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Wind-Powered Knitting: A Mobile Factory Harnessing Urban Winds

2025-07-04

Wind-Powered Knitting: A Mobile Factory Harnessing Urban Winds

Imagine a building facade with a constantly growing knitted fabric, a 'mobile factory' powered by wind. Wind propels the knitwear down from the building's top, through a window into the interior, where it's eventually 'harvested' into scarves labeled with their creation time. This art installation cleverly connects public and private space, showcasing the potential of harnessing urban wind energy and uniquely visualizing the production process.

(www.merelkarhof.nl)

Design urban wind energy

McDonald's App Security Flaw: The Perils of Trusting Clients

2025-01-17

McDonald's App Security Flaw: The Perils of Trusting Clients

A blog post exposes a critical security vulnerability in the McDonald's app. The vulnerability stems from the app's excessive trust in clients, allowing hackers to bypass security checks and obtain free Big Macs and other deals. The post details how attackers utilize root access, custom recovery systems, and other methods to circumvent the app's security mechanisms, highlighting that simply checking client trustworthiness is ineffective. The author urges developers to abandon blind trust in clients and implement stronger security measures to prevent similar incidents.

(liberda.nl)

Development client-side security mobile app security

LLMs: The Next Frontier in Code Assistance

2025-01-14

LLMs: The Next Frontier in Code Assistance

This article recounts the rapid advancement of Large Language Models (LLMs), particularly their application in code assistance. Using examples like Amazon AWS and Kubernetes, the author illustrates how small technological breakthroughs can give rise to massive industries. The author argues that LLM-powered coding assistants are poised to revolutionize software development, emphasizing the importance of high-quality data (a data moat) for superior code generation. The article concludes with an introduction to Sourcegraph's Cody, an LLM-based coding assistant leveraging Sourcegraph's powerful code search engine to build a 'cheat sheet' – the context window – for significantly improved code generation.

(sourcegraph.com)

Development Code Assistance

Giant Clam Genome Sequencing Reveals Secrets of Algae Symbiosis

2025-02-01

Giant Clam Genome Sequencing Reveals Secrets of Algae Symbiosis

Scientists sequenced the genome of the giant clam, *Tridacna maxima*, revealing how these massive mollusks evolved a symbiotic relationship with algae to fuel their impressive size. The study found that giant clams have evolved genes to specifically recognize and tolerate symbiotic algae, suppressing their immune response to avoid rejection. This immune suppression, however, leaves them vulnerable to viral infections. The research highlights the evolutionary mechanisms behind the giant clam's size and underscores the importance of protecting these keystone species, threatened by climate change and other factors impacting coral reef ecosystems.

(www.colorado.edu)

Tech genome sequencing symbiosis coral reef ecosystem

I Tracked Myself Using Leaked Geolocation Data: A Shocking Experiment

2025-02-02

I Tracked Myself Using Leaked Geolocation Data: A Shocking Experiment

A recent geolocation data leak from Gravy Analytics exposed over 2000 apps secretly collecting location data, often without developers' knowledge. To investigate, I installed a single game and used Charles Proxy to monitor network traffic. Even with location services disabled, the game leaked my approximate location and IP address via Unity Ads, Facebook, and other ad platforms. The data included surprisingly granular details like screen brightness and memory usage. Further investigation revealed the ease of purchasing datasets linking identifiers to personal information, enabling precise location tracking. This experiment highlights the alarming scale of data leakage in the mobile advertising ecosystem and the significant risks to user privacy.

(timsh.org)

Tech geolocation leak ad tracking

Greenpeace Ordered to Pay $666M Over Dakota Access Pipeline Protests

2025-03-20

Greenpeace Ordered to Pay $666M Over Dakota Access Pipeline Protests

A North Dakota jury ordered Greenpeace to pay over $666 million in damages to Energy Transfer for defamation and other claims related to protests against the Dakota Access pipeline. Energy Transfer accused Greenpeace of defamation, trespassing, nuisance, civil conspiracy, and other actions. Greenpeace plans to appeal, stating the fight against Big Oil continues. The case stems from 2016-2017 protests against the pipeline and its crossing of the Missouri River upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation.

(apnews.com)

Tech Greenpeace Dakota Access Pipeline Protests

Duolingo's Wild Ride: AI's Double-Edged Sword

2025-08-18

Duolingo's Wild Ride: AI's Double-Edged Sword

Language learning platform Duolingo saw its stock surge 30% after a strong quarter, only to plummet after OpenAI's GPT-5 demonstrated the ability to create a language-learning app with a simple prompt. This highlights AI's double-edged sword: it can fuel growth, but also bring disruptive competition. While Duolingo embraces AI, its advantages proved fragile against GPT-5, serving as a warning to software companies about the rapid disruptive potential of AI.

(finance.yahoo.com)

Tech

Android's pKVM Achieves SESIP Level 5 Certification: A New Era for Mobile Security

2025-08-18

Android's pKVM Achieves SESIP Level 5 Certification: A New Era for Mobile Security

Google announced that pKVM (protected KVM), the hypervisor powering Android's Virtualization Framework, has achieved SESIP Level 5 certification—a first for a software security system designed for large-scale deployment in consumer electronics. This allows Android to securely support next-generation high-criticality isolated workloads, such as on-device AI processing ultra-personalized data, with the highest assurances of privacy and integrity. The certification, conducted by Dekra and compliant with EN-17927, includes AVA_VAN.5, the highest level of vulnerability analysis and penetration testing. This achievement sets a cornerstone for Android's multi-layered security strategy and provides device manufacturers with a robust, open-source firmware base.

(security.googleblog.com)

Tech SESIP Level 5

The Relentless Cycle of Homelessness: A Two-Year Struggle

2025-02-17

The Relentless Cycle of Homelessness: A Two-Year Struggle

Morrisette, a homeless individual, repeatedly experienced a cycle of setting up camp, having it cleared by authorities, and then rebuilding. For two years, despite the kind assistance of Barrows in applying for housing, he felt despair at failing to qualify for priority placement. This article recounts a poignant story of struggle within the system, highlighting the challenges and intertwined hopes of a homeless person seeking help.

(sfstandard.com)

Misc

The Ultimate Guide to Setting Your PATH in Bash, Zsh, and Fish

2025-02-17

This guide provides a comprehensive walkthrough of adding directories to your PATH environment variable across different shells like bash, zsh, and fish. It addresses common pitfalls, such as locating the correct configuration file, handling duplicate entries, and configuring PATH within cron jobs. The author uses real-world examples to guide you through the process, ensuring you can successfully run programs after mastering PATH configuration.

(jvns.ca)

Development Environment Variables

Novel Link Between Cell Nutrition and Identity Could Improve Immunotherapies

2024-12-12

Novel Link Between Cell Nutrition and Identity Could Improve Immunotherapies

Scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a nutritional switch from acetate to citrate is key in determining T cell fate, shifting them from active effector cells to exhausted ones. Published in Science, the findings reveal that different nutrients alter a cell's gene expression, function, and identity. This groundbreaking research offers new therapeutic targets for immunotherapies, potentially keeping T cells active against chronic diseases. The discovery highlights a direct link between cellular function and nutrition, opening new avenues for treating chronic illness.

(www.genengnews.com)

AI Immunotherapy T cells Cellular Metabolism

Data, Not Compute: The Next AI Bottleneck

2025-09-03

Data, Not Compute: The Next AI Bottleneck

For years, we've misinterpreted the Bitter Lesson; it's not about compute, but data. Increasing GPUs requires a 40% data increase, otherwise it's wasted resources. The internet's data is nearing saturation. The future lies in 'alchemists' (high-risk, high-reward data generation) and 'architects' (steadily improving model architecture), not just compute. The article analyzes the pros, cons, and risks of both paths, concluding that solving data scarcity in 2025 will determine AI company survival in 2026.

(obviouslywrong.substack.com)

AI data bottleneck model architecture

Flat Design is Dead: Long Live Diamorphism!

2025-05-27

Flat Design is Dead: Long Live Diamorphism!

Airbnb's recent redesign signals a paradigm shift in design, moving away from flat design and embracing vibrant, dimensional aesthetics. The author coins the term "Diamorph" to describe this new style, emphasizing depth, texture, and light, rather than mimicking the real world. The rise of AI has also lowered the barrier to entry for this style, allowing more people to participate. While AI simplifies the creative process, core design skills like composition, lighting, depth, and taste remain crucial. Ultimately, it's a step forward towards a more expressive, emotional, and purely digital design language.

(www.flarup.email)

Design design trends

Learn Japanese Grammar with TypeScript: Introducing Typed Japanese

2025-03-29

Learn Japanese Grammar with TypeScript: Introducing Typed Japanese

Typed Japanese is a TypeScript type-level library that allows you to express complete Japanese sentences using the type system. It creates a domain-specific language (DSL) based on Japanese grammar rules, enabling the writing and verification of grammatically correct natural language using TypeScript's compiler. The project also explores an intermediate format for AI in language learning, potentially replacing JSON with a type-checked representation for improved accuracy. It supports various verb and adjective conjugations, phrase and sentence construction, aiming to create a type system for learning and verifying Japanese grammar. While still in early stages and relying on LLM-generated rules, it offers a unique approach to language learning and grammar verification.

(github.com)

Development Japanese Language Learning

Frupidity: The Silent Killer of Productivity and Innovation

2025-02-10

Frugality is good, but frupidity—the reckless pursuit of cost-cutting at the expense of productivity—is a silent killer. This article uses the example of a fictional company, PennyTech, to illustrate how penny-pinching on tools, infrastructure, and travel leads to significant losses in efficiency and morale. The author argues that true efficiency lies in smart spending, not blind cost-cutting, and emphasizes the importance of valuing engineers' time and avoiding short-sighted decisions that ultimately cost more than they save.

(selix.net)

Development

Absurd Math Error: Earth's Radius Only 4333 Feet?

2025-01-11

Absurd Math Error: Earth's Radius Only 4333 Feet?

A blogger discovered an unbelievable mathematical error in an image posted by a design and construction company. The image incorrectly calculated the Earth's radius when computing the lengths of two circular arcs at different altitudes, resulting in a radius of only 4333 feet, far less than the actual value. The blogger detailed the error in the calculation and pointed out the huge discrepancy between the actual Earth's radius and the calculated result. This erroneous calculation raises questions about the authenticity of information and highlights the importance of carefully verifying information in the information age.

(www.charlespetzold.com)

Misc Mathematical error Earth's radius Information authenticity

Eating Spaghetti by the Fistful: A Neapolitan Street Spectacle

2024-12-17

Eating Spaghetti by the Fistful: A Neapolitan Street Spectacle

In 19th-century Naples, eating spaghetti became a unique spectacle. People would grab handfuls of spaghetti and shove it into their mouths with surprising speed. This unusual custom attracted numerous tourists and became a Neapolitan specialty. The article traces the history of this practice, from the price drop of pasta in the 17th century, to its role as an important food source for the poor, and its eventual disappearance with societal changes.

(www.atlasobscura.com)

Misc spaghetti Naples street food

Twice Promoted to Staff Engineer: Lessons Learned

2025-01-01

The author shares their experience of being promoted to Staff Software Engineer twice in two years. The key to promotion wasn't technical prowess, but delivering value to the company by successfully completing high-priority projects aligned with company goals. The author emphasizes the importance of understanding company priorities, working on impactful projects, and building strong relationships with management and team members. A supportive manager is crucial. Key takeaways include focusing on high-impact projects the company prioritizes, not overemphasizing mentoring, and having a manager willing and able to champion the promotion process.

(www.seangoedecke.com)

Development career advancement software engineer

Litestack: All-in-One Data Infrastructure Gem for Ruby on Rails

2024-12-23

Litestack: All-in-One Data Infrastructure Gem for Ruby on Rails

Litestack is a Ruby gem offering a comprehensive data infrastructure solution for Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications. Leveraging SQLite's power, it integrates a full-fledged SQL database, a fast cache, a robust job queue, a reliable message broker, a full-text search engine, and a metrics platform—all in one package. Unlike traditional approaches requiring separate servers and databases, Litestack delivers superior performance, efficiency, ease of use, and cost savings. Its embedded database and cache reduce memory and CPU usage, while its streamlined interface simplifies development. It seamlessly integrates with ActiveRecord and Sequel and automatically optimizes for Fiber-based I/O frameworks.

(github.com)

Development Data Infrastructure

PyPI Bolsters Account Security with Expired Domain Checks

2025-08-19

PyPI Bolsters Account Security with Expired Domain Checks

To prevent domain resurrection attacks – a type of supply chain attack where an attacker buys an expired domain to hijack PyPI accounts – PyPI now checks for expired domains. This enhances account security by un-verifying email addresses associated with expired domains; over 1,800 email addresses have been unverified since early June 2025. While not a perfect solution, it significantly mitigates a major attack vector. Users are advised to add a second verified email address for enhanced security.

(blog.pypi.org)

Development domain resurrection

Adaptable Text Editor 'ad': Blending Vim and Acme

2024-12-18

Adaptable Text Editor 'ad': Blending Vim and Acme

ad is a novel text editor that combines the modal editing interface of Vim and Kakoune with the extensibility approach of Plan9's Acme. ad allows users to execute text and serves as a playground for experimenting with implementing various text editor features. Currently, ad is stable enough and feature-complete enough to try out, though documentation is sparse and bugs may exist. ad's design philosophy blends Vim's modal editing, Emacs's mini-buffer, and Acme's editing commands and extensibility, aiming for a comfortable editing environment that supports direct interaction with external tools and programs.

(github.com)

Development text editor modal editing extensibility

Autodesk Forum Archiving Update: Community Backlash and Adjustments

2025-01-27

Autodesk's recent forum archiving policy changes sparked a significant community backlash. The initial plan to archive a large number of forum posts, including valuable code and solutions, resulted in information loss and user complaints about broken links and missing knowledge. Facing pressure, Autodesk revised its policy, stating that Idea Boards will not be archived and that forum threads with 'accepted solutions' will be preserved along with related posts. They are working to recover some archived content, but due to technical limitations, complete restoration is not guaranteed. This incident highlights the importance of communication between the company and its users and the need for more careful handling of community content to avoid unnecessary knowledge loss.

(forums.autodesk.com)

Development community forum archiving policy

Benchmarking Decimal Digit Counting Algorithms

2025-01-08

Benchmarking Decimal Digit Counting Algorithms

This code implements a benchmark suite for comparing different decimal digit counting algorithms. It generates random integers and then uses five different methods (including log10, bit manipulation, and lookup table methods) to count the number of digits in those integers and compares their performance. The tests cover both 32-bit and 64-bit integers, revealing significant performance differences between the algorithms, with some bit manipulation-based algorithms showing superior performance.

(github.com)

Development algorithm comparison

Auto-Braking Systems Fail to Detect Pedestrians in Reflective Gear

2025-01-14

Auto-Braking Systems Fail to Detect Pedestrians in Reflective Gear

A new IIHS report reveals that automatic emergency braking (AEB) systems in Honda CR-V and Mazda CX-5 vehicles failed to detect pedestrians wearing reflective strips, even under various lighting conditions. The systems consistently failed to brake, while a Subaru Forester performed better. Researchers urge automakers to improve AEB technology, recommending pedestrians continue to wear reflective gear for increased visibility at night, while acknowledging the limitations of current AEB in some vehicles.

(usa.streetsblog.org)

Tech Automatic Emergency Braking Pedestrian Safety Vehicle Safety

California's Housing Crisis After the Fires: Rebuild or Collapse?

2025-01-16

California's Housing Crisis After the Fires: Rebuild or Collapse?

Recent wildfires in California have destroyed thousands of homes, exacerbating an already dire housing crisis. Los Angeles and other areas have extremely low vacancy rates, making finding rental properties difficult even at high prices. The fires have also caused insurance premiums to skyrocket, leaving many homeowners facing exorbitant costs or losing coverage altogether. This could lead to widespread foreclosures and homelessness. While the government has taken some steps to speed up rebuilding, experts argue these measures are insufficient. The real solution lies in transforming urban planning, increasing high-density, fire-resistant housing, requiring significant policy changes.

(www.vox.com)

Tech Housing Crisis Insurance Crisis

Writing C Code in Prolog: The C Plus Prolog Project

2025-03-13

Writing C Code in Prolog: The C Plus Prolog Project

The C Plus Prolog project attempts to merge Prolog and C. It leverages non-standard features of SWI-Prolog to translate Prolog code into C. The project uses Prolog's metaprogramming capabilities to implement advanced features like macros and generics. While verbose and error-prone, it explores the possibilities of macros in a systems programming language and demonstrates Prolog's potential for code generation. Despite its quirks, it offers a unique approach to cross-platform C development leveraging Prolog's capabilities.

(github.com)

Development

German Unemployment Hits Decade High

2025-01-31

German Unemployment Hits Decade High

Germany's unemployment rate surged to a decade high in January, reaching almost three million, a figure not seen since 2015. This represents a significant increase of 187,000 compared to January 2024, sparking concerns about the German economy. Employers attribute the rise to various headwinds hindering economic growth, including bureaucracy, high non-wage labor costs, and energy prices. The Mechanical Engineering Industry Association reported that a quarter of its member companies plan job cuts in the next six months. Adding to the gloom, retail sales unexpectedly fell by 1.6% in December.

(www.dw.com)

Tech German Economy Economic Slowdown

Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace

2025-01-26

Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace

Notion is a powerful all-in-one workspace that integrates notes, task management, wikis, and databases into a single platform. Its flexible, modular design allows users to customize their workflows, making it suitable for personal note-taking, team collaboration, and knowledge base management. Its clean interface and powerful customization options make it ideal for boosting productivity and managing knowledge.

(hkust-nlp.notion.site)

Development

Australia Enacts World's Strictest Social Media Ban for Under-16s

2025-01-31

Australia Enacts World's Strictest Social Media Ban for Under-16s

Australia has implemented one of the world's strictest internet crackdowns, prohibiting children under 16 from using social media or creating new accounts. The law, effective in a year, holds social media companies accountable for verifying users' ages, with penalties reaching nearly $50 million for non-compliance. Facing opposition from tech companies citing free speech concerns and the potential for driving kids to unregulated online spaces, Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, is tasked with enforcement. The approach, drawing global attention, aims to shift responsibility for online child safety from parents to platforms, similar to past automotive safety regulations.

(www.npr.org)

Tech child safety internet regulation

(Ab)using General Search Algorithms on Dynamic Optimization Problems

2025-02-18

This blog post compares four algorithms – Bellman's principle, Dijkstra's algorithm, Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS), and Pontryagin's Maximum Principle – on a simple dynamic optimization toy problem. The author finds that specialized algorithms (Bellman and Pontryagin) are significantly more efficient for this specific problem, while general-purpose algorithms, while capable of finding a solution, are less efficient in terms of speed and memory usage. The post includes animations visualizing the search process of each algorithm and benchmarks comparing their performance.

(dubovik.eu)

Development dynamic optimization Monte Carlo Tree Search

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