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Ice's Shocking Secret: Bending Generates Electricity, Potentially Explaining Lightning

2025-09-17

Ice's Shocking Secret: Bending Generates Electricity, Potentially Explaining Lightning

A study published in Nature Physics reveals that ordinary ice is a flexoelectric material, generating electricity when bent. This discovery could revolutionize electronics and potentially explain the formation of lightning. Researchers found that ice produces electric charge in response to mechanical stress at all temperatures, with a ferroelectric layer on its surface at low temperatures. This offers two mechanisms for ice's electricity generation. This groundbreaking research puts ice on par with advanced electroceramics like titanium dioxide and paves the way for new electronic devices using ice as an active material.

(phys.org)

Tech ice flexoelectricity

Interstellar Object A11pl3Z Speeds Toward the Sun

2025-07-03

Interstellar Object A11pl3Z Speeds Toward the Sun

Astronomers have detected A11pl3Z, a potential interstellar object hurtling through our solar system. This could be only the third interstellar visitor ever observed, following Comet 2I/Borisov and 'Oumuamua. Estimated to be up to 20 kilometers across, A11pl3Z is approaching the inner solar system at a breakneck speed. It will make its closest approach to the sun on October 23rd and pose no threat to Earth. Scientists are eager to study this mysterious object using advanced telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope to learn more about its origin and composition.

(www.livescience.com)

Tech

Fakespot: Your Secret Weapon Against Fake Amazon Reviews

2025-06-04

Fakespot: Your Secret Weapon Against Fake Amazon Reviews

Fakespot is a browser extension that helps users identify fake reviews on Amazon and other e-commerce sites. User reviews rave about its effectiveness in saving time and money by avoiding purchases of low-quality products. Fakespot analyzes reviews, flags suspicious fake ones, and rates products and sellers, helping users make more informed buying decisions. Many users report never buying a fake product since using Fakespot, praising its effectiveness.

(www.fakespot.com)

Misc

NYC Congestion Pricing: 43K Fewer Cars in Manhattan's Core

2025-01-14

Data from the MTA shows Manhattan's congestion pricing initiative has yielded significant results in its first week. An average of 43,000 fewer vehicles entered the toll zone daily, a 7.5% reduction. While slightly below projections, this decrease has led to faster bus speeds (up to 40%) and improved traffic flow. The revenue will fund transit improvements, though the policy faces opposition from some congressmen. Transit advocates praise the immediate positive impacts.

(gothamist.com)

Tech Congestion Pricing Traffic NYC

Gemma 3n: Powerful Mobile-First AI Model Released

2025-06-27

Gemma 3n: Powerful Mobile-First AI Model Released

Gemma 3n, a powerful mobile-first multimodal AI model, is now fully released! Built on the innovative MatFormer architecture, it supports image, audio, video, and text inputs, running with incredibly low memory footprints (2GB for E2B and 3GB for E4B). Gemma 3n supports 140 languages for text processing and 35 languages for multimodal understanding, achieving an LMArena score exceeding 1300. Its efficient architecture and Per-Layer Embeddings technology enable outstanding performance across various tasks, offering developers unprecedented convenience and ushering in a new era for mobile AI.

(developers.googleblog.com)

AI

Xcode's Constant Phone Home: Privacy Concerns and Build Speed Bottlenecks

2025-02-25

Developer Jeff Johnson discovered that Xcode frequently connects to Apple servers during project builds, leading to slow build times, especially during the "Gather provisioning inputs" phase. By disabling connections to developerservices2.apple.com using Little Snitch, he resolved the build speed issue. He also found that Xcode connects to other Apple servers, such as devimages-cdn.apple.com and appstoreconnect.apple.com, upon launch and project opening, seemingly unnecessarily and potentially transmitting developer information to Apple. Jeff argues that Xcode acts as a developer analytics collection mechanism, compromising developer privacy.

(lapcatsoftware.com)

Development Build Speed

Conquering ADHD: Strategies and Tactics

2025-08-31

Conquering ADHD: Strategies and Tactics

This post delves into managing ADHD, divided into 'Strategies' and 'Tactics'. 'Strategies' focus on high-level control systems such as medication, memory management, energy allocation, and introspection. 'Tactics' list micro-level improvements, including task selection, visual field management, regular project check-ins, and inbox management. The author emphasizes medication as a first-line treatment for ADHD and shares practical tips based on personal experience, guiding readers to build efficient personal growth systems and ultimately conquer ADHD.

(borretti.me)

Development

Tidewave Web: In-Browser AI Coding Agent for Rails & Phoenix

2025-08-20

Dashbit introduces Tidewave Web, an AI coding agent running directly in the browser alongside your Rails and Phoenix web applications. It boasts full page and code context awareness, eliminating the constant switching between tools. Tidewave directly accesses your UI state, executes code, queries databases, monitors logs, and more. Users suggest improvements via a point-and-click inspector, and Tidewave automatically builds features and tests them in the browser. Currently supporting Rails and Phoenix, future support for React, Django, and other frameworks is planned. Tidewave changes the traditional AI coding paradigm by creating a shared context between the developer, agent, and web app, boosting development efficiency.

(tidewave.ai)

Development Web development

US Treasury Hacked via Decade-Old PostgreSQL Zero-Day

2025-03-17

US Treasury Hacked via Decade-Old PostgreSQL Zero-Day

The US Treasury suffered a data breach exploited via a nearly decade-old SQL injection vulnerability in PostgreSQL. The attack wasn't a simple SQL injection; it leveraged the output of an internal Postgres string escaping method fed directly into the psql command-line tool. Attackers used two bytes, `c0 27`, bypassing Beyond Trust's PAM tool and the pg_escape_string function, gaining full psql control and executing arbitrary system commands. This highlights how subtle, long-standing vulnerabilities, even in heavily scrutinized open-source projects, can lead to severe security breaches.

(slamdunksoftware.substack.com)

Tech PostgreSQL Vulnerability

Ladybird: A Novel Web Browser Built on Web Standards

2025-02-28

Ladybird: A Novel Web Browser Built on Web Standards

Ladybird is a truly independent web browser using a novel engine based on web standards. Currently in pre-alpha, it's intended for developers. Its multi-process architecture—with a main UI process, multiple WebContent renderers, an ImageDecoder, and a RequestServer—prioritizes robustness against malicious content. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows (with WSL2), and many other *nix systems and leverages several core library components from SerenityOS. Developers are invited to join the Discord server for discussions and contributions.

(github.com)

Development web standards multi-process architecture

FedRAMP 20x: One Month In, Full Speed Ahead

2025-05-13

FedRAMP 20x: One Month In, Full Speed Ahead

One month after its launch, the GSA's FedRAMP 20x initiative is rapidly modernizing FedRAMP through continuous collaboration with industry and federal agency experts. This month saw the authorization of 29 new cloud services, numerous community working group meetings, and significant progress on improving standards, including the release of three proposed standards for public comment. Looking ahead, the FedRAMP 20x Phase One pilot program is opening, aiming to use Key Security Indicators to summarize the security capabilities of cloud-native service offerings. The initiative prioritizes security over compliance and encourages private sector innovation.

(www.fedramp.gov)

Tech

Scottish Police Face Data Sovereignty Showdown with Microsoft

2025-08-29

Scottish police are grappling with significant data security and sovereignty challenges in their adoption of Microsoft Office 365. Microsoft's refusal to disclose data processing locations and methods, citing "commercial confidentiality," prevents the police from meeting the stringent data transfer restrictions of the UK's 2018 Data Protection Act. This raises concerns about data potentially being processed in countries lacking adequate data protection, including China and India, and highlights the risks of relying on cloud services without sovereign cloud capabilities. While aware of the risks, the police are constrained by the UK National Enabling Programme and existing contracts with Microsoft, making a swift change of supplier difficult.

(www.computerweekly.com)

Tech

FFmpeg 8.0: Vulkan-Accelerated Encoding and Auto-Subtitling

2025-08-29

FFmpeg 8.0: Vulkan-Accelerated Encoding and Auto-Subtitling

FFmpeg 8.0, codenamed "Huffman," is here with significant updates. A standout feature is the integration of the Whisper speech recognition model, enabling automatic video subtitling. It leverages the Vulkan API for hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding of various formats, including AV1, FFv1, VP9, and ProRes RAW, and supports VVC (H.266) encoding, boosting efficiency. This release also enhances compatibility with older formats like RealVideo 6.0 and niche audio codecs, solidifying its indispensable role in video processing.

(www.theregister.com)

Development Video Encoding

Airbnb's Listing Lifetime Value Framework: A Deep Dive

2025-04-04

Airbnb's Listing Lifetime Value Framework: A Deep Dive

Airbnb developed a framework to estimate listing lifetime value (LTV) to enhance user experience. The framework calculates three types of LTV: baseline LTV, incremental LTV, and marketing-induced incremental LTV. Baseline LTV predicts the total bookings a listing will receive in the next 365 days using machine learning and listing data. Incremental LTV accounts for booking cannibalization between listings. Marketing-induced incremental LTV measures the additional value generated by internal marketing initiatives. The article discusses challenges like accurately measuring baseline LTV, handling incrementality, and dealing with uncertainties (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic). Airbnb uses LTV to identify high-value listings, improve host recommendations, and evaluate marketing campaign effectiveness.

(medium.com)

Development Lifetime Value

Turing Award Recognizes Reinforcement Learning Pioneers

2025-03-05

Turing Award Recognizes Reinforcement Learning Pioneers

Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton have been awarded the 2024 ACM A.M. Turing Award for their foundational work in reinforcement learning. Their research, starting in the 1980s, laid the conceptual and algorithmic groundwork for this crucial approach to building intelligent systems. Reinforcement learning, inspired by psychology and neuroscience, uses reward signals to guide agents toward optimal behavior. Barto and Sutton developed key algorithms like temporal difference learning and policy gradient methods, and their textbook, 'Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction,' became a standard reference. The combination of reinforcement learning with deep learning has led to breakthroughs like AlphaGo and improvements in models like ChatGPT. Their work continues to shape the field of AI.

(awards.acm.org)

AI Turing Award

US House Proposes New Fees on EVs and Hybrids

2025-05-01

US House Proposes New Fees on EVs and Hybrids

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is proposing new annual fees for electric vehicles ($200) and hybrids ($100) as part of a budget bill. This Republican-backed measure aims to bolster the highway trust fund, but critics worry it will stifle EV adoption. While commercial and farm vehicles are exempt, the revenue generated is expected to be a small fraction of the federal budget, and the fees will increase annually with inflation until 2035. The move is part of a broader Republican effort, described as a 'war against science and the environment'.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech taxation

Giant Log Viewer: Instantly Browse 4TB Text Files

2025-04-15

Giant Log Viewer: Instantly Browse 4TB Text Files

Tired of waiting to open massive log files? `giant-log-viewer` instantly loads text files up to 4TB with a tiny memory footprint, using only ~80MB of JVM heap memory. It supports UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, but has limitations: it doesn't handle lines longer than 1MB, emojis, or systems without a GUI; it currently only runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. While not as feature-rich as `less`, it's perfect for quickly browsing giant logs via drag-and-drop or keyboard shortcuts. The project is open-source on GitHub, and donations are welcome to help the developer sign the executables.

(github.com)

Development large files

Waymo's Self-Driving Accident Analysis: Are Humans the Real Culprits?

2025-03-26

Waymo's Self-Driving Accident Analysis: Are Humans the Real Culprits?

This article analyzes 38 serious accidents involving Waymo self-driving cars between July 2024 and February 2025. Surprisingly, the vast majority of these accidents were not caused by Waymo vehicles themselves, but rather by other vehicles driving recklessly, such as speeding and running red lights. Waymo's data shows that its self-driving vehicles have a much lower accident rate than human drivers. Even if all accidents were attributed to Waymo, its safety record is still significantly better than human drivers. Compared to human driving, Waymo has made significant progress in reducing accidents, especially those resulting in injuries.

(www.understandingai.org)

AI

GhidrAssistMCP: AI-Powered Reverse Engineering for Ghidra

2025-07-13

GhidrAssistMCP: AI-Powered Reverse Engineering for Ghidra

GhidrAssistMCP is a powerful Ghidra extension providing an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, enabling AI assistants and other tools to interact with Ghidra's reverse engineering capabilities via a standardized API. It boasts 31 built-in tools covering functions, data, cross-references, and more, along with a configurable UI, real-time logging, and dynamic tool management. This extension seamlessly integrates AI-powered analysis tools and custom scripts, boosting reverse engineering efficiency significantly.

(github.com)

Development

Palantir: The World's Most Evil Company?

2025-08-03

Palantir: The World's Most Evil Company?

Palantir, a data analytics firm, has seen its stock price surge 500% thanks to its AI prowess in military and intelligence. However, its alleged involvement in targeted killings with the Israeli military and its contract to manage the UK's NHS data have sparked controversy. The author argues Palantir's use of social media to assist in the assassination of journalists poses significant ethical risks, potentially leading to future drone assassinations using biometric and health data. The author expresses deep concern about Palantir and the forces behind it, seeing it as a dangerous and unchecked direction for technological development.

(politicaleconomist.substack.com)

Tech

Google Search Integrates AI-Powered Audio Overviews

2025-06-13

Google Search Integrates AI-Powered Audio Overviews

Google is testing a new feature that integrates AI-powered Audio Overviews directly into mobile search results. Enabled via Labs, this feature generates podcast-style AI discussions for specific queries. For example, searching “How do noise cancellation headphones work?” reveals a ‘Generate Audio Overview’ button. Clicking this generates a ~40-second overview featuring two AI ‘hosts’ discussing the topic and linking to source materials. Currently, this is US-English only.

(www.theverge.com)

AI

Depot Registry: A Faster, More Powerful Docker Registry is Here

2025-03-05

Depot Registry: A Faster, More Powerful Docker Registry is Here

Depot has launched Depot Registry, a faster and more powerful Docker registry. Built upon learnings from their internal ephemeral registry, it offers a globally distributed architecture seamlessly integrating with Depot builds. Key improvements include enhanced performance via Tigris' global content delivery and S3 integration; a new registry dashboard for image management; customizable image retention policies; and automatic integration with Depot GitHub Actions runners, simplifying authentication. Depot Registry is now generally available, included in all plans with storage charges only.

(depot.dev)

Development

Railway's Journey: Building a Data Center from Scratch

2025-01-17

Railway's Journey: Building a Data Center from Scratch

Constrained by hyperscaler limitations, Railway embarked on Project Metal, building its own data center in just nine months. The blog post details the entire process, from site selection, power and network infrastructure, to server installation, highlighting challenges and solutions encountered along the way. This included power and network redundancy, rack layout, cable management, and more. The result? A software-defined network and internal tools automating the entire data center build process, from design to deployment.

(blog.railway.com)

Tech

Youtuber Takes Over Commodore Trademark, Plans Retro-Futuristic Comeback

2025-06-29

Youtuber Christian Simpson has successfully acquired the Commodore trademark rights and is now CEO. He's assembled a team including former Commodore employees and actor Thomas Middleditch as advisors. Funding is still being secured, with the company actively seeking further investors and staff, including a social media manager and merchandise designers. They plan to launch 'retro-futuristic' products, potentially utilizing the Commodore OS Vision Linux distribution. Details of the first product will be revealed in a future video.

(www.amiga-news.de)

Tech Trademark Acquisition

Pleasure Reading Plummets 40% in the US: A Digital Age Warning?

2025-08-28

Pleasure Reading Plummets 40% in the US: A Digital Age Warning?

A new survey reveals a stark 40 percent decline in daily pleasure reading among US adults between 2003 and 2023. Researchers highlight this isn't a minor dip, but a sustained 3 percent annual decrease. This trend correlates with increased consumption of digital media. While those who still read are doing so for slightly longer, the decline is sharper among Black Americans, lower-income individuals, and those living outside cities, highlighting socioeconomic disparities. The research team urges targeted strategies, such as community-led initiatives, to reverse this concerning trend.

(www.sciencealert.com)

Misc declining readership socioeconomic disparity

Dino Programming Language: Scripting, Functional, and Object-Oriented Powerhouse

2025-06-05

Dino Programming Language: Scripting, Functional, and Object-Oriented Powerhouse

Dino is a high-performance programming language blending scripting, functional, and object-oriented paradigms. Its history dates back to 1993, initially used at the Russian game company ANIMATEK. This document details the implementation of Dino's 0.98 development version, covering its bytecode compiler, interpreter, JIT compiler, and type inference. Performance comparisons against Python, PyPy, Ruby, and others are presented across architectures like x86-64 and AARCH64. Dino boasts features like multi-precision integers, heterogeneous extensible arrays, associative tables, first-class functions, fibers, exception handling, and pattern matching, with innovative class composition for safe and powerful object orientation.

(github.com)

Development Dino programming language

Hacking Claude: Exploiting Compositional Risks in LLMs

2025-07-17

Hacking Claude: Exploiting Compositional Risks in LLMs

Security researcher Golan Yosef achieved code execution on Anthropic's Claude desktop app using a crafted Gmail email, not by exploiting vulnerabilities in the app itself, but by leveraging Claude's capabilities and trust mechanisms. Through an iterative process involving Claude, the researcher guided the LLM to refine its attack strategy, ultimately bypassing its built-in security. This highlights the critical 'compositional risk' in GenAI, where secure individual components can create insecure systems when combined. The research underscores the need for comprehensive security assessments of LLM-powered applications to address this novel attack vector.

(www.pynt.io)

AI compositional risk

Slow-Motion Earthquake Captured: A Tectonic Shock Absorber Off Japan

2025-07-05

Slow-Motion Earthquake Captured: A Tectonic Shock Absorber Off Japan

For the first time, scientists have directly observed a slow-slip earthquake releasing tectonic pressure on a major ocean fault. The event, occurring on the tsunami-generating portion of Japan's Nankai Trough, acted like a tectonic shock absorber, slowly unzipping the fault line between tectonic plates. Deep-sea borehole sensors captured two such events in 2015 and 2020, each lasting weeks and traveling tens of kilometers along the fault. The study reveals these slow slips occur in areas of abnormally high fluid pressure, confirming the role of fluids in slow earthquakes. This discovery provides crucial insights into subduction zone behavior throughout the Pacific Ring of Fire, highlighting the contrast with potentially more hazardous faults like Cascadia, which lacks this natural shock-absorbing mechanism.

(phys.org)

Tech slow-slip earthquake Nankai Trough earthquake prediction

Threads Surpasses 350M Monthly Active Users, Challenging X's Dominance

2025-05-03

Threads Surpasses 350M Monthly Active Users, Challenging X's Dominance

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed during the company's Q1 2025 earnings call on Wednesday that Instagram Threads, its competitor to X, has now surpassed 350 million monthly active users. This represents a 30 million user increase from the previous quarter's reported 320 million. Growth accelerated, with 30 million users added in Q1 compared to 20 million in Q4 2024. Remarkably, Threads added almost as many users in a single quarter as newer competitor Bluesky, which currently boasts roughly 35 million users. Meanwhile, X claims over 600 million monthly active users, according to its CEO Linda Yaccarino. While still smaller than Meta's other social apps (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp), Threads' growth solidifies its position in the microblogging landscape. Meta reports over 3.4 billion people use at least one of its apps daily. Zuckerberg highlighted this growth as indicating Threads is “on track to become our next major social app,” citing a 35% increase in time spent on the app due to recommendation system improvements.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech

Over 300 Million Americans' Social Security Numbers at Risk After Data Copy

2025-08-27

Over 300 Million Americans' Social Security Numbers at Risk After Data Copy

A whistleblower alleges that a former senior official at the Social Security Administration (SSA) copied the Social Security numbers, names, and birthdays of over 300 million Americans to a private section of the agency's cloud. This private cloud, accessible to other former DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) employees, lacks adequate security, potentially exposing massive amounts of sensitive data to identity theft. The whistleblower claims this action violates laws and regulations, constitutes gross mismanagement, and poses a significant threat to public safety. While the SSA claims the data remains secure, internal documents reveal cybersecurity officials assessed the move as "very high risk," even considering reissuing Social Security numbers. This incident raises further concerns about data security and privacy practices during the Trump administration.

(www.npr.org)

Tech

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