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California Running Out of License Plate Numbers; New System Incoming

2025-04-23

California Running Out of License Plate Numbers; New System Incoming

California is projected to exhaust its current license plate number system by the end of 2025. The existing 1-3-3 format (one number, three letters, three numbers), in use since 1980, will be replaced. The California DMV has announced a new 3-3-1 format (three numbers, three letters, one number), with plates like 000AAA1 anticipated. The last plate of the old system, likely 9ZZZ999, will become a collector's item, as will the first plate of the new system. A redesign of the plate itself may also accompany the change.

(www.thedrive.com)

Misc license plates DMV

Transparency Isn't Enough: The Failure of Prop 65 and Privacy Policies

2025-04-19

Cory Doctorow critiques the ineffectiveness of California's Prop 65 and lengthy privacy policies, arguing that mere "transparency" is insufficient to protect consumer rights. He contends that instead of relying on consumers to assess the risk of carcinogens in products, stronger regulations should compel companies to minimize risks. Similarly, lengthy privacy policies are useless; real protection requires stricter privacy laws, not user comprehension of incomprehensible terms. Using his blog's humorous privacy policy as an example, he satirizes the absurdity of the current system and calls for stronger regulatory measures, such as adopting Stanford's Mark Lemley's proposed "default rules", to safeguard consumers.

(pluralistic.net)

Misc privacy policies

The Immortal Flower Lady: A Woman's Legacy in Medical Research

2025-04-16

The Immortal Flower Lady: A Woman's Legacy in Medical Research

Dr. Victor Spitzer of the University of Colorado School of Medicine and his friend Susan Potter share an extraordinary story. Potter's persistence in donating her body to Spitzer's Visible Human Project for medical education culminated in a 14-year journey. High-resolution digital images of Potter's remains were reconstructed, exceeding the detail of previous Visible Human projects. Beyond imagery, Spitzer's company, Touch of Life Technologies, aims to create a virtual 'living cadaver' of Potter, combining her anatomy with her life story to create a richer educational resource. Potter's story prompts reflection on the selfless dedication to medical education and the future of anatomical study.

(news.cuanschutz.edu)

Tech Medical Research Body Donation

From Audiobooks to Essays: A Writer's Journey

2025-04-16

From Audiobooks to Essays: A Writer's Journey

Starting with reflections on listening to the audiobook of Gabrielle Zevin's 'Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,' the author delves into the relationship between audiobooks and traditional reading, and their own experiences in the creative process and recording audiobooks. The essay showcases personal reflections and, based on reader feedback, the author's decision to share more directly about life, writing, and opinions. The piece also promotes a podcast and writing workshop the author is involved with.

(newsandreviews.substack.com)

Misc audiobooks

Optimizing JS Config Objects with BigInts: An Experiment

2025-09-25

Optimizing JS Config Objects with BigInts: An Experiment

To optimize serialization, comparison, and update operations on a large number of configuration objects, the author experimented with using JavaScript's BigInt type to store configuration data. By packing multiple configuration fields into a single BigInt and using bitwise operations for efficient read and write operations, the author achieved a compact memory representation and fast serialization/deserialization. However, this approach also has some drawbacks, such as the need to manually manage field bit widths and offsets, and the performance issues of BigInt bitwise operations. The author is currently still evaluating the practical effect of this method and plans to update the article in the future.

(jonathan-frere.com)

Development

Xona's Anti-Jamming Satellite Navigation System

2025-06-08

Xona's Anti-Jamming Satellite Navigation System

Xona Space Systems is tackling the vulnerability of GPS signals to jamming and spoofing. Their upcoming Pulsar-0 satellite will transmit signals 100 times stronger than GPS by significantly reducing the distance to ground receivers. This enhanced strength improves resistance to interference and enables more accurate indoor positioning. Crucially, this addresses the limitations of current GPS systems, particularly for applications like autonomous driving and drones that require high precision, especially in urban environments.

(www.technologyreview.com)

Tech Anti-Jamming

PromptArmor: Breaking LLMs and Building the Future of AI Security

2025-06-04

PromptArmor: Breaking LLMs and Building the Future of AI Security

PromptArmor is a startup focused on AI security, specializing in breaking large language model (LLM) applications to build robust defenses. They serve major American enterprises, helping them securely accelerate their AI adoption. The team boasts experience from companies like Google and Tesla, and is backed by top investors including Y Combinator. They emphasize a customer-centric approach and offer competitive compensation, including a base salary of $120k-$180k and 0.75%-2% equity. Located in San Francisco, they're seeking engineers with strong technical skills and product sense to join their team.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Startup

Typographic Portrait: A Finnish Printer's Remarkable Feat

2025-04-16

Typographic Portrait: A Finnish Printer's Remarkable Feat

In 1937, Finnish typographer Valto Malmiola painstakingly crafted a portrait of Jean Sibelius using tens of thousands of pieces of brass rule and spacing material. This wasn't simple printing; Malmiola treated the type as pixels, arranging them with incredible precision to create grayscale effects. The article details Malmiola's process, his inspirations from international trends and personal experiences, and explores his work's place in both contemporary and modern art. The article also addresses the controversial fact that Malmiola was a Nazi sympathizer.

(blog.glyphdrawing.club)

Design

Hidden Gems of Japan: Exploring the Country's Charming Small Towns

2025-04-14

Hidden Gems of Japan: Exploring the Country's Charming Small Towns

This article unveils a collection of captivating small towns across Japan, offering a refreshing escape from bustling city life. The author shares personal experiences in Ie Island (Okinawa), Kitsuki (Oita), Kotohira (Kagawa), Minoh (Osaka), Nakafurano (Hokkaido), Onomichi (Hiroshima), Tsuwano (Shimane), and Zao Onsen (Yamagata). Each town boasts unique charm, from stunning natural landscapes and preserved historical architecture to renowned onsen and local delicacies. The author recommends visiting during the shoulder seasons (May or October) for pleasant weather and fewer crowds, suggesting flexible travel plans to fully appreciate these hidden gems.

(japanstartshere.com)

Misc Japan Travel Small Towns Hidden Gems

Founding Engineer Needed: AI-Powered Video Editing Revolution

2025-04-11

Founding Engineer Needed: AI-Powered Video Editing Revolution

Mosaic, an AI-powered node-based video editing paradigm, won the $25,000 grand prize at the Google Gemini Kaggle competition. We're seeking a Founding Engineer to accelerate development of our core agentic video editing technology. Responsibilities include building scalable video processing and inference pipelines, designing evaluations, and making high-level product decisions. The team comprises ex-Tesla engineers and aims to reduce video editing time from hours to seconds. First-principles thinking is a must.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development AI video editing Founding Engineer

Realtime Collaborative Web Apps Without ClojureScript: The Power of Clojure and Datastar

2025-04-11

This article showcases a real-time multiplayer web game built using Clojure and the lightweight framework Datastar. Surprisingly, it uses zero ClojureScript and no user-written JavaScript! By streaming the entire main element of the page to the client every 200ms and leveraging Datastar's efficient DOM diffing algorithm, it achieves a smooth, real-time collaborative experience. The author cleverly uses SSE (Server-Sent Events) and Brotli compression to address bandwidth concerns and avoid the complexities and performance bottlenecks of WebSockets. The project demonstrates the potential of Clojure in building high-performance, real-time collaborative web applications, offering developers a simple and efficient alternative.

(andersmurphy.com)

Development

Strange Traffic on IXPs: An Admin's Observations

2025-09-25

Strange Traffic on IXPs: An Admin's Observations

The author, operating one of the largest IXP networks on the internet, uses bgp.tools to monitor and reveal a surprising amount of unexpected traffic on IXPs. This includes various routing protocols (OSPF, IS-IS, RIP), auto-addressing protocols (DHCP, IPv6 RA), and vendor-specific protocols (LLDP, CDP, MNDP), all posing security risks like information disclosure and traffic hijacking, even causing outages. The author also highlights bizarre traffic like home networking protocols (UPnP), printer discovery protocols (MDNS), and erroneous broadcast DNS queries stemming from misconfigurations. The author calls for increased traffic monitoring and access controls on IXPs to enhance network security.

(blog.benjojo.co.uk)

Tech traffic monitoring

Checking for Constant Expressions in C: A Macro Approach

2025-04-22

This article explores various methods for creating a C macro that detects if an expression is a constant expression. The author investigates several techniques, including C23's static compound literals, GNU extension `__builtin_constant_p`, `static_assert`, `sizeof` combined with compound literal arrays, `sizeof` with enum constants, and the comma operator. Each method has its pros and cons; C23 support is limited, `__builtin_constant_p` relies on GNU extensions, `static_assert` and `sizeof` methods might alter the expression's type, and the comma operator generates warnings. The author concludes that a perfect solution is elusive, and the best choice depends on specific needs and the C standard version.

(nrk.neocities.org)

Development Macro Constant Expression

Bluesky's Censorship Loophole: Turkey's Crackdown and the Client Response

2025-04-25

Bluesky's Censorship Loophole: Turkey's Crackdown and the Client Response

Following a request from the Turkish government to block 72 accounts, questions have arisen about Bluesky's decentralization. While the official Bluesky app complied with the censorship demands, third-party clients based on the AT Protocol, such as Skeets and Ouranos, can bypass censorship because they don't enforce geolocation tagging. However, this workaround is not permanent; as third-party clients gain popularity, they too may face government pressure. Developer Aviva Ruben is building Deer.social, allowing users to disable Bluesky's official moderation service and manually configure their location to counter future censorship attempts. This highlights the complex interplay of technology and politics in the pursuit of decentralized social media.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech

macOS Tahoe Beta Bids Farewell to the Old Hard Drive Icon

2025-08-06

macOS Tahoe Beta Bids Farewell to the Old Hard Drive Icon

Apple's latest macOS 26 Tahoe developer beta brings a complete overhaul of system disk icons, marking the end of the era for the iconic old hard drive icon. The new design reflects modern SSDs and extends to applications like Disk Utility and installers. While functionally minor, the change symbolizes Apple's complete departure from the traditional HDD era, prompting a touch of nostalgia.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

The Unexpected Origins of the NYSE: Buttonwood, Tontines, and a Coffee House

2025-04-21

The Unexpected Origins of the NYSE: Buttonwood, Tontines, and a Coffee House

This article unveils the surprising history of the New York Stock Exchange. While the Buttonwood Agreement of 1792 laid the groundwork, the subsequent development hinges on the Tontine Coffee House. Funded by a unique annuity-like scheme called a tontine – a blend of retirement planning and lottery – the coffee house became a hub for early traders. Investors received dividends until death, with remaining funds increasing the payouts for survivors. This unusual financial instrument, combined with the coffee house's central role, ultimately led to the evolution of the modern NYSE. The story highlights the fascinating evolution of finance and the impact of an archaic financial tool on the modern financial system.

(tontinecoffeehouse.com)

Startup Financial History NYSE

Coinbase Data Breach Sparks Fears of Kidnappings and Deaths

2025-05-20

Coinbase Data Breach Sparks Fears of Kidnappings and Deaths

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington claims that a recent Coinbase data breach, exposing sensitive user data like addresses and balances, will lead to deaths due to a surge in kidnapping attempts targeting high-net-worth crypto holders. Arrington calls for a re-evaluation of KYC regulations and imprisonment for executives failing to protect customer data. Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan counters that the problem stems from government-mandated KYC data collection. The incident highlights serious security and privacy concerns in the crypto space and sparks debate over the merits of KYC.

(decrypt.co)

Tech Crypto Security

Modernized Dockerfile Formatter: dockerfmt

2025-04-09

Modernized Dockerfile Formatter: dockerfmt

Introducing dockerfmt, a modernized Dockerfile formatter built on top of the buildkit parser. It offers improved support for RUN commands (though grouping and semicolons are not yet supported), basic inline comment support, and various command-line options for checking, writing, indentation, and newline handling. JS bindings are also provided for easy integration. While features like line wrapping for long JSON commands and the # escape=X directive are not yet implemented, dockerfmt provides a user-friendly and effective way to format your Dockerfiles.

(github.com)

Development formatter

Mind-blowing! These Unexpected Things Are Turing-Complete!

2025-04-27

From C++ templates to Magic: The Gathering, even PowerPoint—this article reveals a surprising array of seemingly simple systems that are, in fact, Turing-complete. The examples range from programming languages and hardware instruction sets to game mechanics and even image compression, showcasing the surprising ubiquity of Turing completeness and its unexpected applications. Some examples even leverage bugs or vulnerabilities to achieve unexpected computational power. Prepare to be amazed!

(beza1e1.tuxen.de)

Development

File Organization: Type vs. Context

2025-05-02

File Organization: Type vs. Context

This article explores two common approaches to organizing code files: by type and by context. Using a real-world Identity and Access Management (IAM) system as an example, the author compares the pros and cons of each method. While organizing by type is convenient for finding specific file types, it falls short in understanding the business logic and maintainability of the code. Organizing by context, however, more clearly reveals the system's business processes, facilitating team collaboration and troubleshooting, and is better suited for large projects. Ultimately, the author concludes that the best choice depends on team size, project characteristics, and workflow, with no absolute superior method.

(muhammedsari.me)

Development

Bezos' Washington Post Overhaul: A Libertarian Pivot?

2025-02-26

Bezos' Washington Post Overhaul: A Libertarian Pivot?

Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, announced a dramatic shift in the paper's opinion sections, declaring a focus solely on "personal liberties and free markets." This decision prompted the resignation of the opinions editor and widespread internal dissent. Bezos argues that the internet provides a platform for diverse viewpoints, but critics see it as silencing opposing voices and a departure from the Post's commitment to unbiased journalism. The move raises concerns about journalistic freedom and media independence.

(www.npr.org)

Tech Journalistic Freedom

Replicube: Code Your Own Voxel Worlds

2025-05-14

Replicube: Code Your Own Voxel Worlds

Replicube is an open-ended programming puzzle game where you write code to replicate 3D voxel-based objects. Solve puzzles by matching reference objects with your code – there's no single right answer, just get the same object! Freely create your own voxel art, and even generate 2D images and GIFs with the built-in tools. Compete on leaderboards, share your creations on the in-game forum, and export your work to other 3D programs. Available on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

(store.steampowered.com)

Game voxel game code creation

Handwriting's Superior Brain Connectivity: A New Study

2025-04-21

Handwriting's Superior Brain Connectivity: A New Study

A new study reveals that handwriting activates significantly more extensive and interconnected brain networks than typing, especially in areas linked to memory and sensory processing. Researchers used high-density EEG to compare brain activity during handwriting and typing, finding that handwriting promotes broader brain communication patterns crucial for learning and memory. The study suggests handwriting should remain a core part of education, particularly for young children, due to its unique ability to fully engage the brain and optimize learning conditions. Further research will explore the long-term cognitive benefits of handwriting.

(www.psypost.org)

Tech handwriting brain connectivity

Bonobo Syntax Challenges the Uniqueness of Human Language

2025-04-11

Bonobo Syntax Challenges the Uniqueness of Human Language

A new study reveals that bonobos combine calls in complex ways to form distinct phrases, suggesting that this type of syntax is more evolutionarily ancient than previously thought. Researchers, by observing and analyzing bonobo vocalizations and using semantic methods, discovered non-trivial compositionality in bonobo call combinations, meaning the meaning of the combination differs from the meanings of its individual parts. This finding challenges the uniqueness of human language, suggesting that the complex syntax of human language may have originated from older ancestors.

(www.newscientist.com)

AI

Microsoft Restructures to Unleash AI Power: LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 Converge

2025-06-04

Microsoft Restructures to Unleash AI Power: LinkedIn and Microsoft 365 Converge

Microsoft announced major organizational changes to fuel its AI ambitions. LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky expands his role to lead Microsoft 365 Copilot, while remaining LinkedIn CEO. Charles Lamanna and his Business and Industry Copilot team will report to Rajesh, reflecting Microsoft's strategy to integrate Modern Work and Business Applications into a unified AI Business Solutions Center. This move aims to break down traditional industry silos, creating greater customer value by leveraging the combined power of LinkedIn, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365 to unlock the next wave of AI innovation.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Microsoft Restructuring AI Strategy LinkedIn Integration

A Curious Adventure in Implementing RNG and Cosine in Purely Functional Nix

2025-04-15

A Curious Adventure in Implementing RNG and Cosine in Purely Functional Nix

This post details the author's experience implementing a random number generator and a cosine function within NixOS, a Linux distribution built on the Nix language. The purely functional nature of Nix presents challenges when working with system randomness and standard mathematical functions. The author explores various approaches, including using Nix's `runCommandLocal` and custom infinite list implementations, ultimately overcoming caching and function-call quirks to achieve the goal. The journey highlights Nix's flexibility and power, but also exposes some limitations of its features.

(unnamed.website)

Development

The Buenos Aires Constant: A Mathematical Puzzle Hiding Primes

2025-02-21

The mysterious number 2.92005097731613..., known as the Buenos Aires constant, generates a sequence of prime numbers when used to initialize a simple Python script. This isn't a coincidence; the constant's definition is intrinsically linked to prime sequences. However, due to computational precision limitations using the IEEE 754 standard, the algorithm fails after generating a certain number of primes. This raises questions about the deeper connection between mathematical constants and primes, highlighting the impact of computational accuracy on mathematical experimental results.

(www.johndcook.com)

Misc mathematical constant

US Attorney Detained at Border, Phone Search Raises Political Reprisal Concerns

2025-04-10

US Attorney Detained at Border, Phone Search Raises Political Reprisal Concerns

Michigan-based attorney Amir Makled was detained by federal immigration agents upon returning from a family vacation. Agents demanded access to his phone, a request he refused. After a 90-minute ordeal, he was released without explanation. Makled believes his detainment is linked to his representation of a student charged in connection with a pro-Palestinian protest, potentially stemming from the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestine visa holders. He sees the phone search as intimidation, aiming to discourage lawyers from taking on similar cases. However, the incident has garnered significant support and sparked widespread debate over government overreach.

(www.npr.org)

Misc political reprisal lawyer rights

Nanoplastics: The Invisible Killer from 75 Years of Plastic

2025-04-11

A new study published in Nature Communications reveals the molecular mechanism behind the massive production of nanoplastics. The research shows that the strength and durability of plastics are intrinsically linked to their propensity to form nanoplastics. Within the crystalline and amorphous layers of plastics, the amorphous layers are more susceptible to environmental degradation and breakage, leading to the fracturing of the hard crystalline layers and the formation of persistent and highly damaging nano- and microplastics. This discovery explains the widespread and persistent nature of plastic pollution over the past 75 years and its potential impact on human health.

(www.sciencedaily.com)

Tech nanoplastics environmental science

GoAnywhere MFT Vulnerability CVE-2025-10035: A CVSS 10.0 Mystery

2025-09-25

GoAnywhere MFT Vulnerability CVE-2025-10035: A CVSS 10.0 Mystery

watchTowr Labs dissected CVE-2025-10035, a critical vulnerability in Fortra's GoAnywhere MFT with a perfect CVSS score of 10.0. This deserialization vulnerability allows an attacker with a forged license response signature to deserialize arbitrary objects, potentially leading to command injection. While exploitation requires internet exposure, watchTowr Labs discovered an unauthenticated method to obtain a license request token, bypassing authentication. However, a signature verification hurdle remains. The analysis details the exploitation process, raising questions about potential undiscovered signature bypasses or leaked private keys. A detection tool is provided to help users identify vulnerable instances.

(labs.watchtowr.com)

Tech deserialization

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