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Manifest: A 1-File Micro-Backend for Simplified Development

2025-03-21

Manifest: A 1-File Micro-Backend for Simplified Development

Manifest is a lightweight, single-file micro-backend framework designed to streamline development for 80% of websites and apps needing only basic backend features. It provides essential functionalities like authentication, validation, storage, image resizing, admin panel, dynamic endpoints, REST API, JS SDK, and webhooks. Ideal for rapid prototyping, microservices, CRUD-heavy apps, and headless CMS, Manifest is currently in beta and suitable for small projects and MVPs, but not recommended for critical platforms.

(github.com)

Development micro-backend rapid prototyping single-file

ARC-AGI-2: The AGI Benchmark That's Easier for Humans, Harder for AI

2025-03-24

ARC-AGI-2: The AGI Benchmark That's Easier for Humans, Harder for AI

The ARC Prize 2025 competition returns with ARC-AGI-2, a significantly harder AGI benchmark for AI while remaining relatively easy for humans. Focusing on tasks simple for humans but difficult for AI, ARC-AGI-2 highlights capability gaps not addressed by simply scaling up existing models. With a $1 million prize pool, the competition encourages open-source innovation towards efficient, general AI systems, aiming to bridge the human-AI gap and achieve true AGI.

(arcprize.org)

AI

Toy Compiler for Python Expressions using MLIR and E-Graphs

2025-03-21

Toy Compiler for Python Expressions using MLIR and E-Graphs

This article details a toy compiler for Python expressions built using MLIR and the egglog library. The compiler leverages E-Graphs for equality saturation and term rewriting to optimize Python expressions before compiling them to MLIR. It features modules for expression modeling, built-in functions, Term IR, a transformation layer, an optimization layer, and MLIR code generation and an LLVM backend. By symbolically interpreting Python functions, converting them to an IR representation, applying optimization rules, and finally generating efficient MLIR code, the compiler achieves compilation and execution via LLVM.

(vectorfold.studio)

Development

Hobby Lobby, the Lost City of Irisagrig, and a Multi-Billion Dollar Evangelical Empire

2025-03-24

Hobby Lobby, the Lost City of Irisagrig, and a Multi-Billion Dollar Evangelical Empire

This article details how the Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby, amassed a vast collection of ancient artifacts, including tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets from the lost city of Irisagrig. Driven by their faith, the Greens channeled their profits into evangelical missions, viewing artifact acquisition as a means to this end. The article explores their acquisition methods and the ensuing controversy surrounding the artifacts' provenance and legality, prompting reflection on the complex interplay between commercial interests, religious beliefs, and the preservation of cultural heritage.

(meghanboilard.substack.com)

Misc artifacts

Hann: A Blazing-Fast Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search Library for Go

2025-03-25

Hann: A Blazing-Fast Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search Library for Go

Hann is a high-performance approximate nearest neighbor search (ANN) library for Go. It offers various index data structures (HNSW, PQIVF, RPT) for efficient similarity searches in high-dimensional spaces, acting as a core component for vector databases. Boost your Go applications with fast in-memory similarity search capabilities. Supports multiple distance computations (Euclidean, Manhattan, cosine), index saving and loading, and bulk operations.

(github.com)

Development

Shingles Vaccine Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

2025-03-23

Shingles Vaccine Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

Studies published in summer 2024 revealed a surprising correlation: individuals vaccinated against shingles showed a reduced risk of developing dementia. Research from Stanford University, analyzing data from Britain and Australia, suggested the original shingles vaccine could prevent roughly one-fifth of dementia cases. Further studies by GSK and British academics indicated that a newer, recombinant vaccine offered even greater protection against dementia. This unexpected finding opens exciting new avenues for dementia prevention.

(www.economist.com)

Tech Shingles Vaccine Prevention

Trump Admin's JFK Files Release Doxes Hundreds, Sparking Lawsuits

2025-03-22

Trump Admin's JFK Files Release Doxes Hundreds, Sparking Lawsuits

In its rush to release unredacted JFK assassination files, the Trump administration inadvertently published the Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information of potentially hundreds of former congressional staffers and others. At least one, former Justice Department official Joseph diGenova, plans to sue the National Archives for violating the Privacy Act. The released information stemmed from his involvement in the 1970s Church Committee investigation into CIA and other intelligence agency misconduct. The National Archives posted thousands of pages without a searchable format, making it difficult to assess the full extent of the breach. National security lawyer Mark Zaid confirmed the release impacted hundreds, many still alive, calling the action unnecessary and unhelpful to understanding the assassination. While DiGenova blames the Archives' sloppy review process, he doesn't fault Trump for the release itself.

(www.usatoday.com)

Tech Privacy Violation

Adélie Linux Saves the Day: RISC-V Rebuilds on Milk-V Pioneer

2025-03-21

Facing infrastructure challenges, the decision to drop RISC-V repositories was reversed thanks to Zach van Rijn of Adélie Linux, who provided access to a Milk-V Pioneer machine. A full world rebuild was completed on this machine, resulting in new, tested repositories. While performance isn't quite on par with Cortex-A72 (closer to Cortex-A55), build times are acceptable for most projects (though Rust builds remain slow). The new repositories are comparable to LoongArch64, including tests. This solution is provisional and future support will depend on ongoing performance and stability.

(chimera-linux.org)

Development

The Barefoot Running Craze of 2010: A Short-Lived Trend with a Lasting Impact

2025-03-25

The Barefoot Running Craze of 2010: A Short-Lived Trend with a Lasting Impact

In 2010, a barefoot running craze swept the running world. Fueled by books like "Born to Run" and minimalist shoes like Vibram FiveFingers, people believed barefoot running offered performance improvements and injury prevention. However, the craze eventually faded, leaving behind altered running shoe designs and a reevaluation of running philosophies. While the benefits of barefoot running remain debated and injury risks exist, the movement pushed shoe manufacturers to develop lighter, more natural shoes, profoundly impacting modern running shoe design.

(runningshoescore.com)

Tech barefoot running running shoes running

Solar Power's Explosive Growth: Deregulation as the Key?

2025-03-24

Solar Power's Explosive Growth: Deregulation as the Key?

Solar power has become the cheapest new electricity source in many US regions, but adoption hinges on market structure. Deregulated markets, where entrepreneurs can readily pursue profits, have rapidly embraced solar. Conversely, regulated utilities lag due to legacy investments and bureaucracy. To accelerate the renewable energy transition, the US needs greater deregulation, enabling private capital to build a cleaner, larger grid. This is crucial to meet surging energy demands from emerging technologies and maintain global competitiveness. The article highlights the dramatic cost reduction of solar and contrasts the rapid adoption in deregulated states like Texas with the slower progress in regulated ones like Tennessee.

(seanobannon.substack.com)

Tech energy deregulation

AI Scraping Arms Race: A Tar Pit of Troubles

2025-03-25

AI Scraping Arms Race: A Tar Pit of Troubles

To combat the excessive scraping of online resources by AI companies, a technique called "tarpit" has emerged. It works by consuming AI crawler resources, thus increasing their costs and posing a significant challenge to these yet-unprofitable companies. Cloudflare's "AI Labyrinth" employs a similar strategy but with a more commercially polished approach, aiming to protect websites from unauthorized scraping. However, AI crawlers generate over 50 billion requests daily, putting immense pressure on online resources and threatening the sustainability of open-source projects. Communities are also developing collaborative tools, such as the "ai.robots.txt" project, to help defend against these crawlers. Unless AI companies cooperate with affected communities or regulations are introduced, this data grab will likely escalate, jeopardizing the entire digital ecosystem.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

LangGraph: Building a Flexible, Opinionated AI Coding Assistant

2025-03-24

LangGraph: Building a Flexible, Opinionated AI Coding Assistant

Qodo built an AI coding assistant using the LangGraph framework, balancing flexibility with adherence to coding best practices. Initially, they used predefined workflows for coding tasks, but with the advent of more powerful LLMs like Claude Sonnet 3.5, they shifted to LangGraph's graph-based approach. LangGraph allows building agents ranging from completely open-ended to fully structured deterministic flows, enabling Qodo to adjust the structure of their flows based on LLM capabilities. The framework's clean API, reusable components, and built-in state management simplified development and support persistence, checkpoints, and branch points. While documentation and testing present some challenges, LangGraph provided a solid foundation for Qodo to build a robust AI coding assistant.

(www.qodo.ai)

Development

Designing Lenses with PyTorch: A Differentiable Optics Library

2025-03-21

Torch Lens Maker is an open-source Python library for differentiable geometric optics built on PyTorch. Its ambitious goal is to design complex real-world optical systems (lenses, mirrors) using modern computing and cutting-edge numerical optimization. The core is differentiable geometric optics: 3D collision detection and optical laws implemented in PyTorch. By cleverly treating optical elements as layers in a neural network, and leveraging PyTorch's auto-differentiation and optimization algorithms, designing lenses becomes surprisingly similar to training a neural network, unlocking the power of modern machine learning tools. The project is early-stage and the author is seeking funding to continue development.

(victorpoughon.github.io)

Development optical design

Trump Admin's Signal Leak: Misunderstandings Around End-to-End Encryption

2025-03-25

Trump Admin's Signal Leak: Misunderstandings Around End-to-End Encryption

An article detailing the Trump administration accidentally adding a journalist to a Signal group chat discussing a military operation in Yemen sparked debate. Many wrongly attributed this to a failure of Signal's security, but the author clarifies that end-to-end encryption (E2EE) protects message confidentiality during transit, not user error. E2EE doesn't prevent adding unauthorized individuals to chats nor replace government-approved secure systems for classified communication. The article explains E2EE's mechanics, its strengths and weaknesses, and its suitability in different contexts, criticizing misconceptions and promotion of alternative technologies. Ultimately, the author argues this wasn't Signal's failure but a result of the government using an unauthorized tool, predicting those involved won't face accountability.

(soatok.blog)

Tech

Global Rural Population Estimates May Be Seriously Undercounted

2025-03-23

Global Rural Population Estimates May Be Seriously Undercounted

New research suggests that global rural population estimates may be significantly underestimated, with the actual number potentially exceeding current figures by at least half. Researchers, analyzing data from 307 dam projects, found substantial discrepancies between existing data and actual populations, with an average undercount of 53%. This finding sparks debate regarding global population totals and public service planning. While some demographers question the findings, arguing the undercount's impact on national or global totals is limited, researchers emphasize the importance of improving rural censuses and recalibrating population models to ensure rural communities aren't disadvantaged.

(www.newscientist.com)

Tech rural population data bias

Gatsby's Secret: War Rumors and True Identity

2025-03-25

Gatsby's Secret: War Rumors and True Identity

In F. Scott Fitzgerald's *The Great Gatsby*, rumors swirl around Gatsby, painting him as a German spy, a relative of Kaiser Wilhelm, even a murderer. These rumors, fueled by intense anti-German sentiment during the era, could have destroyed his life. The novel later reveals Gatsby's true identity as a WWI veteran, highlighting the persecution and injustice faced by German-Americans at the time. Many were arrested and imprisoned, even interned in camps, based on unfounded accusations.

(www.theworldwar.org)

Misc anti-German sentiment

The Decline of Music and the Fall of Civilization: Lessons from Ancient Greece and China

2025-03-25

The Decline of Music and the Fall of Civilization: Lessons from Ancient Greece and China

This article explores the common thread in the decline of ancient Greek and Chinese civilizations: the degeneration of music. Plato and ancient Chinese texts argue that musical chaos directly led to the collapse of social order. The article posits that this wasn't merely an aesthetic shift, but a departure from the principles of cosmic harmony (the Greek Logos and the Chinese Tao). Initially, music adhered to strict conventions, maintaining social cohesion. However, when artists broke these conventions in pursuit of sensory stimulation, the audience's rational judgment was weakened, and social order crumbled. This wasn't rebellion against authority, but a rejection of cosmic harmony, ultimately leading to civilizational decline.

(renovatio.zaytuna.edu)

Misc civilization decline philosophy of music ancient greek philosophy

X Macros: Chapel Compiler's Code Generation Secret Weapon

2025-03-25

The Chapel compiler cleverly leverages X Macros to dramatically simplify code generation. The article uses string interning and the AST class hierarchy as examples, showcasing how X Macros elegantly generate large amounts of repetitive code. This includes declaring and initializing over 100 string variables and generating visitor pattern code for AST nodes. X Macros achieve this by defining macros in header files, which are then included in the code, thereby increasing code maintainability and scalability. Even generating a Python class hierarchy is easily managed. The article concludes by discussing the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, noting that while dependencies are stronger, the declarative nature makes the code more readable and maintainable.

(danilafe.com)

Development X Macros Chapel Compiler

My Bosch Dishwasher Demands a Cloud Connection: A Lament

2025-03-24

The author bought a Bosch 500 series dishwasher, praising its easy installation. However, key features like delayed start and eco mode require a Home Connect app and Wi-Fi connection. This sparked a reflection on manufacturers' over-reliance on cloud control, potentially contributing to planned obsolescence and data harvesting. The author argues that appliances should prioritize local control, with cloud features as add-ons, not replacements for core functionality. This creates unnecessary obstacles and dependence on internet access for basic operations.

(www.jeffgeerling.com)

Hardware planned obsolescence

Fake CDC Website Spreads Vaccine Misinformation, Raising Legal Concerns

2025-03-23

Fake CDC Website Spreads Vaccine Misinformation, Raising Legal Concerns

A website mimicking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is spreading false and misleading claims about vaccines, using CDC logos, social media links, and authoritative language. Hosted by an NGO whose leader was the HHS Secretary until December 2024, the site raises serious legal concerns under federal impersonation statutes. It uses parental testimonials and selectively cited scientific arguments to support its claims, potentially misleading the public and undermining trust. The HHS Secretary's awareness and response to this apparent conflict of interest and potential violation of federal law remain unclear.

(infoepi.substack.com)

Tech vaccine misinformation

Jakt: A Memory-Safe Systems Programming Language

2025-03-25

Jakt: A Memory-Safe Systems Programming Language

Jakt is a new memory-safe systems programming language currently transpiling to C++. It employs strategies like automatic reference counting, strong typing, and bounds checking to ensure memory safety, avoiding raw pointers. Jakt emphasizes code readability with a flexible module system and clean syntax. It supports structs, classes, enums, pattern matching, generics, operator overloading, and exception handling, along with powerful compile-time features such as compile-time function execution. While still under development, Jakt aims to balance performance, safety, and developer productivity.

(github.com)

Development

MIT Researchers Discover the Tipping Point of Pedestrian Flow

2025-03-24

MIT Researchers Discover the Tipping Point of Pedestrian Flow

MIT researchers have discovered a critical parameter determining the transition from ordered to disordered pedestrian flow: "angular spread." When pedestrians deviate from straight paths by more than 13 degrees, the crowd flow becomes chaotic and inefficient. This research, combining mathematical modeling and experiments, offers valuable insights for public space design, promoting safer and more efficient pedestrian traffic. The findings, validated through experiments tracking volunteers navigating a simulated crosswalk, provide a quantifiable metric for predicting lane formation and potential congestion.

(news.mit.edu)

Tech pedestrian dynamics crowd flow public space design

Google's Gemini 2.5: A Thinking AI Model Takes the Lead

2025-03-25

Google's Gemini 2.5: A Thinking AI Model Takes the Lead

Google unveiled Gemini 2.5, its most intelligent AI model yet. An experimental version, 2.5 Pro, achieves top ranking on LMArena, significantly outperforming competitors. Gemini 2.5's key innovation is its 'thinking' capabilities: it reasons before responding, leading to enhanced accuracy and performance. This reasoning extends beyond simple classification and prediction; it involves analyzing information, drawing logical conclusions, understanding context and nuance, and making informed decisions. Building upon prior work with reinforcement learning and chain-of-thought prompting, Gemini 2.5 combines an improved base model with advanced post-training. Google plans to integrate these thinking capabilities into all future models, enabling them to tackle more complex tasks and power more sophisticated, context-aware agents.

(blog.google)

AI

Sam Altman on OpenAI: An Accidental Consumer Tech Giant

2025-03-25

Sam Altman on OpenAI: An Accidental Consumer Tech Giant

This Stratechery interview features OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, detailing OpenAI's journey from a research lab to a consumer tech giant, and the unexpected success of ChatGPT. Altman candidly discusses OpenAI's business model shift, its relationship with Microsoft, views on AI safety and regulation, and the future of AGI. The interview also touches on OpenAI's open-source strategy, GPT-5 development, and the implications of AI across various industries. Altman believes a billion-user AI platform will be more valuable than cutting-edge models, hinting at potential alternative monetization strategies beyond advertising.

(stratechery.com)

AI

Blockchain Misuse: Hype or Innovation?

2025-03-18

Blockchain Misuse: Hype or Innovation?

This article critically analyzes the current state of blockchain applications in areas such as supply chain management, object authenticity verification, statement authenticity guarantee, voting, proof of authorship, and land registry. The author points out that many seemingly logical blockchain solutions ignore the core issue of 'blockchain is not the Internet of Things (IoT)', leading to difficulties in guaranteeing data authenticity. The article argues that in many scenarios, distributed databases or digital signatures can solve the problem without the complexity and resource consumption of blockchain. The author believes that currently, only in the area of value transfer does blockchain (such as Bitcoin) demonstrate true value, while the application prospects of smart contracts remain unclear.

(blog.smartdec.net)

Tech smart contracts

France Rejects Backdoor Attempt on End-to-End Encryption

2025-03-21

France Rejects Backdoor Attempt on End-to-End Encryption

The French National Assembly wisely rejected a dangerous proposal that would have undermined end-to-end encryption. This ill-conceived bill, ostensibly aimed at fighting drug trafficking, would have forced messaging apps to allow covert access to private conversations. Security experts warned of the systemic vulnerabilities this 'ghost' participant model would create, eroding trust and creating opportunities for abuse. The vote is a victory for digital rights and privacy, demonstrating that prioritizing security doesn't require sacrificing fundamental freedoms. This decision serves as a crucial warning to other governments considering similar anti-encryption measures.

(www.eff.org)

Tech digital rights

Germany Rejects Taurus Cruise Missile Delivery to Ukraine

2025-03-25

The German parliament rejected a proposal to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles. The proposal urged the government to provide missiles, assist in integrating them into Ukrainian aircraft, train Ukrainian soldiers, remove obstacles to information sharing, replenish the Bundeswehr's equipment, increase industrial production capacity, and procure more missiles. The decision likely reflects concerns about escalating the conflict and the potential uses of the missiles.

(abstimmung.eu)

Tech Ukraine Taurus Cruise Missile

Trump Admin Halts Coordinated Effort Against Russian Hybrid Warfare

2025-03-23

Trump Admin Halts Coordinated Effort Against Russian Hybrid Warfare

The Biden administration established cross-agency working groups to counter Russia's hybrid warfare campaign, collaborating with European allies. However, following Trump's inauguration, this effort largely ceased. This raises concerns that the Trump administration is de-prioritizing the threat, leaving the US vulnerable to future attacks and potentially emboldening Russia. The pause coincides with a significant shift in US-Europe relations and potentially has profound implications for the Ukraine conflict.

(www.yahoo.com)

Tech intelligence cooperation

Newton's Method Gets a Modern Upgrade: A Faster, Broader Optimization Algorithm

2025-03-25

Newton's Method Gets a Modern Upgrade: A Faster, Broader Optimization Algorithm

Over 300 years ago, Isaac Newton developed an algorithm for finding the minimum values of functions. Now, Amir Ali Ahmadi of Princeton University and his students have improved this algorithm to efficiently handle a broader class of functions. This breakthrough uses higher-order derivatives and cleverly transforms the Taylor expansion into a convex sum-of-squares form, achieving faster convergence than traditional gradient descent. While currently computationally expensive, future advancements in computing could allow this algorithm to surpass gradient descent in fields like machine learning, becoming a powerful tool for optimization problems.

(www.quantamagazine.org)

AI optimization algorithm Newton's method

The Pioneer of Climbing Gyms: Peter Mayfield and City Rock

2025-03-23

The Pioneer of Climbing Gyms: Peter Mayfield and City Rock

Forty years ago, there wasn't a single purpose-built climbing gym in the US. In 1990, climbing prodigy Peter Mayfield founded City Rock Gym, California's first commercial climbing gym, revolutionizing the sport. He not only created a training space for experienced climbers but also made climbing accessible to the masses, particularly children and women. City Rock prioritized safety, introduced membership systems and professional climbing classes, setting a standard for future gyms. While City Rock eventually closed, Mayfield's innovative spirit and social responsibility continue through his non-profit, Gateway Mountain Center, benefiting youth.

(www.climbing.com)

Startup climbing

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