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British Artist Creates Playful, Weightless Steel Sculpture

2025-06-06

British Artist Creates Playful, Weightless Steel Sculpture

British artist Alex Chinneck unveiled "A week at the knees," a new sculpture at London's Clerkenwell Design Week. Made from 320 meters of repurposed steel and 7,000 bricks, the 5-meter-tall, 12-ton piece is surprisingly only 15 centimeters thick. It playfully anthropomorphizes a Georgian facade, its lower levels appearing to sit with knees bent, creating a whimsical interaction with the surrounding park. The sculpture masterfully blends the weight of the materials with a light and graceful visual effect, creating a unique artistic experience within the historical context of London's squares and gardens.

(www.thisiscolossal.com)

Design sculpture art public art installation

West Bank Palestinians Rely on Homegrown Navigation Apps to Bypass Israeli Checkpoints

2025-09-20

West Bank Palestinians Rely on Homegrown Navigation Apps to Bypass Israeli Checkpoints

Navigating the West Bank has become a daily struggle for Palestinians, with Israeli checkpoints and barriers severely restricting movement. Homegrown apps like Doroob Navigator and Azmeh, which crowdsource real-time traffic and road closure data, have become lifelines, helping people reach work, schools, and hospitals. These apps highlight the resilience and community spirit of Palestinians in the face of ongoing conflict and restrictions.

(restofworld.org)

Misc navigation apps mapping

PlanetScale for Postgres Goes GA

2025-09-22

PlanetScale for Postgres Goes GA

PlanetScale's managed Postgres service is now generally available, exiting private preview. Users can easily create Postgres databases and leverage migration guides for switching from other providers. Built on five years of experience with their Vitess product, PlanetScale has helped companies like Cursor, Intercom, and Block scale their databases. This new offering combines PlanetScale's maturity with the performance of bare metal, and includes a Postgres sharding solution called Neki, planned for future open-source release.

(planetscale.com)

Tech

Huawei's 3000km Range Solid-State Battery Patent Shakes Up the EV Market

2025-06-30

Huawei's 3000km Range Solid-State Battery Patent Shakes Up the EV Market

Huawei has filed a patent for a sulfide-based solid-state battery boasting a 3,000km range and 5-minute ultra-fast charging. This breakthrough signals Huawei's ambitious entry into the rapidly evolving solid-state battery landscape and could reshape the electric vehicle market. The patent describes a battery with energy densities of 400-500 Wh/kg, two to three times that of conventional lithium-ion cells. Huawei's innovation lies in improving electrochemical stability by nitrogen-doping the sulfide electrolyte, addressing a major hurdle for sulfide-based battery commercialization. While the 3,000km range and 5-minute charge remain theoretical, the technology showcases China's accelerating lead in next-generation battery technology, sparking concern and attention from global competitors.

(carnewschina.com)

Tech

FlashSpace: Blazing-Fast Workspace Manager for macOS

2025-02-08

FlashSpace: Blazing-Fast Workspace Manager for macOS

FlashSpace is a lightning-fast virtual workspace manager for macOS, designed to enhance and replace the native macOS Spaces. It eliminates the wait for macOS animations and offers features like multi-display support, customizable hotkeys for workspace switching, and the ability to assign apps to specific workspaces and displays. Additional features include a focus manager, cursor manager, profiles for quick configuration switching, and SketchyBar integration for enhanced workflow.

(github.com)

Development virtual workspace

The Rise and Fall of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

2025-02-10

The Rise and Fall of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

This article chronicles the remarkable history of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Starting with Ken Olsen's post-WWII creation of the TX-0 in a MIT basement, DEC revolutionized the computing industry with its PDP series of minicomputers, emphasizing low cost, ease of use, and user interaction. The PDP-1 heralded the dawn of the personal computing era. However, facing the onslaught of the IBM PC and strategic missteps, DEC was ultimately acquired by Compaq in 1998. This history showcases the power of technological innovation and the ruthlessness of market competition, offering valuable insights into management decisions and technological direction.

(www.abortretry.fail)

Tech Computer History

Do Newly Coined Swear Words Relieve Pain? A Controlled Experiment

2025-07-02

Do Newly Coined Swear Words Relieve Pain? A Controlled Experiment

Researchers conducted an experiment to test whether newly invented swear words have the same pain-relieving effects as traditional swear words. Participants immersed their hands in ice water while repeating different words, including a conventional swear word, two newly coined swear words, and a neutral word. Results showed that the conventional swear word increased pain tolerance and threshold, but the newly coined words did not. This suggests the pain-relieving effect of swearing may not simply be due to sound or emotional arousal, but rather learned negative associations from childhood.

(www.frontiersin.org)

Misc pain swearing

Supercomputer Simulations Reveal Stunning Details of Neutron Star-Black Hole Collisions

2025-06-19

Supercomputer Simulations Reveal Stunning Details of Neutron Star-Black Hole Collisions

Scientists used supercomputers to simulate neutron star-black hole collisions, revealing that before the collision, the neutron star is torn apart by the black hole's gravity, generating Alfvén waves and a final burst of radio waves lasting about a second. The collision also produces the universe's strongest shock waves and may form a brief black hole pulsar, emitting high-energy X-rays or gamma rays. This research, leveraging the powerful GPU computing capabilities of the Perlmutter supercomputer, provides crucial clues for detecting these most violent events in the universe.

(www.caltech.edu)

Tech supercomputer simulation

RubyMine Goes Free for Non-Commercial Use

2025-09-02

RubyMine Goes Free for Non-Commercial Use

JetBrains has announced that RubyMine, their popular Ruby and Rails IDE, is now free for non-commercial use! Whether you're learning, contributing to open source, creating dev content, or building personal projects, you can now enjoy the full power of RubyMine without cost. This move aims to lower the barrier to entry and support the vibrant Ruby community. Commercial use still requires a paid subscription. The free version offers the same features as the paid version, except for some limitations in Code With Me. Getting a free license is easy – just select the non-commercial use option within the IDE.

(blog.jetbrains.com)

Development Free IDE

Linux Kernel Drama: Bcachefs Gets the Axe

2025-06-29

Linux Kernel Drama: Bcachefs Gets the Axe

The upcoming Linux kernel 6.17 will drop support for Bcachefs, a COW filesystem, due to escalating tensions between its maintainer, Kent Overstreet, and Linus Torvalds. The conflict stems from disagreements over code submission practices and timing, violating established community rules. A central point of contention was a new 'journal-rewind' feature submitted during the release candidate phase, raising concerns from other developers. Despite Overstreet's arguments about user data integrity, Torvalds ultimately decided to remove Bcachefs entirely, marking a notable event in Linux kernel development history.

(news.itsfoss.com)

Development Developer Conflict

Vicinae: A High-Performance Desktop Launcher Challenging Raycast

2025-09-13

Vicinae: A High-Performance Desktop Launcher Challenging Raycast

Vicinae is a high-performance native desktop launcher built with C++ and Qt, inspired by Raycast. It boasts a mostly compatible extension API leveraging server-side React/TypeScript, eliminating the need for a browser or Electron. Features include file indexing with full-text search, a smart emoji picker, a calculator, an encrypted clipboard history tracker, shortcuts, window manager integration, and a customizable theming system. While some features may have limited support on certain platforms, Vicinae aims to provide developers and power users with fast, keyboard-centric access to common system actions.

(github.com)

Development desktop launcher

French Fusion Reactor Sets New Record with 22-Minute Plasma Sustainment

2025-02-19

French Fusion Reactor Sets New Record with 22-Minute Plasma Sustainment

France's CEA WEST Tokamak reactor has achieved a groundbreaking milestone in fusion energy research, sustaining a plasma reaction for over 22 minutes – a new world record. This achievement represents a significant step towards commercial fusion power, a long-sought goal with the potential to provide humanity with virtually limitless clean energy. While initiating fusion is relatively straightforward, creating a self-sustaining reactor that produces more energy than it consumes is incredibly challenging. The success of the WEST reactor provides invaluable data and experience for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) currently under construction in southern France, paving the way for future clean energy applications.

(newatlas.com)

Tech fusion energy plasma

PGP Public Key: A Secure Encryption Key

2025-03-19

This code snippet displays a PGP public key used for encryption and verifying digital signatures. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is a widely used encryption technology that ensures the security and integrity of digital communication. This public key can be used to encrypt messages, which can only be decrypted by the person possessing the corresponding private key. It's also used to verify the authenticity of digital signatures, ensuring that messages haven't been tampered with.

(www.zbeegnew.dev)

Tech

Syftr: An Open-Source Framework for Automating Generative AI Workflow Optimization

2025-05-31

Syftr: An Open-Source Framework for Automating Generative AI Workflow Optimization

Building effective generative AI workflows faces a combinatorial explosion of choices. Syftr is an open-source framework that uses multi-objective Bayesian optimization to automatically identify Pareto-optimal workflows across accuracy, cost, and latency constraints. Syftr efficiently searches a vast configuration space to find workflows that optimally balance accuracy and cost, achieving significant results on the CRAG Sports benchmark, reducing cost by nearly two orders of magnitude. Syftr supports various components and algorithms and is compatible with other optimization tools, providing an efficient and scalable approach to building generative AI systems.

(www.datarobot.com)

AI Workflow Optimization

Google DeepMind Unveils Gemini Robotics: AI for Dexterous Robot Control

2025-03-12

Google DeepMind Unveils Gemini Robotics: AI for Dexterous Robot Control

Google DeepMind announced Gemini Robotics and Gemini Robotics-ER, two new AI models designed to control robots with unprecedented dexterity and precision. Built upon the Gemini 2.0 large language model, these models incorporate vision-language-action (VLA) capabilities and enhanced spatial reasoning. Gemini Robotics allows robots to understand and execute complex commands like "pick up the banana and put it in the basket," while Gemini Robotics-ER focuses on seamless integration with existing robotic control systems. This represents a significant leap forward in robotics, particularly in handling intricate physical manipulations and demonstrating strong generalization capabilities. Google is partnering with Apptronik to build the next generation of humanoid robots using Gemini 2.0, showcasing the potential for widespread adoption. However, Google also emphasizes safety, releasing the "ASIMOV" dataset to help researchers evaluate the safety implications of robotic actions.

(arstechnica.com)

AI

US Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Program Halted Due to Funding Lapse

2025-07-23

US Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Program Halted Due to Funding Lapse

A US program monitoring critical infrastructure networks for threats, CyberSentry, has been suspended due to expired government funding. Run by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the program uses AI to detect cyberattacks and previously successfully identified high-risk Chinese-made surveillance cameras in US infrastructure. The suspension raises concerns about US critical infrastructure cybersecurity, particularly with the increasing sophistication of cyberweapons targeting industrial control systems. This mirrors a similar funding lapse earlier this year with the CVE program, highlighting staffing and funding shortages at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

(www.theregister.com)

Tech critical infrastructure

The Rise of the Small Language Model: 30B Parameters and Still 'Small'

2025-05-24

The Rise of the Small Language Model: 30B Parameters and Still 'Small'

In 2018, a 'small model' meant a few million parameters running on a Raspberry Pi. Today, a 30B parameter model is considered 'small'—requiring only a single GPU. The definition has shifted. Now, 'small' emphasizes deployability over sheer size. These models fall into two categories: edge-optimized models (like Phi-3-mini, running on mobile devices) and GPU-friendly models (like Meta Llama 3 70B, running on a single GPU). Small models excel at specialized tasks, offering higher efficiency and easier fine-tuning. Even 70B parameter models, with optimization, run smoothly on high-end consumer GPUs. This marks the arrival of the small model era, opening up possibilities for startups, developers, and enterprises.

(jigsawstack.com)

AI small models model optimization

Google Earth's Approach to Naming Bodies of Water: A Balancing Act

2025-01-29

Google Earth's Approach to Naming Bodies of Water: A Balancing Act

Google Earth faces the challenge of handling diverse user perspectives on place names and borders globally. Their solution prioritizes displaying the primary, commonly used local names for bodies of water used by bordering nations. In cases of disputes, all major names are shown with explanations, striving for neutrality and comprehensiveness. This approach avoids relying solely on international organizations or academic consensus, focusing instead on a user-friendly experience while acknowledging sensitive geopolitical issues.

(publicpolicy.googleblog.com)

Tech Google Earth Place Name Disputes Cartography

SimCity Megacity: A Six Million Strong Totalitarian Nightmare

2025-05-03

Vincent Ocasla spent four years building Magnasanti, a totalitarian SimCity 2000 metropolis with a population of six million. Inspired by the Buddhist Wheel of Life, the city reflects a dark commentary on social control and power dynamics. Lacking hospitals, schools, and fire stations, citizens rarely live past 50, existing within a highly regimented environment. Ocasla views Magnasanti not as a mere game, but an artistic expression commenting on the harsh realities of power, oppression, and social control, using the game as a medium to explore these themes.

(www.vice.com)

Game City Planning

AI Code Writing: A Breakthrough with Darwin-Gödel Machines

2025-06-26

AI Code Writing: A Breakthrough with Darwin-Gödel Machines

Microsoft and Google's CEOs have both stated that AI now writes a significant portion of their company's code. New research introduces a system called Darwin-Gödel Machines (DGMs), which uses a combination of large language models and evolutionary algorithms to achieve recursive self-improvement in code-writing agents. DGMs significantly improved performance on coding benchmarks through iterative refinement, even surpassing systems using fixed external improvement methods. While current DGM performance doesn't exceed human experts, it showcases immense potential and sparks discussion about AI safety and risks.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

AI

The Dark Horse Duchess: How Anne Monck Reshaped British History

2025-05-29

In the tumultuous aftermath of Cromwell's death in 1660, Britain teetered on the brink of chaos. General George Monck, commander of the Scottish army, held the nation's fate in his hands. His decision to support the exiled Parliament and march south was a pivotal moment. Faced with a stark choice – reinstate the Commonwealth, restore Richard Cromwell, or contact the exiled Charles II – Monck's path was subtly shaped by his wife, Anne. Anne, a woman of humble origins, possessed remarkable political acumen. Her dreams, strategic counsel, and quiet influence ultimately led Monck to contact Charles II, fundamentally altering British history and paving the way for the Restoration. This untold story reveals the powerful, behind-the-scenes role of a remarkable woman in shaping the destiny of a nation.

(www.historytoday.com)

Misc Restoration Female Influence

Startup Necromancy: Exploiting Abandoned Google Apps Domains

2025-01-15

Startup Necromancy: Exploiting Abandoned Google Apps Domains

A security researcher discovered a critical vulnerability: improperly shutting down Google Workspace accounts leaves defunct startup domains vulnerable. New owners can reactivate former employees' Google accounts, granting access to third-party services (Slack, ChatGPT, Zoom, etc.) accessed via Google OAuth. Sensitive data, including tax documents and internal communications, becomes exposed. Google initially dismissed it, but after the researcher's Shmoocon presentation, they reevaluated, offering a bounty. This highlights the risk of insufficient account closure procedures and potential weaknesses within OAuth authentication.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

TigerBeetle's Docs Site Rebuild: Ditching Docusaurus for a Zig-Powered Solution

2025-04-10

TigerBeetle's Docs Site Rebuild: Ditching Docusaurus for a Zig-Powered Solution

TigerBeetle rebuilt its documentation site from scratch, abandoning Docusaurus (Node.js based) in favor of a lightweight, fast, Zig-powered static site generator. Leveraging Zig's build system and Pandoc, they achieved efficient Markdown parsing and HTML generation. The new site boasts improved user experience, a significantly smaller footprint, and even a fun Easter egg game. This rebuild showcases TigerBeetle's commitment to technical excellence and a lean approach.

(tigerbeetle.com)

Development Documentation Site

Building a Database with the Rust Open-Source Community: The ScopeDB Story

2025-01-15

Building a Database with the Rust Open-Source Community: The ScopeDB Story

A team of three built ScopeDB, a shared-disk architecture cloud database for managing petabytes of observability data, in just four months using Rust. Leveraging the power of the Rust ecosystem and numerous open-source projects like Apache OpenDAL, SQLx, and SeaQuery, the team actively contributed back to the community with patches and new libraries. ScopeDB also features an open-source twin, Morax, for sharing engineering experience, demonstrating a commercial open-source paradigm.

(tisonkun.io)

Development

Why AI Can't Replace Top Sales Performers: The Irreplaceable Human Element

2025-04-18

Why AI Can't Replace Top Sales Performers: The Irreplaceable Human Element

A VP of Sales faces pressure from his CEO to replace human sellers with AI. Analyzing a recent $2.7 million deal, he reveals AI's inability to replicate human skills like building rapport, embodying accountability, reacting swiftly to competition, and navigating complex client relationships. He uses the 'HUMAN' framework (Humanity, Understanding, Metrics, Action) to successfully argue for retaining his sales team and even increase the budget for top performers. The article emphasizes that while AI assists, it cannot fully replace the emotional intelligence, judgment, and flexibility of human sales professionals.

(lewislin.substack.com)

Startup

Local CI for GitHub: Ditch the Cloud, Embrace Your Dev Machine

2025-04-14

Local CI for GitHub: Ditch the Cloud, Embrace Your Dev Machine

Tired of slow, expensive, and rented cloud CI? `gh-signoff`, a GitHub CLI extension, brings CI back in-house! Run your tests locally, sign off when they pass (using `gh signoff`), and get that green GitHub commit status without the hassle. Say goodbye to complex merge queues and deployment pipelines – simplicity and control are yours.

(github.com)

Development Local CI

Microsoft Makes Significant Windows Changes to Comply with the Digital Markets Act

2025-06-03

Microsoft Makes Significant Windows Changes to Comply with the Digital Markets Act

To comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act, Microsoft announced several new features for Windows users in the EEA. Users can now uninstall the Microsoft Store and avoid being forced to set Edge as their default browser. Setting a different default browser will pin it to the taskbar and extend its association to more file types. Microsoft assures users that apps installed from the Store will continue receiving updates even after uninstallation. Further improvements include enabling third-party apps to add their search results to Windows Search upon installation, and allowing users to customize the order of search providers. These updates will roll out in early June and July.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

DeepMind's Table Tennis Robots: An Endless Match for a Smarter Future

2025-07-26

DeepMind's Table Tennis Robots: An Endless Match for a Smarter Future

Google DeepMind has trained two robots to play an endless game of table tennis to improve general-purpose AI. The goal isn't a final score, but continuous learning and strategy improvement through competition. The robots have reached a level comparable to amateur human players, achieving a 50/50 win rate against intermediate players. Researchers hope this will spark a robotics revolution, creating robots that can safely and effectively interact with humans in the real world, similar to the impact of ChatGPT on language models.

(www.popsci.com)

AI

Zuckerberg's Testimony: Smoking Gun in Meta Antitrust Case

2025-04-26

The FTC's antitrust trial against Meta is underway, and Mark Zuckerberg's testimony has emerged as a pivotal moment. Prosecutors used Zuckerberg's own internal emails as damning evidence, revealing his admission that the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were intended to eliminate competition. Emails show Zuckerberg was aware of potential antitrust violations yet proceeded with the acquisitions, subsequently implementing strategies to restrict Instagram's growth and increase ad load. While Meta argues it's not a monopoly, Zuckerberg's testimony strongly supports the prosecution's case of anti-competitive behavior, significantly strengthening their position.

(pluralistic.net)

Tech

Google Opens Up Google Maps Platform Data to Cities and Developers

2025-04-09

Google Opens Up Google Maps Platform Data to Cities and Developers

Google announced Wednesday that it's opening up its Google Maps Platform data, making it easier for cities, developers, and business decision-makers to access information on infrastructure, traffic, and more. For the first time, Google is integrating new datasets from Google Maps Platform products—Imagery Insights, Roads Management Insights, and Places Insights—directly into BigQuery. This allows for easier access to data that can help solve various problems. For instance, telecom companies can use Imagery Insights to assess infrastructure like utility poles, road authorities can analyze traffic with Roads Management Insights, and Places Insights offers customized data on locations. Access to Earth Engine data via BigQuery also provides sustainability insights from satellite imagery, such as wildfire risk.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

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