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Software Glitch Grounds NZ Flights

2025-08-24

Software Glitch Grounds NZ Flights

A software glitch in New Zealand's air traffic control system caused significant disruption on the weekend, grounding several flights and causing delays. Five planes circled Wellington, and four couldn't take off due to a one-hour outage resulting from flight data transfer issues between systems. Airways CEO James Young assures the public that all aircraft were under control and that the incident wasn't a cyberattack. An investigation is underway to determine the root cause and improve system resilience.

(www.rnz.co.nz)

Tech

Apple's COO Jeff Williams Retires, Sabih Khan Takes the Helm

2025-07-09

Apple's long-time Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Williams, is retiring later this month. His successor will be Sabih Khan, Apple's SVP of Operations, a key figure in Apple's globally influential supply chain. Williams will remain at Apple through the year, overseeing Apple Watch and health initiatives, and leading the design team until his retirement, after which the design team will report directly to Tim Cook. Khan's promotion is a long-planned transition, highlighting his strategic prowess in navigating supply chain complexities and driving sustainability initiatives. This leadership change signals a generational shift within Apple's operations, setting the stage for the company's Vision Pro era and increased hardware-services integration.

(nerds.xyz)

Tech Leadership Change

Montreal Street Trees Thrive on Leaky Pipes

2025-08-24

Montreal Street Trees Thrive on Leaky Pipes

Street trees in Montreal are surprisingly drought-resistant compared to their park counterparts, thanks to an unexpected water source: leaky pipes. A study analyzing lead isotopes in tree rings revealed that street trees draw water from old lead pipes, unlike park trees relying mainly on rainwater. Given Montreal's daily water loss of 500 million liters from leaky pipes, this explains the street trees' superior drought tolerance. This finding challenges the common assumption that park trees are healthier.

(www.newscientist.com)

Tech urban trees lead isotopes

Linux SD Card Formatter: Optimized for Performance

2025-08-25

Linux SD Card Formatter: Optimized for Performance

The SD Memory Card Formatter, developed by Tuxera, is a Linux-based utility designed to format SD, SDHC, SDXC, and SDUC cards according to SD Association specifications. It's recommended over OS-provided tools for optimal performance. Note that it doesn't support BitLocker To Go encrypted cards and leaves the protected area untouched. Supports various Linux distributions and SD interfaces. Download and manual available on the official website.

(www.sdcard.org)

Hardware SD card formatting tool

London Overground: A Breath of Fresh Air in the City

2025-08-24

London Overground: A Breath of Fresh Air in the City

While London's Tube is infamous for its cramped conditions, the newly revamped Overground offers a stark contrast: spacious, airy, and quiet. Rather than a new build, it's a revitalization of underutilized lines, resulting in a remarkable success story. Beyond improved passenger satisfaction and economic growth along its routes, the Overground provides a more relaxed and comfortable travel experience. Passengers find it easier to relax, even socialize, transforming it into a vital part of city life.

(www.dwell.com)

Tech

Kafka's Genesis: A Data Integration Saga

2025-08-24

Kafka's Genesis: A Data Integration Saga

In 2012, LinkedIn faced a massive data integration challenge. Their existing data pipelines were inefficient, unscalable, and suffered from data silos. To solve this, they created Apache Kafka. This article delves into Kafka's origins, revealing its design was driven by the need for robustness, scalability, real-time capabilities, and seamless data integration. It explores how LinkedIn cleverly utilized Avro schemas and a schema registry to ensure data consistency and compatibility, ultimately achieving efficient data management. The article also reflects on Kafka's lack of first-class schema support and contrasts it with newer approaches like Buf's schema-first philosophy.

(bigdata.2minutestreaming.com)

Development Data Integration

Indoor Air Purification Tech: Effectiveness Questioned, Real-World Studies Needed

2025-08-26

Indoor Air Purification Tech: Effectiveness Questioned, Real-World Studies Needed

A new study reveals that many technologies claiming to purify indoor air and prevent virus spread lack human testing, and their potential risks remain unclear. The research analyzed nearly 700 studies on technologies like HEPA filters, UV lights, ionizers, and advanced ventilation systems. Only 9% examined their impact on human health. Researchers call for more real-world studies evaluating effectiveness and potential risks, standardized health outcome measures, and independent funding to inform public health policy.

(news.cuanschutz.edu)

Tech air purification virus spread

A Decade of Ruby Marshal Deserialization Exploits: A History and Path Forward

2025-08-24

A Decade of Ruby Marshal Deserialization Exploits: A History and Path Forward

This article delves into the decade-long saga of Ruby Marshal module deserialization vulnerabilities. Tracing the evolution from initial bug reports in 2013 to the latest exploit techniques in 2024, it reveals a persistent cat-and-mouse game between security researchers and attackers. The author highlights the limitations of a purely patch-based approach and advocates for the eventual deprecation of the Marshal module in favor of safer alternatives, aiming to eliminate this recurring security threat.

(blog.trailofbits.com)

Development Ruby Security Deserialization Vulnerability

Medieval Water Myth Busted: Did People Really Avoid Drinking It?

2025-08-25

A long-held belief paints a picture of medieval people guzzling beer and wine to avoid contaminated water. New research challenges this, revealing extensive historical records showing widespread water consumption. Concerns from doctors existed, but not about clear water causing disease; rather, wine was considered more nutritious. The myth is debunked, revealing a more nuanced understanding of medieval drinking habits.

(leslefts.blogspot.com)

Misc Water Consumption

Coinbase Tightens Security Amid Growing North Korean Hacking Threat

2025-08-24

Coinbase Tightens Security Amid Growing North Korean Hacking Threat

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that the company has been forced to tighten its remote-first work policy to combat a growing threat from North Korean hackers. North Korean IT workers have been exploiting Coinbase's remote work policy to infiltrate the company's systems and steal sensitive information. In response, Coinbase is requiring all employees to attend in-person onboarding in the US and is implementing stricter background checks, including US citizenship requirements and fingerprinting, for those with access to sensitive systems. The company has also strengthened internal security measures to mitigate insider threats and bribery attempts.

(www.businessinsider.com)

Tech

From Hackathon to YC: The Birth of AI Assistant April

2025-08-25

From Hackathon to YC: The Birth of AI Assistant April

Neha and her team, almost skipping a hackathon, unexpectedly won a Y Combinator interview with their AI voice email response project, Inbox Zero. In just one week, they attracted 150 users, proving market demand. They expanded Inbox Zero into the more comprehensive AI assistant, April, helping users manage email, calendars, and meeting prep, thus saving time. Under YC's intense training, April won the "best demo" award, becoming a daily tool relied upon by users. This story showcases the journey from a simple hackathon project to a successful startup, and the accelerating effect of YC.

(www.producthunt.com)

AI

OceanGate Disaster: When Accountability Fails

2025-08-24

OceanGate Disaster: When Accountability Fails

The OceanGate submersible implosion investigation report repeatedly mentions 'accountability,' but this article argues it's not a panacea. It categorizes problems into two types: coordination challenges and miscalibrated risk models. In coordination challenges, accountability can lead to blaming individuals while ignoring systemic issues. With miscalibrated risk models, even with the CEO piloting the submersible and having 'skin in the game,' incorrect risk assessment led to disaster. The article argues that solutions require cross-team collaboration and independent safety oversight, not just accountability. Accountability can exacerbate 'double binds,' where individuals face conflicting pressures, leading to safety risks being overlooked.

(surfingcomplexity.blog)

Tech systemic safety

Seed: An Interactive Programming Environment in Your Browser

2025-08-24

Seed: An Interactive Programming Environment in Your Browser

Seed is an interactive software environment built on Common Lisp that runs inside a web browser. It allows you to create and use computer programs in diverse ways, visualizing them as a tree grid with glyphs representing functions and data types. Seed aims to transcend the limitations of traditional text-based programming by offering a representation orthogonal to the language's structure. It integrates the ASDF build system and provides comprehensive installation and usage instructions.

(github.com)

Development Interactive Programming

ContextForge MCP Gateway: Unifying REST, MCP, and A2A

2025-08-25

ContextForge MCP Gateway: Unifying REST, MCP, and A2A

ContextForge MCP Gateway is a powerful gateway, proxy, and MCP registry that federates MCP and REST services, unifying discovery, auth, rate-limiting, observability, virtual servers, multi-transport protocols, and an optional admin UI into a single, clean endpoint for your AI clients. It runs as a fully compliant MCP server, deployable via PyPI or Docker, and scales to multi-cluster environments on Kubernetes with Redis-backed federation and caching. Currently in alpha/early beta, it's not production-ready but ideal for development and experimentation. Note: This is an open-source component with no official support from IBM.

(github.com)

Development Gateway

Playing Games to Test Software: How One Company Conquered Metroid and Mario

2025-08-24

Playing Games to Test Software: How One Company Conquered Metroid and Mario

A company used playing Nintendo games, specifically Metroid and Super Mario Bros., to test its software platform, Antithesis. Initially, their AI testing system got stuck on a red door in Metroid because it prioritized eliminating enemies, depleting its missiles. This led them to develop a new 'swarm testing' technique that optimizes objectives while exploring the state space, such as prioritizing having more missiles. This not only solved the red door problem but enabled Antithesis to explore the game world more efficiently, uncover bugs, and even exploit game mechanics for speedruns. This technique isn't limited to game testing; it's applicable to various software testing scenarios, such as finding memory leaks or performance anomalies.

(antithesis.com)

Development

Firefox 142: AI-Powered Browser Update, But Not Without Issues

2025-08-25

Firefox 142: AI-Powered Browser Update, But Not Without Issues

Mozilla has released Firefox 142, incorporating AI features such as content summarization for links and LLM support for extensions. However, the rollout is staggered, with some regions not yet seeing all features like link previews and the new tab page's news and weather integrations. Accuracy concerns exist with the AI summarization. Despite this, improvements include simpler sidebar and tab bar interactions, and enhanced tracking protection exception management. A new feature, CRLite, improves certificate revocation checking.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

macOS Dev Tool: One-Click Kill for Processes on Ports 2000-6000

2025-08-24

macOS Dev Tool: One-Click Kill for Processes on Ports 2000-6000

This lightweight macOS status bar app monitors and manages development processes running on ports 2000-6000. It provides real-time process detection and lets you kill individual processes or all at once. Using `lsof`, it scans ports every 5 seconds, displaying the process count via a color-coded status bar icon (green: 0, red: 1-9, orange: 10+). Clicking the icon opens a context menu to kill all or specific processes. It uses a SIGTERM → SIGKILL termination strategy for safe process shutdown.

(github.com)

Development dev tool

Halt and Catch Fire: A Tech History Curriculum

2025-08-25

This website offers a 15-class tech history curriculum based on the TV series, Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017). Designed for small, self-forming groups, the curriculum uses the show to explore the tech landscape of the 1980s and 90s. Each class includes pre-viewing material, RFCs and emulators for reflection, discussion prompts, readings, episode summaries, and content warnings. Perfect for a tech history 'watching club'.

(bits.ashleyblewer.com)

Tech Online Curriculum Halt and Catch Fire

Chinese Solar Giants Post Massive Losses Amidst Price War

2025-08-25

Chinese Solar Giants Post Massive Losses Amidst Price War

Major Chinese solar panel manufacturers reported significant losses in the first half of the year due to overcapacity and U.S. trade restrictions. The industry faces pressure to reduce output, with the Chinese government urging the closure of outdated facilities. A supply glut and the U.S. crackdown exacerbated price wars, leading to substantial losses for many companies.

(asia.nikkei.com)

Tech

Repair: How Great Managers Learn From Mistakes

2025-08-22

Repair: How Great Managers Learn From Mistakes

Managers will make mistakes; it's inevitable. This article emphasizes the importance of "repair," proactively acknowledging mistakes, taking responsibility, and making amends. Instead of striving for perfection, focus on repairing relationships with your team. The author uses personal anecdotes and observations to illustrate how to repair mistakes through specific steps: being specific about the error, focusing on the impact on others, changing behavior, and consistent improvement. Ultimately, managers who are good at repair build stronger trust and improve team performance.

(terriblesoftware.org)

Development team

30-Year Satellite Data Validates Early Climate Projections

2025-08-25

30-Year Satellite Data Validates Early Climate Projections

A study published in Earth's Future reveals that climate models from the mid-1990s accurately predicted global sea-level rise, matching satellite observations over the past 30 years. Despite the relative crudeness of the models at the time, the projected 8-centimeter rise closely aligns with the observed 9 centimeters. This strongly supports the understanding of human-driven climate change and bolsters confidence in future projections. However, the study also highlights an underestimation of ice sheet melt, emphasizing the need to consider potential catastrophic ice sheet collapse, particularly threatening low-lying coastal regions in the US.

(news.tulane.edu)

Tech

Claude Code: Simplicity and Delight in an AI Coding Agent

2025-08-24

Claude Code: Simplicity and Delight in an AI Coding Agent

This article delves into Claude Code, an AI coding assistant built on the Claude 4 model, highlighting its remarkable simplicity and ease of debugging. By analyzing Claude Code's inner workings, the author reveals its secret to success: a single-threaded architecture, simple prompts and tools, and the avoidance of complex RAG search algorithms. Claude Code achieves efficient and reliable code editing and generation through carefully crafted prompt engineering, including abundant examples and heuristics, and tight control over model behavior. The article also emphasizes the importance of maintaining code simplicity and leveraging lower-cost smaller models, providing valuable insights and guidance for building similar AI coding assistants.

(minusx.ai)

Development

Optimizing Airport Travel: A Practical Guide

2025-08-24

Optimizing Airport Travel: A Practical Guide

This article offers a practical guide to optimizing airport travel, drawing on the author's personal experiences. Key strategies include booking flights about two weeks in advance, opting for basic economy and direct flights, avoiding budget airlines, and efficiently managing time at the airport. The author suggests arriving at the terminal one hour before departure, adjusting this based on factors like traffic and checked baggage. The article also explores maximizing airport waiting time through activities like reading, listening to music, or watching movies, and cautions against attempting work on the plane unless absolutely necessary.

(thezvi.substack.com)

Misc airport travel travel strategies

ArduinoOS: A Lightweight RTOS for Arduino

2025-08-23

ArduinoOS: A Lightweight RTOS for Arduino

ArduinoOS is a lightweight real-time operating system (RTOS) for Arduino. It features thread safety using locks to prevent conflicts, exception handling with try-catch-clearException supporting exception inheritance and custom types, kernel panic handling with the OnKernelPanic function, memory management functions (freeMemory, freeStack), configurable thread stack sizes (InitTaskWithStackSize) and argument passing (InitTaskWithArgument), and a configurable kernel tick period. It also provides abstract classes for various hardware, simplifying hardware interaction.

(github.com)

Development

ICE Uses Private Jet Blacklist to Obscure Deportation Flights

2025-08-24

ICE Uses Private Jet Blacklist to Obscure Deportation Flights

For years, the wealthy and famous have used a little-known FAA program to shield their private jet flight records. Now, ICE is using the same program to obscure its deportation flights. Originally created by the private jet lobby to protect the privacy of the rich, the program is now being used to mask ICE's deportation operations, raising concerns about government transparency. While ICE flight information can be tracked through other means, this move highlights how the private aviation industry's pursuit of privacy is being used to limit oversight of government actions.

(jacobin.com)

Tech Private Jets Flight Tracking

Turn Your Old iPhone or RTSP Camera into an AI Security Camera

2025-08-24

Turn Your Old iPhone or RTSP Camera into an AI Security Camera

The Clearcam app lets you upgrade your old iPhone or any RTSP-enabled camera into a state-of-the-art AI security camera. With a simple Homebrew install and running a Python script, you can view live feeds and receive event notifications (objects/people detected) on your local browser. Clearcam Premium offers remote viewing, event clips, and end-to-end encryption. Currently only iOS is supported, Android users can use the iOS User ID temporarily.

(github.com)

Tech

X-37B's Secret Mission: A Quantum Leap in Space Navigation

2025-08-25

X-37B's Secret Mission: A Quantum Leap in Space Navigation

The US military's X-37B spaceplane, launching on its eighth mission in August 2025, carries a potentially revolutionary experiment: a quantum inertial sensor. This sensor uses atom interferometry to enable highly accurate navigation even where GPS is unavailable or compromised, such as deep space or underwater. Outperforming traditional inertial navigation systems in accuracy and stability, it holds significant implications for both military and civilian spaceflight, marking a crucial step towards real-world applications of quantum technology.

(www.space.com)

Tech GPS Alternative

Burner Phone 101: A Workshop Summary

2025-08-25

Burner Phone 101: A Workshop Summary

This workshop, hosted at the Brooklyn Public Library, covered phone-related risk modeling, privacy-enhancing smartphone practices, various burner phone options, and when to ditch phones altogether. Participants learned to assess risks by considering what needs protection, from whom, and the consequences of failure. The workshop detailed smartphone vulnerabilities and offered privacy tips for all phones, including updates, strong PINs, and restricted app permissions. Different burner phone options were explored – prepaid phones, SIM rotation, and minimal phones – each with its limitations. Finally, the workshop emphasized that sometimes, the best burner phone is no phone at all, suggesting alternative methods for communication and location sharing when digital devices are a risk.

(rebeccawilliams.info)

Tech burner phones

A Universal Rhythm Underlies Human Speech: 1.6-Second Intonation Units Discovered

2025-08-25

A Universal Rhythm Underlies Human Speech: 1.6-Second Intonation Units Discovered

A groundbreaking study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals a universal 1.6-second rhythm in human speech, called intonation units. Analyzing over 650 recordings across 48 languages, researchers discovered this rhythmic chunking regardless of language family or geographic location. This rhythm isn't cultural; it's deeply rooted in human biology and cognition, mirroring brain activity patterns linked to memory, attention, and voluntary action. The findings have implications for AI speech development, speech disorder treatments, and a deeper understanding of neurological function.

(phys.org)

Tech speech rhythm intonation units cognitive neuroscience

Algorithm Nightmare: An O(EV+VlogVlogK) Solution for Counting Paths of Length K

2025-08-25

This article tackles a seemingly simple algorithmic problem: finding the number of paths of length K between nodes A and B in a directed, unweighted graph. Starting with basic BFS and dynamic programming, the author delves into more advanced techniques, including matrix exponentiation, linear recurrences, generating functions, annihilating polynomials, and the Berlekamp-Massey algorithm. The result is a stunning O(EV+VlogVlogK) solution, significantly faster than traditional O(EK) or O(V³logK) approaches. The author clearly explains the principles and connections between these algorithms, highlighting the problem's complexity and the elegance of the solution.

(horace.io)

Development linear recurrences

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