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Calibre 8.0 Released: Enhanced Kobo Support and More

2025-03-21

Calibre 8.0 is here, boasting significantly improved Kobo support! It now natively edits, views, and converts KEPUB files, automatically converting EPUB to KEPUB when sending to Kobo devices (configurable via the Kobo icon). New features include connecting to folders (ideal for Chromebooks), a revamped ToC editor, updated macOS icons, and numerous bug fixes. Previous 7.x releases introduced exciting additions like an audio overlay tool, automatic PDF header/footer removal, drastically faster EPUB opening, and the new Piper neural network TTS engine, enhancing reading and editing workflows.

(calibre-ebook.com)

Development e-book update

The Rise of ESM-Only: Is the JavaScript Ecosystem Ready?

2025-03-24

The Rise of ESM-Only: Is the JavaScript Ecosystem Ready?

This post explores the current state of ESM (ECMAScript Module) adoption in the JavaScript ecosystem and argues for a transition to ESM-only packages. The author revisits a previous post advocating for dual CJS/ESM formats and explains the shift towards ESM-only. The rise of modern build tools like Vite and frameworks like Nuxt and SvelteKit has made ESM the dominant module system. Node.js's support for `require()`ing ESM modules further removes interoperability hurdles. While dual CJS/ESM packages served as a transition mechanism, they introduce significant maintenance overhead and interop issues. The author recommends ESM-only for new projects and provides guidance for different project types (browser, CLI). A new tool, Node Modules Inspector, is introduced to help analyze ESM adoption in project dependencies.

(antfu.me)

Development JavaScript Modules

Google Shifts Android Development Inward, Less Transparency Ahead

2025-03-26

Google Shifts Android Development Inward, Less Transparency Ahead

Google is changing how it develops Android. All future development will occur in internal branches, shifting away from the previously more public AOSP model. While the final source code will still be publicly released, the development process itself will be less transparent. This aims to streamline releases and simplify development for both Google and Android device manufacturers. The change impacts developers and OEMs, but Google promises improved efficiency.

(arstechnica.com)

Development

The Principles of the Wheel Reinventor

2025-03-21

This article explores the philosophy of the 'Wheel Reinventor' – a programmer who chooses to build things from scratch, not for efficiency, but for learning, customization, innovation, and the sheer joy of creation. Four key reasons are given for reinventing the wheel: learning, specificity, innovation, and enjoyment. However, the author stresses the importance of careful planning and avoiding unnecessary rabbit holes, weighing the costs and benefits before starting. Practical advice is also shared, including minimizing third-party dependencies, mastering built-in tools, avoiding excessive abstraction, and open-sourcing code.

(tobloef.com)

Development programming philosophy

The Placebo Effect: Stronger Than You Think

2025-03-23

The Placebo Effect: Stronger Than You Think

The 18th-century London street sale of Perkins Tractors (metal rods for pain relief) showcased the early form of the placebo effect. Today, placebos come in various forms, from oral pills to injections, and their effectiveness varies depending on the form. Studies show that intra-articular placebo injections are more effective at pain relief than topical placebos, which are in turn more effective than oral placebos. Surprisingly, the difference in effectiveness between intra-articular and oral placebos sometimes exceeds the difference between active pain relief drugs and oral placebos. Furthermore, doctor demeanor and patient age also impact placebo effectiveness. The significantly increased placebo effectiveness in the US in recent years has led to some drugs failing approval due to reduced relative efficacy, a phenomenon worthy of further investigation.

(www.samstack.io)

Tech placebo effect

GCC 15.1's Rust Front-End Gets Major Boost

2025-03-24

The upcoming GCC 15.1 release will feature significant improvements to its Rust front-end, gccrs. Arthur Cohen of Embecosm merged a third patch set adding support for Rust's "if let" statements, massive changes to internal AST/HIR representations, and full implementation of Clone and Copy. Further improvements, including support for PartialOrd and PartialEq, are expected before the release, making gccrs a more viable alternative to rustc.

(www.phoronix.com)

Development

ghidraMCP: An MCP Server for LLM-Powered Automated Reverse Engineering

2025-03-26

ghidraMCP: An MCP Server for LLM-Powered Automated Reverse Engineering

ghidraMCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server enabling Large Language Models (LLMs) to autonomously reverse engineer applications. It exposes a wealth of tools from Ghidra's core functionality to MCP clients. Key features include decompilation and analysis of binaries within Ghidra, automated method and data renaming, and listing methods, classes, imports, and exports. Installation is straightforward, involving downloading the plugin and importing it into Ghidra. Support for multiple MCP clients, including Claude Desktop and 5ire, is provided.

(github.com)

Development

Google's Gemini: Billions Invested, Profits Elusive

2025-03-26

Google's Gemini: Billions Invested, Profits Elusive

Google's ambitious Gemini AI application, aiming for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), faces a significant challenge: profitability. Its downloads lag far behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, and the massive R&D costs and energy consumption of generative AI remain hurdles. Google is attempting to monetize Gemini through in-app advertising, while simultaneously facing potential massive revenue losses from antitrust lawsuits. Internal anxieties about workload and future prospects are also prevalent. Despite expanding functionalities, accuracy issues persist, as exemplified by a recent ad miscalculating global Gouda cheese consumption. Google is cautiously navigating Gemini's development, aiming to avoid past missteps and maintain its leading position in the AI race.

(www.wired.com)

Tech

Six Months In: My Year-Long Project on Building Friendships

2025-03-23

Six Months In: My Year-Long Project on Building Friendships

This post summarizes the author's sixth month of a year-long project focused on building and maintaining friendships. Key takeaways from eight books on the subject include: strong friendships improve health, even weak ties are valuable for opportunities, building friendships requires significant time investment, genuine interest is more effective than self-promotion, and declining social capital poses risks. The author found the topic far more complex than anticipated and will share personal reflections next week.

(www.scotthyoung.com)

Misc social skills

Saying Goodbye to `podman generate systemd`: Quadlet Simplifies Podman Container Systemd Management

2025-03-24

This blog post introduces Quadlet, a superior method for managing Podman containers as systemd services, replacing the deprecated `podman generate systemd` command. Quadlet uses concise `.container` files for configuration, offering features like automatic updates, dependency management, and automatic restart after server reboots. It's presented as a more flexible, powerful, and maintainable alternative to the previous shell scripting approach. The author provides a detailed comparison of both methods, highlighting Quadlet's advantages, including single configuration files, full systemd feature utilization, and simpler dependency management. The post also mentions `podman auto-update` and the `podlet` migration tool.

(mo8it.com)

Development

Apple to Use Apple Maps Imagery for AI Model Training

2025-03-25

Apple to Use Apple Maps Imagery for AI Model Training

Apple recently updated its website, revealing that starting March 2025, it will use imagery and data collected for its Apple Maps Look Around feature to train AI models for image recognition, creation, and enhancement. This data, gathered by vehicles and backpacks equipped with cameras, sensors, and iPhones/iPads, has faces and license plates blurred. Apple states only blurred imagery will be used, and it accepts requests to blur houses. This will enhance AI capabilities in Apple products and services, such as the Photos app's cleanup tool and search functionality.

(www.theverge.com)

AI

Elegant UI Undo Stack Algorithm: Avoiding Indexing Errors

2025-03-26

This article presents a clever implementation of a UI undo stack algorithm. Instead of the traditional index-based approach, it uses two stacks (undoStack and redoStack) to manage undo and redo operations, neatly avoiding common indexing errors and off-by-one issues. The code is concise and easy to understand. The author addresses the pass-by-reference problem in JavaScript using `structuredClone()`, ensuring idempotency. A complete code example is provided.

(blog.julik.nl)

Development UI Development Undo Redo

Hyperlight Wasm: Blazing Fast, Secure, and Compatible WebAssembly Micro-VM

2025-03-26

Hyperlight Wasm: Blazing Fast, Secure, and Compatible WebAssembly Micro-VM

Microsoft's open-source Hyperlight project gets a major update: Hyperlight Wasm. It's a WebAssembly-based micro-VM capable of running components written in various programming languages at incredible speeds while maintaining security and compatibility. Leveraging WASI and the WebAssembly Component Model, Hyperlight Wasm runs programs without a full operating system, boasting millisecond-level startup times. The article details Hyperlight Wasm's workings and demonstrates its usage with a UDP echo example, highlighting its performance and security advantages, and its potential applications in Azure services.

(opensource.microsoft.com)

Development Micro-VM

C++ Metaprogramming: Ditching IILEs in Favor of Expansion Statements and Structured Bindings

2025-03-26

This blog post explores how to streamline C++ metaprogramming, reducing reliance on Immediately Invoked Lambda Expressions (IILEs) by leveraging the `expand` helper, expansion statements, and structured bindings. It details element-wise expansion, early returns, and returning values, showing how to transform arbitrary ranges into packs for efficient compile-time data manipulation. These techniques significantly improve code readability and maintainability, avoiding verbose coding practices.

(pydong.org)

Development C++ metaprogramming expansion statements structured bindings

Google Translate Bug Turns 'Yes' into 'Forks' in Online Surveys

2025-03-26

Google Translate Bug Turns 'Yes' into 'Forks' in Online Surveys

A bizarre bug in a Pew Research Center's 2024 online survey replaced the 'yes' option with 'forks' for some respondents. The investigation revealed a 'lightbox popup' design feature caused some browsers to misinterpret the English survey as Spanish, triggering Google Translate's auto-translation. Google Translate, however, contained a peculiar error: translating 'yes' from Spanish to English resulted in 'forks'. Pew Research Center resolved the issue by disabling the browser's translation function and improving its programming. Analysis showed the bug had a negligible impact on the survey data.

(www.pewresearch.org)

Tech online surveys programming bug

localscope: Banishing Global Variable Bugs in Jupyter Notebooks

2025-03-17

Ever hunted down bugs caused by accidentally using global variables in a Jupyter Notebook function? localscope solves this by restricting a function's accessible scope. This prevents accidental global variable leakage, leading to more reproducible results and less debugging frustration. For example, a function calculating mean squared error relying on a global `sigma` variable will yield unpredictable results if `sigma` changes; localscope forces `sigma` to be passed as an argument, eliminating this risk.

(localscope.readthedocs.io)

Development

GitHub Actions Security Risk: The Mutable Tag Vulnerability

2025-03-25

GitHub Actions Security Risk: The Mutable Tag Vulnerability

A recent attack on the tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action highlighted a security vulnerability. By modifying a mutable Git tag, attackers could inject malicious code and leak secrets from build logs, which are public for public repositories. The author shares a shell script to audit used GitHub Actions, emphasizing the importance of using immutable commit IDs for security. The script analyzes workflow YAML files to identify and count actions, prioritizing those from large organizations or self-written scripts over less trustworthy ones. The author advocates for prioritizing actions from large organizations and writing custom scripts when possible.

(alexwlchan.net)

Development

Surprisingly Stable: Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds in Binary Systems

2025-03-22

Surprisingly Stable: Dyson Spheres and Ringworlds in Binary Systems

Science fiction staples, Dyson spheres and ringworlds, are typically considered gravitationally unstable and prone to collapse. However, a new study from Colin McInnes at the University of Glasgow reveals that specific configurations of these megastructures near a binary star system can, in fact, be stable. McInnes identified seven equilibrium points around a binary system where a ring structure could maintain stability. This research has significant implications for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), potentially guiding future surveys to look for bright stars orbiting with objects exhibiting strong infrared excesses—a potential technosignature indicating such megastructures.

(phys.org)

Tech Dyson Sphere Ringworld Gravitational Stability

AMD RDNA 4: Out-of-Order Memory Accesses and the Elimination of False Dependencies

2025-03-23

AMD RDNA 4: Out-of-Order Memory Accesses and the Elimination of False Dependencies

AMD's RDNA 4 architecture introduces significant memory subsystem enhancements, notably addressing false dependencies between wavefronts present in RDNA 3 and earlier architectures. Previously, one wavefront could be stalled by another's memory accesses, impacting performance. RDNA 4 resolves this by implementing new out-of-order queues, allowing requests from different shaders to be serviced out of order. This article details testing that verifies this improvement and compares AMD, Intel, and Nvidia GPU architectures in handling cross-wave memory dependencies. While not entirely novel, RDNA 4's improvements significantly enhance performance, particularly in emerging workloads like ray tracing.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware GPU architecture memory subsystem

Improved Ollama Model Atom Feed Scraper with Gemini 2.5 Pro

2025-03-26

This post details the creation of a GitHub Actions and GitHub Pages powered Atom feed scraping recent model data from Ollama's latest models page. Initially built using Claude to convert HTML to Atom, the script was refined using Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro. The upgrade splits the output into two feeds: one containing all models and another with only the most recent 20, improving efficiency and usability.

(simonwillison.net)

Development model scraping

Transborder Flight Bookings Between US and Canada Plummet Over 70%

2025-03-26

Transborder Flight Bookings Between US and Canada Plummet Over 70%

Recent data reveals a dramatic drop of over 70% in transborder flight bookings between the United States and Canada. Aviation analytics firm OAG shows a 71.4% to 75.7% decrease in bookings for April through September compared to the same period last year. April bookings alone are down 75.7%. While airlines have reduced some flights, it's far from enough to match the massive demand decline. This presents a significant challenge for airline route planning, requiring substantial adjustments to reflect current realities.

(onemileatatime.com)

Tech tourism US-Canada relations

Signal's Rise in the Netherlands: Universities Ditch WhatsApp Over Privacy Concerns

2025-03-23

Signal's Rise in the Netherlands: Universities Ditch WhatsApp Over Privacy Concerns

Signal messaging app is rapidly gaining popularity in the Netherlands, particularly among universities, driven by growing concerns over WhatsApp's data privacy practices and the spread of misinformation. Institutions like Utrecht University of Applied Sciences are recommending or considering switching to Signal due to its non-profit nature, open-source code, and strong privacy focus. The National Student Union also voiced privacy concerns, advocating for Signal or other open-source alternatives. This follows previous security concerns in higher education, with TikTok previously facing bans due to espionage risks.

(dub.uu.nl)

Tech

NCURSES: The Unsung Hero of UNIX Terminal Programming

2025-03-26

This document introduces the NCURSES library, a powerful and terminal-independent library for screen painting and input event handling. Originating from the screen-handling routines of the vi editor, it evolved through termcap and terminfo databases. NCURSES supports multiple highlights, color, mouse interaction, and extensions for panels, menus, and forms, simplifying terminal application development significantly.

(invisible-island.net)

Development terminal programming

Botswana Launches its First Satellite: BOTSAT-1

2025-03-26

Botswana Launches its First Satellite: BOTSAT-1

Botswana successfully launched its first satellite, BOTSAT-1, on March 15th, 2025, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This 3U hyperspectral Earth observation satellite, developed by the Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST), will provide crucial data for national development priorities including food security, environmental conservation, and urban planning. The launch represents a significant milestone in Botswana's space program and fosters human capital development through practical training for local engineers. Collaboration with Dragonfly Aerospace enhances BIUST's capabilities with advanced imaging technology and support for cleanroom facility development.

(spaceinafrica.com)

Tech Satellite Launch African Space Program

Revisiting 'The Mother of All Demos': Doug Engelbart and his 5-Key Keyset

2025-03-23

Revisiting 'The Mother of All Demos': Doug Engelbart and his 5-Key Keyset

This article recounts Douglas Engelbart's groundbreaking 1968 computer demonstration, "The Mother of All Demos." It revisits the innovative technologies showcased, like the mouse and hypertext, but also delves into the lesser-known 5-key keyset and the author's experience interfacing it with a modern USB connection. Furthermore, the article clarifies the origin of the name, revealing it wasn't initially associated with Engelbart's demo but later adopted. A blend of technical details and historical narrative, the article offers a fascinating look at technological history and personal exploration.

(www.righto.com)

Tech Engelbart

Ernst Fraenkel's The Dual State and the Trumpian Warning

2025-03-23

Ernst Fraenkel's *The Dual State* and the Trumpian Warning

This article revisits Ernst Fraenkel's *The Dual State*, written before his escape from Nazi Germany. The book describes how the Nazi regime maintained a facade of normalcy in its capitalist economy while simultaneously operating a 'prerogative state' of unchecked violence. The author argues that dictatorships don't abolish existing laws but create a lawless zone alongside the 'normative state.' Actions by the Trump administration, such as abuses of power and suppression of dissent, mirror this 'dual state' model, serving as a warning against such systemic risks.

(www.theatlantic.com)

Misc

AMD's Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs Sell 10x More Units in First Week

2025-03-25

AMD's Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs Sell 10x More Units in First Week

AMD CEO Lisa Su announced that the Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards have been a phenomenal success, selling ten times more units than their predecessors in their first week on the market. This success is attributed to AMD's focus on delivering top-tier gaming performance at competitive prices. While current supply is limited and prices are exceeding MSRP, AMD is aggressively increasing production. More RDNA 4 cards are on the way, with the rumored RX 9060 potentially included in the lineup.

(www.techspot.com)

Hardware

PgDog: Open-Source Sharding for pgvector

2025-03-26

Scaling pgvector beyond a million embeddings becomes challenging due to slow index building. This post introduces PgDog, an open-source project that shards the pgvector index. Leveraging IVFFlat's inherent clustering, PgDog distributes vector space partitions across multiple machines. Query vectors are routed to appropriate shards based on proximity to centroids, calculated using scikit-learn, significantly improving search speed and recall. The implementation details cover centroid calculation, a custom sharding function, and SQL parsing using pg_query. Experiments demonstrate PgDog's effectiveness, offering optimizations like parallel cross-shard queries and refined centroid allocation. Future work includes supporting more distance algorithms and SIMD instructions for faster calculations.

(pgdog.dev)

Development sharding

StarVector: A Transformer-based Image-to-SVG Vectorization Model

2025-03-26

StarVector is a Transformer-based image-to-SVG vectorization model, with 8B and 1B parameter models released on Hugging Face. It achieves state-of-the-art results on the SVG-Bench benchmark, excelling at vectorizing icons, logos, and technical diagrams, demonstrating superior performance in handling complex graphical details. The model leverages extensive datasets for training, encompassing a wide range of vector graphic styles, from simple icons to intricate colored illustrations. Compared to traditional vectorization methods, StarVector generates cleaner, more accurate SVG code, better preserving image details and structural information.

(starvector.github.io)

AI image vectorization Transformer model

Formal Verification of ML Models in Lean 4

2025-03-23

Formal Verification of ML Models in Lean 4

The `formal_verif_ml` project offers a Lean 4 framework for formally verifying properties (robustness, fairness, interpretability) of machine learning models. It includes a Lean library, model translator, web interface, and CI/CD pipeline, supporting various model types. An interactive web portal lets users upload models, view generated Lean code, trigger proof compilation, and visualize the architecture.

(github.com)

AI

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