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The Unexpected Legacy of Parking Reform Pioneer Donald Shoup

2025-02-12

The Unexpected Legacy of Parking Reform Pioneer Donald Shoup

Professor Donald Shoup, a pioneer in parking reform, passed away on February 6th. This article details how his work fundamentally reshaped the political economy of parking and cities themselves. His seminal work, *The High Cost of Free Parking*, argued that underpriced parking leads to wasted resources and urban congestion. Shoup advocated for demand-based parking pricing and the abolition of minimum parking requirements, using parking revenue to improve local infrastructure to gain public support. His ideas have been implemented in thousands of cities worldwide, leaving a lasting impact on urban planning.

(www.worksinprogress.news)

Misc parking reform

Boosting Ruby Ractor Performance: Tackling the `object_id` Bottleneck

2025-04-27

Ruby's Ractor concurrency model suffers from performance limitations due to global locks. This post dives deep into a performance bottleneck caused by the `object_id` method, stemming from historical design choices and improvements to garbage collection. By optimizing `object_id`'s implementation, storing it directly within objects instead of using a global hash table lookup, the author significantly improves Ractor performance, resulting in a two-fold speed increase in JSON benchmarks. While challenges remain, such as handling special object types, this work represents a crucial step towards making Ractors truly parallel.

(byroot.github.io)

Development

Google's UI/UX: A Bad Design Example

2025-04-24

While Google is often criticized for its data collection practices, less attention is paid to its influence on UI/UX design. As a dominant tech company, its design choices set standards, leading developers to mimic its style. However, Google's own interfaces are frequently criticized for being chaotic and confusing. This "do it like Google" effect results in a homogenization of design, stifling innovation and harming user experience. The author argues that Google's poor design not only impacts users but also sets a bad precedent for the industry, contrasting it with Apple's generally better user experience design. This extends beyond tech, affecting even household appliances, illustrating the broader impact of a dominant company's design choices.

(rakhim.exotext.com)

Design UI/UX design

arXivLabs: Community Collaboration on New arXiv Features

2025-09-22

arXivLabs is a framework for collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the arXiv website. Participants must adhere to arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. Have an idea to improve the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Microsoft Doubles Down on Europe Amidst Geopolitical Uncertainty

2025-05-01

Microsoft Doubles Down on Europe Amidst Geopolitical Uncertainty

Responding to growing concerns about data sovereignty and US-EU trade tensions, Microsoft unveiled a five-point plan to bolster its European presence and reassure customers. This includes a 40% increase in European datacenter capacity over the next two years, a European board of directors composed solely of European nationals, and a commitment to defend European customer data in court if necessary. The plan also emphasizes enhanced cybersecurity measures and support for open-source development within Europe. This strategic move aims to mitigate risks associated with US data legislation and maintain Microsoft's market share in Europe.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech European Datacenters Data Sovereignty

The Seven-Year Rule: Embrace Your Ever-Changing Self

2025-04-26

Inspired by the Dalai Lama's concept, this article explores the idea that we are completely reborn every seven years due to cellular regeneration. The author argues that clinging to past mistakes or triumphs is futile, as that person no longer exists. By focusing on the present moment and embracing this constant transformation, we liberate ourselves and better shape our future selves.

(www.macsparky.com)

Misc

DropZap World: 120 Levels of Laser-Powered Block-Dropping Fun

2025-06-18

DropZap World: 120 Levels of Laser-Powered Block-Dropping Fun

DropZap World, from the creator of the original DropZap games, offers a fresh take on falling block puzzles. This game features 120 challenging levels filled with lasers, mirrors, color-matching mechanics, and a satisfying level progression system. Available across iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and macOS with iCloud sync, DropZap World promises hours of laser-zapping entertainment for both newcomers and veteran players.

(apps.apple.com)

Game lasers

SkyRoof: Ham Satellite Tracking and SDR Receiver Software

2025-06-05

VE3NEA recently released SkyRoof, a Windows program combining satellite tracking and SDR receiver functionalities. Supporting RTL-SDR, Airspy, and SDRplay, it tracks and receives ham radio satellites, offering real-time tracking, pass prediction, a sky map, and an SDR waterfall display. It demodulates SSB/CW/FM, automatically compensates for Doppler shift, and interfaces with hamlib-compatible antenna rotators. Johnson's Techworld on YouTube features a SkyRoof test video.

(www.rtl-sdr.com)

Hardware Amateur Radio Satellite Tracking SDR Receiver

Apple Accused of Colluding with Sony Music to Remove Musi App

2025-05-27

Apple Accused of Colluding with Sony Music to Remove Musi App

Musi app developers are accusing Apple of colluding with Sony Music and YouTube to secretly remove their app. Court documents reveal that Apple senior legal director Elizabeth Miles secretly contacted Sony Music executives to seek the removal of the Musi app. Apple tried to block key witnesses from testifying, including in-house counsel Violet Evan-Karimian, responsible for the removal decision, and Arun Singh, who handled the liaison with YouTube. Musi claims Apple's actions constitute a "backchannel scheme," while Apple denies this, stating that the complaint was never closed and YouTube was actively involved. This case raises concerns about Apple's App Store review process and the abuse of power by large tech companies.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech Music App

Zhaoxin's Century Avenue: A Deep Dive into China's x86 CPU Ambitions

2025-04-30

Zhaoxin's Century Avenue: A Deep Dive into China's x86 CPU Ambitions

Zhaoxin's latest CPU, the KX-7000, featuring the new "Century Avenue" architecture, aims to bridge the performance gap with early 2010s Intel CPUs. While showing progress with a wider 4-wide core and higher clock speeds, the KX-7000 lags in cache bandwidth, branch prediction, and memory subsystem performance. Single-threaded performance roughly matches AMD's Bulldozer, outperforming it in floating-point benchmarks but falling short in multi-threaded tasks against both Bulldozer and Intel Skylake. The article suggests the KX-7000 isn't designed to directly compete with AMD and Intel, but rather to meet China's demand for domestic CPUs, highlighting the technical and resource challenges in the pursuit of performance.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware Zhaoxin x86 CPU

Surprisingly Usable Word Processors on the Commodore VIC-20

2025-01-08

Surprisingly Usable Word Processors on the Commodore VIC-20

This article explores several surprisingly capable word processors for the Commodore VIC-20, a machine with a notoriously small screen. VICWRITER, with its typewriter-like interface, offers comfortable editing. Quick Brown Fox stands out with 80-column display support and RS-232 communication capabilities. Speedscript impresses with its word wrap and efficient editing commands. Write Now is also briefly mentioned, showcasing the ingenuity of software developers in overcoming hardware limitations.

(techtinkering.com)

Tech Retro Computing Word Processors

Sole Maintainer of Popular Node.js Utility Raises Security Concerns

2025-08-28

Sole Maintainer of Popular Node.js Utility Raises Security Concerns

A Node.js utility, fast-glob, used by thousands of public projects and over 30 Department of Defense systems, is maintained solely by a Yandex employee residing in Russia. While fast-glob has no known vulnerabilities, its deep system access and the maintainer's affiliation with Yandex raise serious security concerns. Hunted Labs' report highlights the utility's 79+ million weekly downloads, exposing a vast attack surface. This incident underscores the critical importance of open-source security and the need to know who writes your code.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech geopolitical risk

Is 0.999... Really Equal to 1? A Mathematical Controversy

2025-06-02

Is 0.999... Really Equal to 1? A Mathematical Controversy

This article delves into the long-standing debate surrounding whether the infinitely repeating decimal 0.999... is exactly equal to 1. While mathematically proven to be equal, many find this counterintuitive. The article analyzes common proofs, highlighting their shortcomings in terms of student comprehension, particularly concerning the multiplication of infinite decimals. It further explains the absence of infinitesimals and infinity in the real number system, introducing hyperreals to demonstrate why the difference between 0.999... and 1 is an infinitesimal, equivalent to zero in the real numbers. Ultimately, the article concludes that the intuitive feeling of a difference between 0.999... and 1 isn't contradictory; this difference simply holds no significance within the real number system used daily.

(lcamtuf.substack.com)

Misc infinite decimal

The Fallacy of 'Gold' in Fantasy Games: A Historical Perspective on Currency Systems

2025-01-07

The Fallacy of 'Gold' in Fantasy Games: A Historical Perspective on Currency Systems

This article challenges the common fantasy game trope of using 'gold' as a universal currency. The author argues that in the ancient Mediterranean world, gold coins were impractical for everyday transactions due to their high value. Analyzing ancient Greek, Roman, and medieval currency systems, the article demonstrates that silver and copper coins were the primary mediums of exchange. The author suggests that fantasy games should adopt more historically accurate currency systems, reflecting the economic realities of ancient societies. This includes considering non-monetary transactions like bartering and debt accounting to better represent wealth disparities and economic functions.

(acoup.blog)

Game currency history game design

C to FlipJump: A Minimalist RISC-V Virtual Machine

2025-01-17

C to FlipJump: A Minimalist RISC-V Virtual Machine

The c2fj project is a compiler that translates C code into FlipJump, a minimalist instruction set virtual machine. It first compiles C code into a RISC-V ELF file, then translates RISC-V instructions into FlipJump instructions, and finally runs the resulting FlipJump program. This process cleverly leverages FlipJump's space optimization, allowing for efficient compilation even of large C codebases. c2fj supports various compilation flags and provides Makefile support for complex projects. It also includes a minimal C library implementing necessary system calls such as `exit`, `getc`, `putc`, and `sbrk`.

(github.com)

Development

ISC: 800+ Players Online, Free Scrabble!

2025-05-15

The Internet Scrabble Club (ISC) is the best place to play live online Scrabble! Right now, 843 players are logged in, with 320 games in progress. Play free Scrabble with no ads or downloads, against friends, people worldwide, or computer opponents. Review your games or watch others. ISC uses only official dictionaries and is available on iOS, Android, and desktop.

(isc.ro)

Game online game scrabble

Sony Battles AI Deepfake Songs: 75,000+ Removed, Copyright Fight Heats Up

2025-03-10

Sony Battles AI Deepfake Songs: 75,000+ Removed, Copyright Fight Heats Up

Sony Music is battling AI-generated deepfake songs mimicking artists like Harry Styles and Beyoncé. Over 75,000 songs have been removed from online platforms, but this is likely a small fraction of the problem. The proliferation of these songs is causing direct commercial harm, sparking a copyright debate. The UK government is considering new copyright laws allowing AI model training on artist material, but this has faced artist protests over the difficulty of policing copyright violations. Meanwhile, AI-generated nude deepfakes are a growing problem in US high schools, highlighting the ethical concerns alongside the technological advancements.

(gizmodo.com)

Tech AI deepfakes deepfake songs Deepfakes deepfakes music industry

The Missing Million: Rekindling American Manufacturing

2025-02-22

The Missing Million: Rekindling American Manufacturing

America's manufacturing sector faces a critical labor shortage, having lost 5 million jobs between 2000 and 2010. This article explores the reasons behind this crisis, including globalization, automation, and a skills gap. To address this, it proposes a community-based, education-focused solution leveraging advanced technologies like 3D printing to cultivate the next generation of manufacturing workers and build resilience through decentralized production. Using Muskegon, Michigan as a case study, it demonstrates how combining advanced technology with traditional craftsmanship can foster innovation and manufacturing capabilities within local communities.

(arenamag.com)

Tech American manufacturing

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaboration

2025-04-14

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who share them. Got an idea for a valuable community project? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Gemini 2.0 Flash: Google's Native Image Generation Model Enters Developer Experimentation

2025-03-12

Gemini 2.0 Flash: Google's Native Image Generation Model Enters Developer Experimentation

Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash, a multimodal AI model boasting enhanced reasoning and natural language understanding, is now available for developer experimentation. It generates images from text, creates illustrated stories, allows for conversational image editing, and excels at rendering long text sequences clearly. Accessible via Google AI Studio and the Gemini API, Gemini 2.0 Flash promises exciting possibilities for developers building AI agents and visually rich applications.

(developers.googleblog.com)

AI AI Image Generation

US Teens' Trust in Big Tech Plummets

2025-01-30

US Teens' Trust in Big Tech Plummets

A new report from Common Sense Media reveals a significant decline in trust among US teens toward major tech companies like Google, Apple, Meta, TikTok, and Microsoft. The survey found low levels of trust regarding these companies' concern for teen well-being, ethical decision-making, and data privacy. This distrust is linked to several tech scandals over the years, including government mass data collection, the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Meta whistleblower leaks. Teens also express skepticism about these companies' responsible use of AI, with many believing AI exacerbates online misinformation and impacts the accuracy of online information. The report calls for increased AI privacy safeguards and transparency, suggesting AI-generated content should be labeled and watermarked.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech teens tech trust

AI Coding Assistants Need More Context: Experiments and Insights

2025-02-10

AI Coding Assistants Need More Context: Experiments and Insights

Traditional AI coding assistants, while proficient in code generation, often lack crucial context about the broader system environment. This leads developers to spend extra time bridging the gap between code and various information sources. This article details experiments integrating operational context (call graphs, metrics, exception reports) into AI assistants to improve debugging accuracy. Results show structured performance data and error reports enhance AI analysis, but efficiently representing vast amounts of context remains a challenge. The future lies in a knowledge graph encompassing production behavior, system metrics, and more, enabling AI assistants to understand system behavior holistically.

(www.nuanced.dev)

Development AI coding assistants context understanding

Colossal's 'Dire Wolves': Gene Editing Sparks Controversy

2025-04-08

Colossal's 'Dire Wolves': Gene Editing Sparks Controversy

Colossal Biosciences claims to have resurrected the extinct dire wolf, using gene editing to create grey wolf pups—Remus, Romulus, and Khaleesi—with some dire wolf traits. However, studies show grey wolves and dire wolves diverged 6 million years ago, with significant genetic differences. Colossal's claim of achieving this with only 20 gene edits is controversial. The three gene-edited pups are under observation in a reserve, and breeding is prohibited. This raises questions about species definition and the ethical challenges of gene editing.

(www.newscientist.com)

Tech dire wolf

Century-Old Problem Solved: Mathematicians Unify Three Theories of Fluid Physics

2025-04-26

Century-Old Problem Solved: Mathematicians Unify Three Theories of Fluid Physics

Mathematicians from the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan have posted a paper to arXiv claiming to have solved a subgoal of Hilbert's sixth problem: unifying three physical theories describing fluid motion—Newton's laws of motion, the Boltzmann equation, and the Euler-Navier-Stokes equations. The achievement bridges the microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels by proving that, in the limit of infinitely many particles with vanishing size, the statistical behavior of Newton's equations converges to the solution of the Boltzmann equation. This strengthens the mathematical foundations of physics.

(www.scientificamerican.com)

Tech Fluid Dynamics

Verification-First Development: Beyond Test-Driven Development

2025-03-18

Verification-First Development: Beyond Test-Driven Development

This article explores Verification-First Development (VFD), a paradigm that emphasizes establishing verification mechanisms before writing code. This could involve writing tests, defining type invariants, adding contracts, or other methods. VFD differs from Test-Driven Development (TDD), which is a specific case of VFD and focuses on using tests to drive code design. VFD's advantages include reducing the likelihood of skipping verification, early error detection, and improved code quality. However, VFD also has drawbacks: it can slow development, hinder exploratory coding, and verification methods might influence code design. The author argues that VFD, as a technique rather than a paradigm, is more flexible and easily integrates with other approaches.

(buttondown.com)

Development test-driven development verification-first

AI Winter Bites: The Struggle for Computer Science Grads in a Shrinking Tech Job Market

2025-04-23

The post-pandemic tech layoff wave has hit globally, with many tech companies, especially large ones, significantly reducing hiring. Simultaneously, rapid AI advancements are displacing some programmers. For recent computer science graduates, the job market is tougher. While some secure roles through internships and networking, intense competition and uncertainty remain. Experts suggest over-hiring during the pandemic and worsening macroeconomic conditions also play roles, not just AI. However, tech still needs talent; job types and locations are shifting, with opportunities emerging outside the tech giants, such as in banking.

(cacm.acm.org)

Tech tech layoffs

Moving Nightmare: A $14,000 Lesson and the FMCSA Insurer Database

2025-05-03

In 2023, the author hired Flat Rate Movers for an interstate move, only to experience a nightmarish ordeal. The company failed to deliver promised services, causing damage to the author's belongings and home, and subsequently refused all communication. After numerous attempts to resolve the issue, the author finally received partial compensation by directly contacting Hanover Insurance Company, identified through the FMCSA insurer database. This cautionary tale highlights the importance of thorough due diligence when choosing movers and introduces the FMCSA database as a crucial resource for protecting consumer rights.

(aphyr.com)

Misc moving

Why 'Boring' Tech Is Actually the Best

2025-02-11

Why 'Boring' Tech Is Actually the Best

This article argues that 'boring' technology, exemplified by NetBSD, is superior in system administration and architecture. 'Boring' implies predictability, reducing unexpected failures and maintenance headaches. Mature technology boasts comprehensive documentation, an active community, and a proven track record, not simply age. While ubiquity isn't the measure of 'boringness', mature technologies are generally easier to understand and maintain, thus lowering costs and improving reliability. The author concludes that NetBSD's 'boringness' is precisely its greatest strength.

(rubenerd.com)

Development

Stuffed-Naan: Hiding Data in Plain Sight (Using NaNs)

2025-04-26

Stuffed-Naan: Hiding Data in Plain Sight (Using NaNs)

Stuffed-Naan is a novel library leveraging the peculiarities of JavaScript's NaN (Not a Number) values to hide and transport data. By cleverly encoding data into the mantissa of NaN values, Stuffed-Naan preserves the original data even after mathematical operations. The article humorously introduces this library, highlighting its high compression ratio, speed, and privacy features, while also mentioning the enterprise edition's added functionalities. While quirky, it effectively exploits the characteristics of IEEE 754 floating-point numbers.

(github.com)

Development data hiding

KDE Plasma: A Surprisingly Delightful Linux Desktop Experience

2025-09-18

The author recently switched their gaming rig's desktop environment to KDE Plasma, initially for their wife's convenience. However, they were pleasantly surprised by its comprehensive features and impressive speed. KDE Plasma's network applet provides extensive network information; its integrated screenshot tool is powerful; and its window rules in System Settings allow for extensive customization of application windows. Furthermore, KDE Plasma boasts many pre-integrated tools, such as Flatpak permission configuration, hardware information viewing, and sleep prevention—features that typically require separate software installations on Windows and macOS. While encountering minor initial issues, the author ultimately found KDE Plasma a highly satisfying experience, calling it the best Linux desktop environment they've used in years.

(kokada.dev)

Development Linux Desktop Environment

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