India's AI Ambitions: A David vs. Goliath Struggle Against US Tech Giants

2025-09-04
India's AI Ambitions: A David vs. Goliath Struggle Against US Tech Giants

While India boasts ambitions of AI sovereignty, its fledgling domestic AI sector faces a daunting challenge: a massive funding gap, regulatory inconsistencies favoring foreign tech giants, and the unchecked expansion of US tech behemoths. Companies like OpenAI and Perplexity AI are aggressively undercutting Indian startups like Sarvam AI and Ola Krutrim with aggressively low prices, leveraging existing user bases to lock in market share. Bernstein analysts warn of misplaced enthusiasm surrounding the entry of these giants, highlighting a fundamental power imbalance. India's AI development is hampered by insufficient funding (US $471B vs India's $11.29B between 2013-2024), regulatory double standards favoring foreign companies, and a strategic risk of becoming a mere digital marketplace rather than a creator of AI technology. This leaves India's AI aspirations significantly threatened.

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Atlassian Acquires AI Browser Startup The Browser Company for $610 Million

2025-09-04
Atlassian Acquires AI Browser Startup The Browser Company for $610 Million

Atlassian, the enterprise software giant, has acquired The Browser Company, the New York-based startup behind the Arc and AI-focused Dia browsers, for $610 million in cash. Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, an early Arc user, was drawn to Dia's innovative blend of web browser and chatbot functionality, enabling cross-app data manipulation. This acquisition strategically positions Atlassian to integrate Dia's capabilities with its existing suite of work applications. The Browser Company CEO, Josh Miller, views the deal as a strategic move to accelerate Dia's growth, secure market share, and avoid potential acquisition by larger tech companies. Dia will remain focused on enterprise users and will not simply become a wrapper for Atlassian apps.

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Tech

Electromechanical Reshaping: A Potential Game Changer in Eye Surgery

2025-09-04
Electromechanical Reshaping: A Potential Game Changer in Eye Surgery

A new technique called electromechanical reshaping (EMR) shows promise as a gentler, cheaper alternative to laser surgery for vision correction. Unlike LASIK, EMR uses small electrical pulses to reshape the cornea without cutting or burning tissue. By disrupting chemical bonds in the collagen, the cornea becomes moldable and can be reshaped using a custom mold. Early tests on rabbits have been successful, demonstrating the potential for a significantly more affordable and accessible method for treating nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism. Further research is needed to ensure long-term safety and efficacy before clinical trials.

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Breaking Math.random(): An Improved Algorithm for Inverting Xorshift128+

2025-09-04
Breaking Math.random(): An Improved Algorithm for Inverting Xorshift128+

The recent vulnerability CVE-2025-7783 exploits an edge case in the Node.js ecosystem, affecting applications using axios or the deprecated request library. The attack requires five consecutive outputs of JavaScript's Math.random(), allowing prediction of future outputs using the z3 solver. This blog post presents a more efficient approach. The author demonstrates a 226-operation algorithm to invert the Xorshift128+ algorithm used by Math.random(), requiring only two full 64-bit outputs. By analyzing Xorshift128+, knowing only the least significant 26 bits of R1 allows determining the remaining bits of L1 and R2. The post also discusses adapting this to the full Math.random() function, highlighting challenges due to bit truncation and proposing a solution using three outputs. Finally, the author shares their experience using ChatGPT for research, noting its potential while acknowledging current limitations.

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Development

Reviving LISP 1.5: A C and Odin Implementation

2025-09-03
Reviving LISP 1.5: A C and Odin Implementation

This project recreates the core functionality of the 1962 LISP 1.5 interpreter in both C and Odin, boasting less than 500 lines of code (around 600 for the Odin version). It features a semi-space copying garbage collector based on Cheney's algorithm and limited tail-call optimization. While simplifying error handling and thread safety, the project successfully executes test programs, demonstrating the elegance and conciseness of LISP.

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Development

FreeBSD Says No to LLM-Generated Code

2025-09-04
FreeBSD Says No to LLM-Generated Code

The FreeBSD Project's latest quarterly report reveals a new policy in the works: a ban on code and documentation generated by large language models (LLMs). This aligns with similar stances taken by NetBSD and Gentoo Linux, reflecting concerns about the reliability and security of AI-generated code. The report also details other FreeBSD projects underway, including improvements to Wi-Fi, graphics, sound, and power management; restructuring the OS into pkg packages; and developing a web-based GUI for virtualization. Despite competition from Linux, FreeBSD remains actively developed, continuously improving its features and user experience.

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Development

Google Services Suffer Major Outage Across Eastern Europe

2025-09-04
Google Services Suffer Major Outage Across Eastern Europe

On September 4th, a widespread outage impacted numerous core Google services across several Eastern European countries, including Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece, causing significant disruptions to daily life and work. Affected services included YouTube, Google Maps, Google Search, Gmail, and Google Drive, with users reporting failures to load videos, map data, search results, and send/receive emails. While not all Google services were affected, the disruption to core services caused major inconvenience for a large number of users. Initial reports point to a server-side issue at Google, rather than user-side connectivity problems.

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Leaked: Microsoft's 1978 BASIC 1.1 for 6502!

2025-09-04
Leaked: Microsoft's 1978 BASIC 1.1 for 6502!

The source code for Microsoft BASIC 1.1 for the 6502 microprocessor, dating back to 1978, has surfaced! This 6,955-line assembly language program was foundational to the personal computer revolution, powering early machines like the Apple II and Commodore PET. Its release offers a glimpse into Microsoft's early successes, showcasing its cross-platform compatibility and efficient memory management, leaving an indelible mark on the software industry.

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From SixthSense to Physics Research: A College Student's Tech Odyssey

2025-09-04
From SixthSense to Physics Research: A College Student's Tech Odyssey

A college student, starting with a reflection on human-computer interaction, attempts to replicate the SixthSense project, which launches his journey into Computer Science and Engineering. During his studies, he discovers a stronger interest in software engineering, particularly in building practical applications and solving real-world problems. He gets involved in physics research, using Docker to streamline software installation, and employing CNNs and Transformers for electron identification, ultimately shifting his major to Computer Science and Physics. This experience showcases his journey of exploring different technological fields, finding his interests and direction, and improving his skills through hands-on experience.

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Development physics research

Complex Hydrocarbons Discovered in the Red Rectangle Nebula

2025-09-04
Complex Hydrocarbons Discovered in the Red Rectangle Nebula

In 2004, scientists discovered hydrocarbons like anthracene and pyrene within the amazing structure known as the Red Rectangle nebula. This nebula, 2300 light-years away, features two stars orbiting each other and emitting a vast torus of icy dust and hydrocarbon molecules. These complex molecules are surprisingly common in space, found in meteorites and even supernova shockwaves. Scientists hypothesize that these polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were crucial precursors to life on Earth and play a dominant role in the interstellar 'organic chemistry ecology'.

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Le Chat's Massive Update: Connectors and Memories Take AI Assistance to the Next Level

2025-09-04
Le Chat's Massive Update: Connectors and Memories Take AI Assistance to the Next Level

Mistral AI's Le Chat has received a major update, introducing 20+ secure, enterprise-ready connectors spanning data, productivity, development, automation, and commerce. Users can now directly access and interact with tools like Databricks, Snowflake, GitHub, and Asana within Le Chat. A new 'Memories' feature (beta) allows for personalized responses based on context and preferences, while maintaining careful control over sensitive information. All features are available on the free plan.

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Thunk: Enabling Your Rust Programs to Run on Ancient Windows

2025-09-04
Thunk: Enabling Your Rust Programs to Run on Ancient Windows

Thunk is a Rust tool that leverages VC-LTL5 and YY-Thunks libraries to enable your Rust programs to run on older Windows systems, even Windows XP. It achieves compatibility by adding VC-LTL to the library search path and using YY-Thunks to compensate for missing APIs in older systems. Thunk offers both command-line tool and library usage, simplifying the process of building programs and shared libraries compatible with older Windows versions. Note: Thunk doesn't guarantee perfect compatibility on older systems; use at your own risk.

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Development

Apple's Liquid Glass: Gorgeous Tech Debt?

2025-09-04

Apple's new "Liquid Glass" design language is visually stunning, with its fluid animations and translucent effects. However, this beauty comes at a cost. The author draws parallels to Windows Vista's Aero, arguing that while it performs flawlessly on powerful hardware like the M4 chip, it could lead to performance issues on less powerful devices. Concerns are raised about potential impacts on battery life, thermals, and future compatibility. The conclusion suggests that while visually appealing, Liquid Glass might represent expensive tech debt.

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Tech

Polars Cloud GA: Bridging the DataFrame Scale Gap

2025-09-04
Polars Cloud GA: Bridging the DataFrame Scale Gap

Polars Cloud is now generally available on AWS, along with the open beta launch of its novel distributed engine. This platform aims to bridge the gap between the ease of use of local pandas and the scalability of remote PySpark, offering a single API that seamlessly scales from laptop to cloud. Its distributed engine leverages Polars' innovative streaming architecture, enabling horizontal, vertical, and diagonal scaling strategies, significantly reducing cost, complexity, and improving performance. Future plans include on-premise support, a live cluster dashboard, task orchestration, autoscaling, catalog support, and multi-region deployment.

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Development

Is AI Already Stealing Jobs From Young People? New Stanford Research Suggests Yes

2025-09-04
Is AI Already Stealing Jobs From Young People? New Stanford Research Suggests Yes

The debate rages on: is AI impacting young people's job prospects? Initial studies found limited impact, but new research from Stanford University, using ADP payroll data, reveals a 13% decline in employment for 22-25 year olds in highly AI-exposed jobs like software development and customer service. Controlling for factors like COVID and the tech downturn, the study suggests AI's effect might be more significant than previously thought, particularly in automation-heavy fields. Conversely, employment rose in AI-augmentation roles. This sparks discussion on curriculum adjustments and career paths for students, highlighting the need for continuous monitoring of AI's real-time impact on the labor market.

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Record-Breaking 11.5 Tbps DDoS Attack Successfully Mitigated

2025-09-04
Record-Breaking 11.5 Tbps DDoS Attack Successfully Mitigated

Over the Labor Day weekend, Cloudflare successfully mitigated a record-breaking 11.5 Tbps distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack lasting approximately 35 seconds and peaking at over 5.1 billion packets per second. The attack leveraged a simple UDP flood, originating from various IoT devices and cloud providers, including compromised Google Cloud accounts. While simple in nature, the scale and frequency of such attacks are rapidly increasing, with Cloudflare blocking over 6,500 similar attacks in Q2 2025. This highlights the importance of modern internet security defenses and serves as a warning for businesses to implement robust DDoS protection.

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Tech

Neovim Package Management: Unveiling the Secrets of `start` and `opt`

2025-09-04

Neovim's package management system allows developers to organize plugins into two types of packages: `start` and `opt`. `start` packages are automatically loaded on Neovim startup, while `opt` packages require manual loading with the `:packadd` command. This article details how to create and use both types of packages, including installation from zip archives, updating using git repositories, and handling dependencies between plugins. Additionally, it introduces Neovim's built-in `vim.pack` plugin manager, which leverages git for plugin management, providing version control and streamlined updates, significantly simplifying the plugin management workflow.

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Development

Amazon Q Developer Neovim Plugin: AI-Powered Coding Assistant

2025-09-03
Amazon Q Developer Neovim Plugin: AI-Powered Coding Assistant

AWS has released a Neovim plugin integrating Amazon Q Developer, offering AI-powered code suggestions, refactoring, and chat functionality. It supports both free tier and paid subscriptions, and installation is straightforward via plugin managers or manual cloning. The plugin leverages LSP for code completion and provides commands like `:AmazonQ` to open the chat window and `zq` to add selected text to the chat context. Currently experimental, contributions and feedback are welcome.

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Development

Magic Lantern Rises From the Ashes: New Team, New Hope

2025-09-03

The long-dormant Magic Lantern camera firmware project is back! After years of inactivity, a new core team has revitalized the project, completely overhauling the codebase, build system, and website. They've overcome significant technical hurdles, releasing updated firmware for several Canon cameras (including the 200D, 6D Mark II, 750D, and 7D Mark II), supporting the latest Digic 6 and 7 processors. New features include intervalometer, custom crop marks, shutter count, and more. The 200D even boasts working raw video with DPAF and Dual ISO. While some advanced features are still under development, Magic Lantern's return offers renewed hope for photography enthusiasts.

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Development Camera Firmware

Reverse Engineering Solos Smart Glasses: Displaying Arbitrary Images on a Retro Gadget

2025-09-04

A hacker successfully reverse-engineered the Solos smart glasses released in 2018 and managed to display arbitrary images on their screen. By analyzing Bluetooth packet captures, they discovered the communication protocol between the glasses and the smartphone app. Using a Python script, they RLE-encoded image data and sent it to the glasses, successfully displaying custom images. While some protocol details remain a mystery, this work demonstrates the customizability of the glasses and opens up possibilities for future development, such as displaying email subjects, weather forecasts, and more.

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Hardware

Zed Integrates Claude Code: AI-Powered Coding in Your Editor

2025-09-04
Zed Integrates Claude Code: AI-Powered Coding in Your Editor

Zed editor has released a public beta integration with Claude Code, running natively through the new Agent Client Protocol (ACP). This represents a significant step forward in AI-powered code assistance. Developers can now run Claude Code directly within Zed's high-performance editor, view real-time multi-file edits, and review code changes granularly. ACP, an open standard, enables any agent to connect to Zed and other editors, making this Claude Code integration possible. The future will see more AI agents integrated into Zed via ACP, offering developers greater choice.

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Development

PyTorch Model with Metal Acceleration: Performance and Correctness

2025-09-04
PyTorch Model with Metal Acceleration: Performance and Correctness

This article presents a PyTorch-based model that attempts to leverage Metal for accelerated computation while providing pure PyTorch fallbacks to guarantee correctness. The model's core involves complex calculations including matrix multiplications, cumulative sums, and exponentiation. To enhance performance, the authors attempt to use Metal for custom kernels, but fall back to a pure PyTorch implementation if the Metal extension isn't available. This design ensures compatibility and reliability across different hardware platforms, offering developers a solution that balances performance and correctness.

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Development Model Acceleration

The Fascinating History of Blue: From Ancient Pigments to Modern Tech

2025-09-04
The Fascinating History of Blue: From Ancient Pigments to Modern Tech

This article explores the fascinating evolution of blue throughout history, from ancient Egyptian blue to modern Prussian blue and LEDs. The author argues that blue, being a difficult color to create artificially, has long been associated with technology and the future. From ancient natural pigments to modern synthetics and the breakthrough of LED technology, blue consistently represents technological advancement and humanity's conquest of nature. Rich historical details and images showcase blue's unique place in art, technology, and culture.

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Tech color

Arundhati Roy's Mother: A Memoir of Rebellion and Reconciliation

2025-09-04
Arundhati Roy's Mother: A Memoir of Rebellion and Reconciliation

Arundhati Roy, after winning the Booker Prize for her debut novel *The God of Small Things*, shifted to political writing, becoming a controversial public intellectual in India. Her new memoir, *Mother Mary Comes to Me*, focuses on her complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a prominent educator and social activist. Mary's influence on Arundhati was profound and contradictory, serving as both a role model and an object of rebellion. Roy portrays her mother's strictness, contradictions, and love with a delicate touch, exploring how she navigated her mother's shadow to find self-identity and ultimately achieve reconciliation. This memoir is not only a personal growth story but also reflects the complex political and cultural context of Indian society.

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The AI Coding Lie: Productivity Hype or Bust?

2025-09-04
The AI Coding Lie:  Productivity Hype or Bust?

A seasoned programmer with 28 years of experience challenges the claims of AI coding tools, revealing a six-week experiment that showed no significant productivity gains, and potentially even a slowdown. The author argues that the industry's hype around AI-driven productivity increases is vastly overblown, unsupported by real-world data. Using extensive data, the article demonstrates the lack of an expected surge in software development output, debunking the myth of the '10x engineer'. The author urges developers to approach AI tools critically, avoid blind adoption, and resist unrealistic marketing claims.

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Development

Dolby Vision 2: AI-Powered HDR Gets a Major Upgrade

2025-09-04
Dolby Vision 2: AI-Powered HDR Gets a Major Upgrade

Dolby has unveiled Dolby Vision 2, an evolution of its HDR format. Beyond fine-tuning picture settings, Dolby Vision 2 introduces "Content Intelligence," leveraging AI and TV sensors to dynamically adjust brightness, addressing common complaints about overly dark scenes (think *Game of Thrones*' infamous 'Battle of Winterfell'). A new "Authentic Motion" feature aims to optimize motion handling across various viewing environments, though this may prove controversial among purists.

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Google's September Pixel Drop: Material 3, Auracast, and AI Enhancements Arrive

2025-09-04
Google's September Pixel Drop: Material 3, Auracast, and AI Enhancements Arrive

Google's September update brings a wave of new features to Pixel devices. Pixel 6 and later models get Material 3 Expressive, offering lock screen customization, improved contact cards, and a revamped Quick Settings pane. Pixel Buds Pro 2 gains Adaptive Audio, loud noise protection, and head gesture controls. Android now supports Auracast, enabling simultaneous audio playback on two devices or creating public broadcasts. Gboard adds AI writing tools, and the Androidify app lets users create AI-powered Android bot avatars. This update spans interface, audio, and AI improvements for a richer user experience.

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Reliable Data Sending with JavaScript's Beacon API: Ditching Unreliable `beforeunload`

2025-09-04
Reliable Data Sending with JavaScript's Beacon API: Ditching Unreliable `beforeunload`

Sending data reliably to servers when a user leaves a website has always been a challenge. Traditional methods using the `beforeunload` event with `fetch` or `XMLHttpRequest` are unreliable, as browsers may cancel requests for a better user experience. JavaScript's Beacon API offers a 'fire-and-forget' solution; the browser doesn't wait for a response, ensuring data is sent reliably. While the Beacon API limits data size and only supports POST requests, it's perfect for sending small, critical data like analytics or page leave events. It's also great for any scenario requiring reliable asynchronous data sending, such as real-time data synchronization.

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Development data sending

Poor Man's Bitemporal Database: Time Travel with SQLite

2025-09-04

This article details the author's journey building a simplified bitemporal database using SQLite for their indie B2B SaaS project. It delves into the nature of temporal data, the truthiness of facts, and the simulation of time travel. Detailed Clojure code examples demonstrate using SQLite, HoneySQL, and UUIDv7 to create an efficient and maintainable bitemporal database. The author stresses the importance of system simplicity, scalability, and data sovereignty, sharing experiences and challenges in architectural design and code implementation.

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Development temporal database
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