance on vendor-specific computation libraries like NVIDIA CUDA. Built on the high-performance AI model compiler and runtime MAX Engine and the Python-native serving layer MAX Serve, it supports the entire AI development lifecycle, from experimentation to production deployment. MAX 24.6 supports various hardware platforms, including NVIDIA A100, L40, L4, and A10 accelerators, with planned support for H100, H200, and AMD GPUs. It's compatible with Hugging Face models and provides an OpenAI-compatible client API. MAX 24.6 achieves a throughput of 3860 output tokens per second on Llama 3.1, matching vLLM's performance with a smaller Docker image size.

(www.modular.com)

AI GPU acceleration AI platform

Exbody2: High-Fidelity Whole-Body Motion Mimicry in Humanoid Robots

2024-12-18

Researchers have developed Exbody2, a generalized whole-body tracking framework enabling humanoid robots to perform expressive motions with human-like stability. Trained in simulation using Reinforcement Learning and then transferred to the real world, Exbody2 decouples keypoint tracking from velocity control. It leverages a privileged teacher policy to distill precise mimicry skills, achieving high-fidelity replication of dynamic movements such as running, crouching, and dancing. Experiments on two humanoid platforms demonstrate superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods, providing practical guidelines for advanced whole-body control in humanoid robotics.

(exbody2.github.io)

AI Robotics Reinforcement Learning Whole-body Control

BYOJS: Embrace Native JavaScript for Web Development

2024-12-17

The BYOJS project champions building web applications with core JavaScript, rather than relying on heavy frameworks. While frameworks and languages like TypeScript are popular, BYOJS argues that building efficient web apps using the core JS language is a lost art. It encourages using loosely-coupled libraries instead of tightly-coupled frameworks, advocating for choosing the least powerful tool that gets the job done and prioritizing concise code. The project provides helpful utilities such as a simple key-value storage API, an asynchronous event emitter, a modal wrapper, and more. All code is MIT licensed.

(byojs.dev)

Development Native JavaScript Lightweight Libraries

Rust Compiler: A Query-Based Incremental Compilation Architecture

2024-12-13

To address the efficiency issues of traditional pipeline-based compilation, the Rust compiler employs a query-based incremental compilation architecture. This architecture breaks down the compilation process into a series of interdependent queries, utilizing a compilation database to cache intermediate results. This allows recompilation only of necessary code sections. Similar to a build system's dependency management, this significantly improves compilation speed, especially beneficial in scenarios like IDE integration. While introducing complexity, this approach offers a more stable and efficient incremental compilation experience for Rust compared to gradual improvements to traditional methods, now default for development builds.

(lwn.net)

3

Development Compiler Incremental Compilation

The Age of Average: Design Homogenization in the Modern World

2024-12-13

From interior design to automobiles and movie posters, a striking homogeneity pervades modern design. The article uses the example of Komar and Melamid's 'People's Choice' paintings to illustrate the surprising uniformity of aesthetic preferences. The sameness of Airbnb interiors, fast-casual architecture, car designs, and brand logos and advertising all exemplify this trend. The author argues this 'Age of Average' isn't accidental but a result of factors like technological constraints, cost pressures, and market convergence. However, this also presents an opportunity; bold brands and courageous companies that dare to be different and distinctive can thrive.

(www.alexmurrell.co.uk)

3

Design design homogenization aesthetic convergence age of average

Open Source Firmware: Necessity and Strategic Choices

2024-12-17

This article explores the necessity of open-source firmware. The author argues that firmware, as software controlling hardware, should adhere to free software principles. This is not only about freedom itself but also directly related to users' practical interests. Non-free firmware can restrict hardware functionality, hide security vulnerabilities, and even prevent users from fixing security issues. The article analyzes two viewpoints: one considers open-source firmware desirable but not necessary; the other advocates that all system software should be open-source. The author leans towards the former, believing that prioritizing the freedom of the operating system kernel is more important, but simultaneously emphasizes the benefits of open-source firmware and discusses how to promote it through strategic means.

(mjg59.dreamwidth.org)

Development firmware free software

DataFuel API: Turn Websites into LLM-Ready Data

2024-12-13

DataFuel is a powerful API that transforms websites and knowledge bases into LLM-ready data with a single query. It effortlessly scrapes entire websites, delivering clean, markdown-structured data perfect for RAG systems and AI model training. No complex scraping code is needed. DataFuel offers multiple output formats, including GPT-4 powered extraction for highly accurate results, and a free tier to get started. Trusted by industry leaders, DataFuel simplifies the data preparation process for building powerful AI applications.

(www.datafuel.dev)

3

AI web scraping

Anthropic Unveils Clio: Privacy-Preserving Insights into Real-World AI Usage

2024-12-13

Anthropic has developed Clio, an automated analysis tool that provides privacy-preserving insights into real-world large language model usage. Clio analyzes conversations, grouping similar interactions into topic clusters, similar to Google Trends, without compromising user privacy. This allows Anthropic to understand how users employ their Claude model, identify potential misuse like coordinated spam campaigns or unauthorized resale attempts, and improve safety measures. Clio helps reduce false positives and negatives in safety systems, offering valuable data for enhancing AI safety and governance while upholding user privacy.

(www.anthropic.com)

3

AI AI safety privacy preserving

One Woman Dev Team Reaches Two Million Users

2024-12-17

Nadia Odunayo, a software engineer, built The StoryGraph, a reading community app with over a million users, as a solo developer. The StoryGraph helps users track their reading and recommends books based on mood and preferences. This inspiring story highlights Odunayo's grit, technical skills, and the 'one-person framework' she used to achieve this impressive feat. It offers valuable insights for aspiring solo developers.

(brightonruby.com)

Development solo development reading community user growth

Study Reveals Misperception of Opposite-Sex Facial Preferences

2024-12-13

A PLOS ONE study reveals that both men and women overestimate the opposite sex's preference for sexually dimorphic facial features (masculine or feminine traits). Using interactive 3D head models, participants chose their own ideal face shape and the face shape they believed the opposite sex would find most attractive. Women overestimated men's preference for feminine faces, while men overestimated women's preference for masculine faces. This misperception correlated with the discrepancy between participants' own and ideal facial dimorphism (an index of appearance dissatisfaction). The study suggests that misperceiving opposite-sex preferences contributes to appearance dissatisfaction.

(journals.plos.org)

3

AI facial attractiveness sexual dimorphism appearance dissatisfaction

Archive Team: Rescuing Digital History from the Brink

2024-12-18

Archive Team is a loose collective of archivists, programmers, and volunteers dedicated to preserving our digital heritage. Since 2009, they've been battling website shutdowns, data deletions, and more, striving to save historical information before it's lost forever. They actively participate in various data archiving projects, offering advice on data management and recovery. Current projects include saving data from platforms like Telegram and Cohost, along with ongoing efforts for sites such as Blogger, GitHub, and Imgur.

(wiki.archiveteam.org)

Tech digital heritage web archiving data preservation

IBM's Executive Terminal: A Forgotten Chapter in Computing History

2024-12-13

A recently discovered 1968 videotape reveals IBM's previously unknown "Executive Terminal" system. Unlike Engelbart's "Mother of All Demos," which emphasized collaboration, this system created an information "war room" for top IBM executives. Executives used modified television sets to query information specialists, who then compiled information from various terminals and resources, presenting it visually to the executives. This showcases an alternative application of early computing technology within a hierarchical organization, contrasting sharply with the collaborative approach of the "Mother of All Demos." Together, they offer a fascinating glimpse into the early development of computing.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

3

Tech Executive Terminal Computing History

Programmers Craft a Whimsical Programming Game: Droste's Lair

2024-12-17

Two programmers spent two weeks developing Droste's Lair, a whimsical programming environment game. Players build and count mathematical structures through intuitive drag-and-drop interactions, using an "amb" mechanism for branching execution and recursion. The game, themed around swords and sorcery, presents challenges such as reversing list elements, generating all face card combinations, and counting ways to cover a checkerboard with dominoes. Droste's Lair cleverly blends programming and game elements, offering a novel and engaging way to learn programming and mathematical concepts.

(vezwork.github.io)

Development programming game recursion visual programming

Fixing the Loading Issues in Myst IV: Revelation

2024-12-13

This article documents the author's journey in fixing the notoriously slow loading times in Myst IV: Revelation. The game suffers from a two-second load time per click, even on SSDs. Using profiling tools, the author pinpointed the issue to the game's inefficient image loading via the LEADTOOLS library, which loads images row by row. The solution involved extracting game assets, converting images to the DDS format for faster loading, and implementing multithreading. However, challenges remain, such as crashes related to water effects, requiring further optimization.

(medium.com)

3

Game game optimization performance profiling

Ergo: A Modern Go-Based IRC Server Released

2024-12-18

Ergo is a modern IRC server written in Go, designed for ease of setup and use. It combines the features of an ircd, services framework, and bouncer (integrated account management, history storage, and bouncer functionality). It boasts bleeding-edge IRCv3 support and is highly customizable via a rehashable YAML config. Key features include integrated services (NickServ, ChanServ, HostServ), native TLS/SSL support, SASL authentication, LDAP support, and advanced security and privacy features.

(github.com)

Development IRC server

Startup Failure After 3 Years: Founder Open-Sources All Code

2024-12-17

After three years, Dylan Huang's developer tools startup, Konfig, has shut down. Konfig focused on simplifying API integrations, with its core product being an SDK generator alongside API documentation and testing tools. Despite gaining some early traction, the company failed to achieve hyper-growth due to challenges in securing contracts and low pricing. A pivot to a B2B SaaS AI product also proved unsuccessful. Now, Huang is open-sourcing Konfig's entire codebase – including the core product, failed pivots, and various supporting scripts – hoping it will be beneficial to others. While the startup ended in failure, Huang emphasizes the invaluable lessons learned.

(dylanhuang.com)

Startup startup failure open source code API development tools

Refactoring in C++: Top Techniques and Best Practices

2024-12-13

This article explores common refactoring techniques in C++ and best practices for improving code quality. Refactoring, the process of restructuring existing code without changing functionality, enhances readability, efficiency, and maintainability. The article covers techniques like renaming variables and functions, extracting functions, simplifying conditional statements, optimizing loops, and removing code duplication. It emphasizes the importance of using IDEs with auto-refactoring capabilities and highlights best practices such as refactoring in small steps, using version control, and automated testing to minimize technical debt and improve overall code quality.

(blog.jetbrains.com)

3

Development refactoring software development

How Learning Tibetan Changed My Thinking

2024-12-13

Estefania Duque shares her journey learning Tibetan, revealing how the language reshaped her thinking, perspective, and spiritual understanding. She describes how studying Tibetan, particularly its grammar and unique ways of expressing possession and personal experience, has altered her self-perception and relationship with the world. The language's nuanced honorifics and humble speech fostered self-reflection and accountability. She likens the process of learning Tibetan to a form of meditation, culminating in a deeper appreciation of Buddhist philosophy and a commitment to translating Dharma texts, preserving both the Dharma and Tibetan culture.

(www.lionsroar.com)

3

Misc Tibetan language mindfulness

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