JP Camara's presentation on Ruby concurrency from RubyConf 2024 is now available on YouTube. The talk summarizes his past year's research and writing, and features animated slides. The video is also available on RubyVideo.
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TeaVM 0.11.0 has been released, featuring a brand new WebAssembly backend. The old WebAssembly backend, while functional, lacked adoption due to insignificant performance gains and a poor developer experience. The new backend, leveraging the WebAssembly GC proposal, addresses these issues, improving interaction with browser JS APIs and reducing binary file size. While currently slightly less feature-rich than the JS backend, it already supports JSO (Java-to-JS interaction API), aiming for parity in the next release. This release also includes bug fixes in BitSet implementation and adds support for various JS APIs, such as file reading, touch events, the Popover API, and Navigator.sendBeacon.
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A programmer publicly criticized several OAuth providers (GitHub, Facebook, TikTok, Strava, Naver, and others) for various API inconsistencies. Issues included incorrect status codes, non-standard error responses, inconsistent parameter naming, and flawed token expiration formats. The author urged these providers to rectify these problems, expressing particular confusion over Naver's design choices. The post also highlighted the lack of support for HTTP Basic authentication, later clarifying that while optional in OAuth 2.1, most providers' lack of PKCE support renders them non-compliant with either specification.
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YouTube recently altered its Publisher for Publishers (PfP) embedded player, removing the title link back to YouTube. This change, intended to protect advertisers since PfP allows publishers to sell their own ads, means many websites, including The Verge, now have YouTube embeds where clicking the title no longer opens the video on YouTube.com or the app. Despite efforts to communicate with YouTube, including reaching out to CEO Neal Mohan, the change remains. This highlights how large tech platforms can prioritize their own interests over user experience.
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Scientists have developed a groundbreaking AI-powered tool, RoseTTAFold, for designing novel proteins. This tool predicts the amino acid sequence of a protein based on a user-specified target structure, generating stable and functional proteins. This breakthrough promises to accelerate advancements in drug discovery, materials science, and bioengineering, offering new possibilities for addressing various challenges facing humanity. The technology holds the potential to revolutionize biomedicine by creating proteins with specific functions for treating diseases or developing new materials.
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Railgun Labs has released Unicorn, a high-velocity Unicode algorithm library known for its speed, embeddability, cross-platform compatibility, and security. Unicorn supports numerous Unicode algorithms, including normalization, case conversion, collation, and segmentation, and provides decoders, encoders, and validators for UTF-8, UTF-16, and UTF-32 encodings. The library is fully customizable and extensively tested for accuracy and reliability. It's MISRA C:2012 compliant and largely thread-safe.
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uv, a lightning-fast Python package and project manager written in Rust, replaces pip, pip-tools, pipx, poetry, pyenv, twine, and virtualenv. Boasting a 10-100x speed improvement, uv offers project management, tool management, Python version management, script support, and a pip-compatible interface. Features like global caching and workspace support streamline workflows. From project creation and dependency management to running scripts and building distributables, uv provides efficient and convenient solutions for all your Python development needs.
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In the fall of 2021, Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts implemented a complex initiative called "multilevel classrooms" aimed at improving educational equity. This model mixed students of varying academic abilities into single classrooms with one teacher. Three years later, the results are troubling. Teachers report the model fails to meet the needs of diverse learners; high-achieving students are stifled, while lower-achieving students are hesitant to ask questions. Lack of adequate training and support for teachers led to poor outcomes, with students in multilevel classes often underperforming their single-level counterparts. The school lacked metrics for success, and no data supported the model's efficacy. A teacher's council petitioned to roll back multilevel classes in STEM and world languages, urging the district to find better solutions for addressing educational equity. The failure highlights the need for data-driven approaches and a focus on student needs in educational reform.
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Scientists have developed an automated system for assembling insect-computer hybrid robots. The system uses a vision-guided robotic arm to precisely implant custom-designed bipolar electrodes onto the backs of Madagascar hissing cockroaches. The entire process takes only 68 seconds, and the assembled robots achieve steering and deceleration control comparable to manually assembled systems. A multi-agent system of 4 robots successfully navigated an obstacle course, demonstrating the feasibility of mass production and real-world applications. This research paves the way for scalable production and deployment of insect robots.
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Victorian-era novels reveal the shockingly high child mortality rates from infectious diseases, underscoring the fragility of public health today. The article highlights that in the first half of the 19th century, 40-50% of children in the U.S. died before age 5, with similar rates in UK slums. Tuberculosis, smallpox, and diphtheria were major killers. However, advancements in sanitation, regulations (food safety), and medicine (vaccines, antibiotics) have drastically reduced child mortality. Victorian novels, with their poignant depictions of grief over lost children, serve as a cautionary tale: the progress made is not guaranteed and complacency regarding public health measures, such as vaccination rates, could lead to a resurgence of deadly diseases.
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The AI chatbot ChatGPT has sparked controversy due to its built-in name filters. These filters prevent users from mentioning certain names, such as Brian Hood, Jonathan Turley, and Jonathan Zittrain, causing chat interruptions. The reason for filtering these names stems from previous instances where ChatGPT incorrectly generated information about these individuals, leading to legal disputes. While OpenAI claims the filtering of "David Mayer" was a glitch, the incident highlights the challenges LLMs face in handling sensitive information and the potential problems hard-coded filters can create.
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In the early 9th century, a Frankish courtier recorded a tale of demonic possession. The demon, Wiggo, confessed to destroying crops, livestock, and spreading plagues, blaming the Franks' sins and their rulers' many crimes. Wiggo described rampant greed, mutual suspicion among rulers, and lack of piety. This story mirrored the crisis of the Carolingian Empire: internal strife, economic instability, and famine. The courtier, Einhard, used this tale to subtly criticize the rulers' corruption and foreshadow the empire's decline.
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IRATA.ONLINE, a PLATO-based online service for retro-computing enthusiasts, has released updated versions of its PLATOTerm terminal emulator. Now supporting Atari 8-bit, C64, Amiga, and Android, IRATA.ONLINE offers a multi-user graphical interface, multiplayer games, social features, and a development environment. This platform aims to revive the PLATO system, providing a unique social and development experience for users.
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The author spent several weeks using OCR to digitize a late 19th-century edition of the 18th-century French memoirs, *Les Mémoires de Saint-Simon*. This 45-volume behemoth, containing over 3 million words, is available online as images, but is difficult to read. The goal was to create a readable, searchable, and copyable text version. Challenges included poor image quality and parsing different page zones (headers, main text, margin comments, footnotes, etc.). Google Vision API was used for OCR, with a Python program processing the results to identify and separate text from different areas. While LLMs failed to reliably handle footnote references, the author improved the program and incorporated manual review, resulting in the release of the first volume.
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AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li delivered a keynote at NeurIPS, outlining her vision for computer vision. She argues that true visual intelligence requires moving beyond 2D image processing to 3D spatial understanding. Her startup, World Labs, is focused on giving AI 'spatial intelligence' – the ability to generate, reason within, and interact with 3D worlds. This unlocks creativity and productivity, impacting robotics, VR/AR, and more. Li stresses the need for substantial computing power and data, advocating for increased public sector investment in AI research.
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For eleven years, elusive bugs plagued parallel builds in GNU Make. Inspired by this, a new `--shuffle` mode was developed to randomly reorder Makefile targets, simulating non-deterministic build order. This effectively revealed hidden bugs in over 30 packages, including gcc, vim, and ghc. Now part of GNU Make 4.4, this mode is accessible via `make --shuffle` or the `GNUMAKEFLAGS=--shuffle` environment variable. This powerful feature helps developers identify and resolve parallel build issues, highlighting the continuous improvement of software development tools.
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After nearly two years of development, XFCE 4.20 has been officially released! This version focuses on preparing the codebase for Wayland, now offering experimental Wayland support for most components, though it's still in its early stages and recommended for advanced users. XFCE 4.20 also boasts numerous new features, bug fixes, and improvements, including improved icon scaling, a performance-enhanced icon view, and an upgraded Thunar file manager. Importantly, Wayland support is incomplete, with some components and features yet to be ported.
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Hugging Face Spaces has introduced ZeroGPU, a shared infrastructure that dynamically allocates NVIDIA A100 GPUs to optimize GPU usage for AI models and demos. ZeroGPU offers free GPU access, multi-GPU support, and lowers the barrier to entry for deploying AI models. Users simply select ZeroGPU hardware when creating a Gradio Space and use the `@spaces.GPU` decorator for GPU-dependent functions. ZeroGPU is compatible with PyTorch and optimized for Hugging Face's transformers and diffusers libraries, but currently only works with the Gradio SDK. Personal accounts (PRO users) can create up to 10 ZeroGPU Spaces, while organization accounts (Enterprise Hub) can create up to 50.
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Fern, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is seeking a Senior Frontend Engineer with a salary of $168,000-$192,000 plus equity. Located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY, this in-person role requires 4+ years of experience in frontend development, proficiency in JavaScript/TypeScript, React, and Next.js. Responsibilities include streamlining developer experience, managing frontend infrastructure, building user-facing features, and fostering strong customer relationships. Fern simplifies API usage and counts Cohere, ElevenLabs, Webflow, and Merge.dev among its clients.
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The CIA's history of using animals in espionage is filled with creativity and challenges. From pigeons carrying miniature cameras, to the attempted use of a cat for eavesdropping in the 'Acoustikitty' program (ultimately failing due to the cat's independent nature), to robotic catfish 'Charlie' for underwater reconnaissance, and the dragonfly-mimicking miniature drone 'Insectothopter', the CIA showcased its imagination, leveraging animal characteristics for intelligence gathering. Additionally, they used animal remains as camouflaged dead drops, even employing rats soaked in cat repellent to deliver messages. These imaginative attempts highlight the CIA's innovative spirit in technology and intelligence, and also reflect the unique value of animals in special environments.
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This article delves into the complexities of Python dependency management, likening it to building a bonfire in a dry forest. The author argues that Python dependencies aren't simply a matter of `pip install`; they encompass project packages, system packages, the operating system, hardware, and the environment itself. Good dependency management is crucial for reproducibility—ensuring consistent results across different environments. The article details version control, environment isolation, definition files, lock files, and other key concepts. It then provides a comprehensive comparison of numerous tools, including pip, venv, virtualenv, pip-tools, Pipenv, Poetry, PDM, pyenv, pipx, uv, Conda, Mamba, conda-lock, and Pixi, analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, and use cases. Finally, the author offers tool recommendations based on different scenarios (administrative privileges, dependency types, operating systems, etc.) and looks ahead to future trends in Python dependency management.
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The LLVM project has released an exciting GPU C library enabling developers to run libc and libm functions directly on the GPU within C/C++ code. The library supports two main modes: as a supplementary library for offloading languages like OpenMP, CUDA, or HIP; and by directly compiling C/C++ code for the GPU. The article details how to use both modes, including compilation options, linking, and specific builds for AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. This library allows developers to leverage the parallel processing power of GPUs, significantly improving performance without needing deep knowledge of complex GPU programming models.
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The American healthcare system is broken, and the problem extends far beyond insurance companies. An oncologist argues that pharmaceutical firms, PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers), the FDA, CMS, hospitals, and doctors all share responsibility. Pharmaceutical companies push unproven drugs, PBMs profit excessively, regulators are lax, hospitals charge exorbitant fees and engage in predatory practices, and doctors order unnecessary tests and treatments. While insurance companies are frustrating, they are a scapegoat for a larger systemic issue. The author calls for sweeping reforms of the FDA and CMS to end corporate capture of regulatory agencies, addressing the high costs and inefficiency of the US healthcare system. The recent assassination of an insurance CEO highlights public frustration with the system.
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This JetBrains RubyMine blog post delves into various approaches to debugging Ruby code, ranging from basic `puts` statements to interactive consoles (IRB and Pry) and powerful debuggers (byebug, debug, and the RubyMine debugger). Using a real-world bug example, it highlights the strengths and weaknesses of each tool, guiding developers in selecting the most appropriate debugger for improved efficiency. The article emphasizes that effective debugging isn't just about fixing errors; it's about gaining a fundamental understanding of the code to write more robust Ruby applications.
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The rise of generative AI and AI-based developer tools is reshaping best practices in AI product management. This article highlights the importance of using concrete examples (inputs and desired outputs) to clearly define product specifications. This not only helps teams move faster but also improves the efficiency of assessing technical feasibility. For example, prompting LLMs to test their accuracy on specific tasks allows for quick validation of product ideas. Furthermore, tools like Replit and Vercel empower product managers to build prototypes independently and gather user feedback, accelerating iteration. In short, AI is revolutionizing AI product management, demanding that product managers master new best practices to meet the rapidly evolving market demands.
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Buzee is a cross-platform, full-text search application built with Rust and Svelte. It allows for fast searching of local files, folders, browser history, and more, even extracting text from PDFs and images using OCR. Developed over two years, this project showcases a robust architecture using Tauri for performance, SQLite and Tantivy for indexing, and a clean Svelte frontend. While feature-rich, it still has some areas for future development, and the author is releasing it open-source for others to contribute.
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This review examines Richard Dawkins's "The Genetic Book of the Dead" and Sara Imari Walker's "Life as No One Knows It." Dawkins continues his "selfish gene" theory, arguing that genes are the central driving force of evolution. However, the review points out that this view is outdated and fails to adequately consider factors such as development, epigenetics, and niche construction. Walker's book attempts to explain the origin of life from the perspective of assembly theory, but the review argues that it is overly simplistic and fails to fully clarify the essence of life. The article concludes that popular science books often tend towards simplistic narratives, ignoring the complexity and diversity of the field of biology.
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Ev Williams, founder of Twitter and Medium, has launched a new social app called Mozi, aiming to redefine the essence of social interaction. Unlike content-focused social media, Mozi prioritizes helping users build and maintain relationships with people in their real lives. By integrating with users' contact lists, it shows when users and their acquaintances will be in the same location (city or event), facilitating offline meetings. Mozi emphasizes privacy, lacking public profiles and follower counts, aiming to be a private platform promoting genuine social connections.
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This article summarizes the author's 20 years of experience with terminal programs, distilling common, albeit unofficial, 'rules' of behavior. These rules cover program responses to Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, and the 'q' key, color usage, readline keybinding support, and pipe output. The author notes that while not mandatory standards, understanding these rules helps predict terminal program behavior and reduces the learning curve. The article uses examples to analyze the applicability and exceptions to these rules, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between a program's own responsibility and default OS behavior.
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After nearly a year of investigation, NASA has finally solved the mystery behind the crash of Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter carried by the Perseverance rover. The helicopter's navigation system, unable to discern sufficient features on the relatively smooth Martian surface, resulted in a horizontal velocity upon landing. This caused Ingenuity to tumble, breaking its blades. Despite lacking a black box, investigators pieced together the cause from limited data and imagery. Remarkably, Ingenuity still communicates intermittently with Perseverance. The incident has prompted NASA to begin planning for follow-on missions, including a larger Mars helicopter capable of carrying scientific instruments.
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