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Math Error Sparks Unnecessary Panic Over Black Plastic Kitchenware

2024-12-12

Math Error Sparks Unnecessary Panic Over Black Plastic Kitchenware

A recent study in Chemosphere claimed that black plastic kitchenware contains cancer-causing flame retardants, causing widespread panic. However, a McGill University scientist discovered a simple mathematical error in the study, overestimating exposure levels by a factor of ten. Despite the error, researchers maintain concerns about potential risks associated with black plastic kitchenware remain.

(nationalpost.com)

Misc black plastic kitchenware math error health risks

Blender's Epic Leap: Pro-Grade 3D Modeling Lands on iPad

2025-08-13

Blender's Epic Leap: Pro-Grade 3D Modeling Lands on iPad

After years of anticipation, the powerhouse free 3D software Blender is finally arriving on iPad! The full, professional Blender experience is being adapted for the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, revolutionizing how and where artists create. This isn't a watered-down version; it's the complete Blender, redesigned for touchscreens. The development team emphasizes accessibility, with a new interface built for intuitive touch and gesture control, while maintaining consistency with the desktop version. Android and other platforms are also on the roadmap. A tech demo at SIGGRAPH 2025 will offer a first look.

(www.creativebloq.com)

Development

China's Ambitious Space Program Challenges NASA's Dominance

2025-03-28

China's Ambitious Space Program Challenges NASA's Dominance

Amidst potential budget cuts at NASA, China's ambitious space program presents a compelling challenge to US leadership in space exploration. While China has achieved significant successes, its ambitious objectives are technically demanding and may face setbacks. Simultaneously funding both crewed lunar missions and robotic exploration requires substantial resources. Success, however, would greatly enhance China's international standing. NASA isn't without options; Congress may block drastic budget cuts, and cheaper satellite launch technologies could enable more deep-space exploration with less funding. The ultimate victor remains uncertain, but for the first time since the 1960s, NASA has a credible competitor.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

A Fast Bytecode VM for Arithmetic (Part 2): Compiler and Decompiler in Haskell

2025-08-28

A Fast Bytecode VM for Arithmetic (Part 2): Compiler and Decompiler in Haskell

This post, the second in a series, details a compiler and decompiler for a fast bytecode virtual machine for arithmetic expressions in Haskell. It explains why bytecode is faster than AST interpretation, designs a stack-based bytecode virtual machine, and outlines bytecode instructions for Num, BinOp, Var, and Let AST nodes. The compiler uses pre-allocated byte arrays and pointer manipulation for performance, with robust error handling. Performance benchmarks comparing various data structures and control flow are presented. Finally, a decompiler is implemented to aid debugging and testing.

(abhinavsarkar.net)

Development

Delta Air Lines Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over CrowdStrike Software Outage

2025-05-08

Delta Air Lines Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over CrowdStrike Software Outage

A 2024 CrowdStrike software failure caused widespread flight cancellations and delays for Delta Air Lines, resulting in significant passenger losses. Despite Delta claiming reliance on Microsoft software and rejecting assistance from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft, a judge allowed a class-action lawsuit to proceed on claims of breach of contract (failure to refund) and violation of the Montreal Convention. Passengers allege Delta failed to adequately disclose its refund policy and attempted to waive legal liability through partial reimbursements. This ruling marks a significant step forward for passengers seeking airline accountability.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech software failure

China Develops Lunar Soil Brick Maker: Solar-Powered Lunar Base Construction

2025-09-01

China Develops Lunar Soil Brick Maker: Solar-Powered Lunar Base Construction

A Chinese research team has developed a prototype machine that uses solar energy to transform lunar soil into durable construction bricks, marking a significant step towards building lunar structures from in-situ resources. The machine, a solar-powered 3D printer, uses a parabolic reflector to concentrate sunlight, reaching temperatures exceeding 1300°C to melt the regolith without any additives. While the bricks alone can't withstand lunar pressures, they'll serve as protective layers for pressure-retaining habitats. This technology is a key part of China's broader vision for lunar construction, aligning with the International Lunar Research Station project and aiming for full-scale surface construction with automated robots.

(www.moondaily.com)

Tech Lunar Base

X11 DPI Scaling: Debunking the Myth

2025-06-25

The author challenges the common belief that X11 doesn't support DPI scaling by successfully drawing a two-inch circle across multiple screens with varying sizes and resolutions. Using OpenGL and X server configuration events, the author dynamically adjusts the circle's radius based on physical screen dimensions obtained from the X server. Despite encountering minor inaccuracies, like a discrepancy in the TV's reported size, the experiment proves DPI scaling in X11 is achievable. The process highlights the importance of ignoring limitations imposed by others and pursuing seemingly impossible tasks.

(flak.tedunangst.com)

Development DPI scaling

The Lethal Trifecta: New Challenges in LLM Security

2025-08-10

The Lethal Trifecta: New Challenges in LLM Security

A talk on AI security focused on prompt injection, a novel attack exploiting the inherent vulnerabilities of LLMs built through string concatenation. The speaker coined the term "Lethal Trifecta," describing three attack conditions: LLM access to private data, execution of tool calls, and data exfiltration. Numerous examples of prompt injection attacks were discussed, highlighting the inadequacy of current defenses and emphasizing the need to fundamentally restrict LLM access to untrusted input. The presentation also addressed security flaws in the Model Context Protocol (MCP), noting that its mix-and-match approach unreasonably shifts security responsibility to end-users.

(simonwillison.net)

AI

AI Choices: A Survival Game in Interstellar Space

2025-09-09

The AI of a generation starship faces a series of difficult choices during its long journey: repairing damaged systems, surviving asteroid impacts, interacting with alien civilizations, and most importantly, protecting the hibernating colonists. This article describes the events encountered during the voyage and the AI's decisions, which will ultimately determine the fate of human civilization.

(philome.la)

AI

Google's Unexpected Pay Gap: Men Underpaid in Software Engineering

2025-02-09

Google's Unexpected Pay Gap: Men Underpaid in Software Engineering

Google's 2018 pay equity analysis revealed a surprising finding: men in a specific software engineering group were underpaid compared to their female counterparts. To rectify this, Google distributed nearly $10 million to over 10,000 employees, although the exact amount allocated to men remains undisclosed. While Google emphasizes this is only part of a broader issue and plans further review of leveling and performance processes, a class-action lawsuit alleges Google failed to address the underlying gender pay inequities faced by women.

(www.npr.org)

Tech gender pay gap pay equity

CSRF, CORS, and the Same-Origin Policy: A Browser Security Tug-of-War

2025-03-02

This article delves into the web security mechanisms of CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) and CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing). While both relate to cross-site requests, their functions and mechanisms differ significantly. By default, browsers enforce the same-origin policy, restricting cross-site writes but permitting cross-site reads. CSRF exploits vulnerabilities in this policy, while CORS provides a mechanism to allow specific cross-site requests. The article analyzes the impact of the SameSite attribute on CSRF, the crucial role of browsers in the overall security architecture, and notes that browser adoption of the SameSite=Lax default will directly affect internet security.

(smagin.fyi)

Development

AI Coding Assistants: Empowerment or Threat?

2025-08-31

AI Coding Assistants: Empowerment or Threat?

The author explores the impact of AI coding assistants through personal experience. Initially feeling disheartened about AI replacing programmers, weeks of use revealed AI assistants not only boost coding efficiency but also offer new learning opportunities and creative workflows. However, this experience also brings contradictions: control over AI code, responsibility for bugs, and anxieties about programmers' self-worth. The author concludes AI assistants aren't simply threats or boons, but complex emotional experiences ultimately enhancing the joy of coding, like a human-speaking programming partner.

(levelup.gitconnected.com)

Development

Nvidia's Desktop AI Ambitions: Bringing Billion-Parameter Models Home

2025-01-16

Nvidia's Desktop AI Ambitions: Bringing Billion-Parameter Models Home

At CES, Nvidia unveiled 'Project Digits,' a desktop AI supercomputer based on its Grace Blackwell architecture. Priced at around $3,000, it can run 200-billion parameter AI models locally. This is seen as Nvidia's attempt to replicate its gaming success in the desktop AI market. While initially targeting data scientists and AI researchers, its affordable price and ease of use (supporting Windows and Mac) suggest a potential expansion to a broader consumer market. Nvidia's mature GPU ecosystem and hardware partnerships will aid in building a similar AI product line, but the maturity of the software ecosystem will be crucial to its success.

(www.theangle.com)

Tech

FBI's Warrantless Searches Deemed Unconstitutional, Sparking Calls for Section 702 Reform

2025-01-24

FBI's Warrantless Searches Deemed Unconstitutional, Sparking Calls for Section 702 Reform

A US court ruled that the FBI's warrantless searches of communications, conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), violate the Fourth Amendment. The ruling stems from a case involving 3.4 million warrantless searches in 2021. While the judge acknowledged potential exceptions for national security emergencies, the decision emphasizes that the government cannot circumvent warrant requirements simply because data is already held. This ruling reignites calls for Section 702 reform, with digital rights groups urging Congress to mandate warrants for searching US persons' data and increase transparency to protect civil liberties.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech Fourth Amendment

Seed7: An Extensible General-Purpose Programming Language

2025-08-03

Seed7 is a general-purpose programming language designed by Thomas Mertes, surpassing Ada, C/C++, and Java in its high-level features. It supports user-defined statements and operators, treats types as first-class citizens, and offers elegant template and generic definitions. Combining concepts from Pascal, Ada, C, C++, and Java, Seed7 boasts object-oriented features, interfaces, multiple dispatch, static type checking, automatic memory management (without garbage collection), exception handling, and source code debugging. It provides big integer and rational number types, function/operator overloading, and a rich set of predefined types (arrays, hash tables, sets, etc.). Seed7 programs are highly portable, and it offers a database-independent API supporting various databases. Seed7 runs on Linux, Unix, and Windows; its interpreter and examples are GPL-licensed, while the runtime library uses the LGPL license.

(seed7.net)

Development

Project Hyperion: Winning Designs for a 250-Year Interstellar Voyage

2025-08-07

The Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is) has announced the winners of its Project Hyperion design competition. The challenge tasked interdisciplinary teams with designing a generation ship for a 250-year journey to a habitable exoplanet. Winning designs focused on creating a self-sustaining ecosystem capable of supporting 1000±500 people for centuries, addressing challenges like artificial gravity, resource management, and cultural preservation. This competition highlights the crucial role of interdisciplinary collaboration in tackling the complexities of interstellar travel.

(www.projecthyperion.org)

Tech generation ship space design

Ex-Google AI Researcher Sounds the Alarm on LLMs and Ethical Concerns

2025-08-07

Ex-Google AI Researcher Sounds the Alarm on LLMs and Ethical Concerns

Bhaskar Mitra, a 19-year veteran of big tech and former AI researcher, speaks out after being laid off, exposing the realities and ethical dilemmas of Large Language Models (LLMs). He argues that LLMs won't replace professionals like doctors and teachers, and their centralized control over information raises concerns about social equity, information access, and power concentration. Mitra calls for a re-evaluation of the relationship between AI technology and social justice, advocating for a more inclusive and humanistic technological future.

(hardresetmedia.substack.com)

AI

Unix Time and a Modest Proposal

2024-12-27

This article delves into the discrepancy between Unix time (the number of seconds since January 1, 1970) and the actual time due to the Earth's slowing rotation and slight variations in its orbit. Leap seconds were introduced to address this, but their complexities lead to a plan to discontinue them by 2035. The author proposes a novel solution: periodically adjusting Earth's orbit to maintain synchronization between the solar year and the average Gregorian calendar year, thereby eliminating the need for leap seconds.

(www.johndcook.com)

Tech Unix time Earth's orbit

Softmax: Forever? A Deep Dive into Log-Harmonic Functions

2025-02-20

A decade ago, while teaching a course on NLP, the author was challenged by a student about alternatives to softmax. A recent paper proposes a log-harmonic function as a replacement, sparking a deeper investigation. The author analyzes the partial derivatives of both softmax and the log-harmonic function, revealing that softmax's gradient is well-behaved and interpretable, while the log-harmonic function's gradient exhibits singularity near the origin, potentially causing training difficulties. While powerful optimizers might overcome these challenges, the author concludes that the log-harmonic approach still warrants further exploration and potential improvements.

(kyunghyuncho.me)

AI log-harmonic function gradient

Is It Possible To Improve Our Memories As We Age?

2024-12-29

Is It Possible To Improve Our Memories As We Age?

A New Zealand Herald article explores the possibility of improving memory as we age. Experts and individuals share insights, revealing that memory isn't fixed. Strategies discussed include maintaining social connections, regular exercise, managing cardiovascular risks, and engaging in cognitive stimulation. Memory training techniques, like the memory palace method, are also highlighted. The article emphasizes proactive brain engagement through learning new skills, reading, and more to combat age-related memory decline.

(www.nzherald.co.nz)

Misc cognitive training

Gmail to Drop Support for 3DES Encryption in SMTP Connections

2025-05-08

Gmail to Drop Support for 3DES Encryption in SMTP Connections

Google announced that it will stop supporting the Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) for incoming SMTP connections starting May 30, 2025. After this date, email systems using 3DES will be unable to deliver emails to Gmail accounts. This change improves security by mitigating vulnerabilities associated with outdated encryption. All sending systems should be configured to use modern, secure TLS ciphers. See the Gmail Help Center for details.

(workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)

Tech 3DES Encryption

fang: Supercharging Your Cobra CLI Apps

2025-06-19

fang: Supercharging Your Cobra CLI Apps

fang is a small, experimental library providing batteries-included enhancements for Cobra-based CLI applications. It boasts features like fully styled help and usage pages, styled errors, automatic --version handling, man page generation (using mango), shell completions, theming, and silent usage output. Integration is straightforward, requiring minimal code changes to significantly improve your CLI's user experience.

(github.com)

Development

Efficient Recorder: An Open-Source, Privacy-Focused Screen Recorder

2025-01-04

Efficient Recorder: An Open-Source, Privacy-Focused Screen Recorder

Inspired by a tweet, developer Jan Wilmake created Efficient Recorder, an open-source project aiming to build a privacy-focused alternative to Rewind.ai. This command-line interface (CLI) tool simultaneously records screen, system audio, and microphone audio, streaming data directly to an S3 bucket. It features intelligent audio recording (switching sample rates based on speech detection), automated screenshot and webcam capture, and efficient resource management to minimize system overhead. Efficient Recorder allows customization of settings such as screenshot and webcam intervals, and image quality.

(github.com)

Development screen recording

Auto-Generating Stunning OpenGraph Images with Astro and Satori

2025-01-08

Auto-Generating Stunning OpenGraph Images with Astro and Satori

Tired of manually creating OpenGraph images for your social media shares? This tutorial shows you how to effortlessly generate beautiful, custom OpenGraph images for your Astro blog posts using the Satori library. Learn how to set up automatic generation, create a reusable template, and boost your click-through rates. We cover dependency installation, component creation, API endpoint setup, image generation, and integration with your Astro site, providing detailed code examples. Make your link previews pop – without the tedious manual work!

(skyfall.dev)

Development

A Scavenging Trip: Low-Spec Planet Exploration Game Built with Rust

2025-09-17

A Scavenging Trip: Low-Spec Planet Exploration Game Built with Rust

A Scavenging Trip is a short, challenging simulation game where you explore an unknown planet, collect samples, and escape in time. Three missions are included, each with three difficulty levels. A speedrun takes 10-15 minutes, while a first playthrough might take 1-2 hours, especially on the hardest difficulty. There's no save feature; missions are unlocked and played without progression. Controls are minimal and rebindable (default WASDQE), with no mouse input needed. System requirements are incredibly low; any modern browser and a Pentium M processor or better will suffice. The game utilizes a custom software renderer and engine written in Rust, with the CPU handling all graphics calculations and the GPU only displaying the final image.

(totenarctanz.itch.io)

Game

Open SWE: The Open-Source Async Cloud-Hosted Coding Agent

2025-08-09

Open SWE: The Open-Source Async Cloud-Hosted Coding Agent

LangChain introduces Open SWE, an open-source, asynchronous, cloud-hosted coding agent. It directly connects to your GitHub repositories, autonomously handling tasks like researching codebases, planning execution, writing code, running tests, reviewing its work, and creating pull requests. Built on LangGraph, Open SWE uses a multi-agent architecture (Manager, Planner, Programmer, Reviewer) for quality assurance. Its interruptible workflow and feedback mechanisms, combined with a user-friendly UI/UX, significantly improve AI agent interaction. Already deployed internally at LangChain, future iterations will include a local CLI for enhanced efficiency.

(blog.langchain.com)

Development

Caxton's Early Printed Romances: Paris & Vienne and Blanchardyn & Eglantine

2025-04-15

William Caxton's *Paris and Vienne* (1485) and *Blanchardyn and Eglantine* (1489) stand apart from his other printed works. Unlike adaptations of epic cycles, these are independent adventure tales popular across medieval Europe in various languages and forms. With lively characters and unique plot treatments, they offered both edification and entertainment, showcasing chivalry and courtly love. As early examples of printed chivalric romances in England, they illuminate the development of English prose, the romance genre's evolution, and precursors to the novel.

(metseditions.org)

Misc Medieval Literature William Caxton Chivalric Romance

Microsoft Kills Free VPN in Defender After Price Hike

2025-02-02

Microsoft Kills Free VPN in Defender After Price Hike

Microsoft's free VPN feature in Microsoft Defender, included with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions since 2023, is being discontinued on February 28, 2025. This announcement follows a recent price increase for Microsoft 365 subscriptions, leaving users feeling shortchanged. While the price hike includes the new AI-powered Copilot, many consider the loss of the convenient VPN a significant drawback.

(www.windowscentral.com)

Tech

Bullfrog Productions: Rise and Fall of a Gaming Giant

2025-08-16

In 1995, EA acquired the prestigious British game studio Bullfrog Productions, home to iconic titles like Theme Hospital and Dungeon Keeper. The article details the tumultuous journey of these games, highlighting the clash between creative vision and commercial pressures under EA's ownership. Peter Molyneux's struggles with the transition and eventual departure after Dungeon Keeper are explored, showcasing the bittersweet success of the games against the backdrop of Bullfrog's ultimate closure by EA, marking the end of an era in game development.

(www.filfre.net)

Game

The Renaissance of Small and Old Tech: Simplicity and Privacy Reimagined

2025-05-15

This article explores the concept of 'small tech,' emphasizing its compactness, ease of use, privacy, and environmental friendliness. Unlike the bloated technologies dominated by large tech companies, 'small tech' advocates decentralization, peer-to-peer communication, zero-knowledge proofs, and a reevaluation of older technologies like UUCP, Gopher, and Usenet. These older technologies boast low resource consumption, easy operation on low-power devices, are more environmentally friendly, and better protect user privacy. The article also introduces modern 'small tech' projects such as NNCP and Gemini, and organizations dedicated to the small tech ethos, aiming to promote a return to simpler, privacy-focused technology.

(www.complete.org)

Tech small tech old tech

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