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Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban: National Security Trumps Free Speech

2025-01-17

Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Ban: National Security Trumps Free Speech

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law banning TikTok unless its Chinese parent company sells it. The ruling prioritizes national security concerns over free speech arguments, citing risks posed by TikTok's ties to China. While President-elect Trump suggested a negotiated solution and the Biden administration indicated it wouldn't enforce the ban immediately, the decision leaves TikTok's future in the US uncertain. The court found the law did not violate petitioners' First Amendment rights.

(apnews.com)

Tech US-China Tech Rivalry

42: A Powerful Spacecraft Attitude Control System Simulator

2025-01-06

42: A Powerful Spacecraft Attitude Control System Simulator

42 is a comprehensive general-purpose simulation of spacecraft attitude and orbit dynamics, primarily used to support the design and validation of attitude control systems throughout their lifecycle, from concept studies to integration and test. It accurately models multi-body spacecraft attitude dynamics (rigid and/or flexible bodies), and both two-body and three-body orbital flight regimes, simulating environments from low Earth orbit to throughout the solar system. 42 simulates multiple spacecraft concurrently, facilitating studies of rendezvous, proximity operations, and precision formation flying. It also features spacecraft attitude visualization.

(github.com)

Development spacecraft attitude control simulation

A New Twist: Molecular Machines Loop and Twist Chromosomes

2024-12-17

A New Twist: Molecular Machines Loop and Twist Chromosomes

Scientists have discovered a new function of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes: SMC proteins not only form long loops in DNA but also significantly twist the DNA during loop formation. Published in Science Advances, the research reveals that SMC proteins introduce a left-handed twist of 0.6 turns in each DNA loop extrusion step. This twisting action is conserved across species, observed in both human and yeast cells, highlighting its evolutionary importance. This finding enhances our understanding of chromosome structure and function and provides insights into developmental diseases like cohesinopathies.

(phys.org)

Biology molecular motors chromosomes

Stripe Investigates Unexpected DNS Error Spike: A Tale of Complex Network Troubleshooting

2024-12-12

Stripe Investigates Unexpected DNS Error Spike: A Tale of Complex Network Troubleshooting

Stripe recently experienced an unexpected spike in DNS errors. This post details how they used tools like Unbound, tcpdump, and iptables to track down the root cause. The investigation revealed that a Hadoop job analyzing network logs was performing numerous reverse DNS lookups (PTR records), leading to traffic amplification due to retries exceeding the AWS VPC resolver's limits. Stripe resolved the issue by adjusting Unbound forwarding configurations to distribute the load across individual Hadoop hosts. The case highlights the importance of robust monitoring, multi-faceted troubleshooting, and strategies for handling traffic surges in high-availability systems.

(stripe.com)

Development Network Monitoring Troubleshooting

Clojure Error Handling: No Silver Bullet, Only Choices

2024-12-14

Clojure offers a diverse range of error-handling approaches, with no single best practice. The article explores several methods: throwing native exceptions, using `ex-info` for data-carrying exceptions, returning error maps, and utilizing various libraries for more sophisticated error handling flows, such as the `anomalies` library or options like `pact` and `failjure`. The author emphasizes that the choice depends on the specific context and that a mix of approaches can coexist within a single project. Developers are empowered to select the most appropriate solution for their needs; Clojure embraces this freedom.

(www.daveliepmann.com)

Development error handling

Serbia: A Digital Prison – State Surveillance and the Suppression of Civil Society

2025-01-03

Serbia: A Digital Prison – State Surveillance and the Suppression of Civil Society

Amnesty International's report reveals Serbia's use of surveillance technology and digital repression to control and suppress civil society. The report details widespread use of spyware, including NSO Group's Pegasus and a newly disclosed domestically-produced Android spyware, NoviSpy, along with Cellebrite's UFED tools against environmental activists and protest leaders. This constitutes a serious human rights violation and attack on freedom of expression.

(www.amnesty.org)

Tech digital repression surveillance technology human rights

Gource: Visualizing Your Codebase with Stunning Animations

2025-01-03

Gource: Visualizing Your Codebase with Stunning Animations

Gource is an open-source software that visualizes your version control repository history in a breathtaking animated way. The repository root is at the center, directories are branches, files are leaves, and developers become dynamic characters moving around the code tree, their contributions shown as animated trails. Gource uses OpenGL rendering and requires a 3D-accelerated video card. It supports various version control systems like Git, SVN, Mercurial, and offers extensive parameters for customization, allowing you to easily generate impressive visualizations of your codebase history.

(github.com)

Development code visualization

AI-Powered Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

2025-01-27

AI-Powered Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

Paolo Galeone recounts his experience using AI to revamp his SaaS platform, bot.eofferte.eu. Leveraging Cline's VSCode plugin and LLMs like Claude Sonnet 3.5 and Gemini, he redesigned the UI/UX, generating content like privacy policies. Backend development saw AI accelerate code optimization and repetitive tasks, but highlighted the need for human expertise. Multilingual content generation was streamlined, with AI efficiently translating JSON files for multiple Amazon affiliate regions. The key takeaway: AI significantly boosts efficiency but requires developers to validate and integrate AI suggestions, emphasizing the role of human expertise in ensuring quality.

(pgaleone.eu)

Development

The Trap of 'I'm Not an Extrovert'

2024-12-26

The Trap of 'I'm Not an Extrovert'

This article recounts a story of Aditya, a college student who used introversion as an excuse to avoid social interaction, ultimately leaving his club. The author argues that introversion and extroversion are not absolute but rather choices. In the workplace, proactive communication and collaboration are essential skills, not inherent traits. Using the example of two engineers, Ram and Shyam, the author highlights the importance of communication skills for career advancement. While deep thinking requires energy, effective communication and collaboration lead to greater success. The author concludes that true friendships often stem from deep conversations, not superficial small talk.

(orkohunter.net)

Misc introversion extroversion communication skills

XFCE 4.20 Released: Experimental Wayland Support and Numerous Improvements

2024-12-15

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.

(alexxcons.github.io)

Development Desktop Environment

Debian's Controversial Approach to Rust Dependency Handling

2024-12-26

Debian's integration of Rust has been a long-standing effort, but its dependency handling approach has become a point of contention. Author Ian Jackson argues that faithfully following Rust's Semantic Versioning (semver) in Debian package dependencies is impractical. Fundamental differences exist between Debian's and Rust's dependency management semantics, leading to significant manual work when directly translating Rust's version dependencies. Jackson proposes a radical solution: Debian shouldn't precisely follow upstream Rust semver dependency information, but instead optimistically try various package combinations, letting automated QA discover and fix breakages. This approach, while violating semver, is argued to be mitigated by the Rust community's emphasis on API safety and change notifications, along with Debian's QA mechanisms. The proposal aims to improve the update efficiency of Debian Rust packages, but it might also lead to some dependency combinations failing.

(diziet.dreamwidth.org)

Development

Climate Reanalyzer: Visualizing Daily Global Temperatures

2025-01-21

The Climate Reanalyzer website, from the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, provides interactive visualizations of daily global temperatures based on ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis data. The site offers interactive charts and maps showing daily mean surface air temperature from 1940 to the present, allowing users to select different regions for analysis. Data updates are delayed by 6-7 days, and users are cautioned to treat extreme temperatures estimated by ERA5 with care. The site also provides access to other climate data, such as sea surface temperature and sea ice extent.

(climatereanalyzer.org)

Tech climate data ERA5 reanalysis data

Design Space for Code Search Queries: ast-grep's Innovative Approach

2024-12-26

Design Space for Code Search Queries: ast-grep's Innovative Approach

ast-grep is an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)-based code search tool designed for ease of use, expressiveness, and precision. This blog post delves into the design space of code search queries, categorizing them into informal queries, formal queries based on existing programming languages, formal queries using custom languages, and hybrid queries. Each type's strengths and weaknesses are analyzed. ast-grep employs a hybrid approach, allowing users to write queries using familiar programming language syntax and offering more powerful expressiveness through YAML configuration files or a programmatic API for precise code search.

(ast-grep.github.io)

Development code search query design

Ruby Conference Roundup: A Global Overview

2024-12-16

Ruby Video Talks is a website that aggregates information on Ruby developer conferences worldwide. From major events like RubyConf 2024 (70 talks) and Rails World 2024 (46 talks) to smaller regional meetups, the site provides a comprehensive calendar. It highlights key speakers like Matz and offers search functionality by date, location, and topic, making it easy to find relevant events. Upcoming conferences in 2025, such as Balkan Ruby and Friendly.rb, are also listed, promising even more opportunities for the Ruby community.

(www.rubyvideo.dev)

Development Ruby Conferences Developer Events Programming Language

LLVM C Library Speeds Up GPUs: Running C Code on GPUs

2024-12-14

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.

(libc.llvm.org)

Development GPU programming C library

Nostr Protocol Basics: Events, Signatures, and Communication

2024-12-23

Nostr Protocol Basics: Events, Signatures, and Communication

Nostr's NIP-01 outlines its core mechanics. Each user has a keypair, using Schnorr signatures on the secp256k1 curve. The core is the event, containing fields like ID, pubkey, timestamp, kind, tags, content, and signature. The event ID is the SHA256 hash of the serialized event data. Tags reference other events or users, with three standard tags defined: e (references an event), p (references a user), and a (references an addressable event). Event kinds define their meaning; NIP-01 defines two basic kinds: user metadata and text notes, and specifies how different kind ranges are handled (regular, replaceable, ephemeral, and addressable). Clients communicate with relays via websockets, sending events, requesting events, and closing subscriptions. Relays return events matching filters and send OK, EOSE, CLOSED, and NOTICE messages.

(github.com)

AI blockchain decentralized social

Build Your Own Virtual Machine: A Step-by-Step Guide

2024-12-26

This tutorial guides you through building your own virtual machine (VM) capable of running assembly language programs, such as 2048 or Roguelike games. Even if you're already a programmer, this project provides a deeper understanding of computer architecture and how programming languages work. The tutorial covers core VM concepts, the LC-3 architecture, instruction sets, trap routines, program loading, and more, with detailed code examples and explanations. The final code is approximately 250 lines of C, making it accessible to those with basic C/C++ knowledge.

(www.jmeiners.com)

Development virtual machine

Saying Goodbye to bcachefs: One User's Reluctant Migration

2025-01-23

After a year of using bcachefs, Steinar Gunderson has migrated to XFS. His reason? A lack of confidence in bcachefs' future. While appreciating its compression and mixed SSD/HDD capabilities, he found the developer's uncompromising attitude, hostility towards distributions like Debian, and numerous unfixed bugs (including catastrophic data loss) unbearable. Reporting bugs proved a frustrating experience, with the developer prioritizing arguments with Debian over bug fixes. He ultimately chose the stability of XFS, sacrificing compression benefits, a trade-off he deems worthwhile.

(blog.sesse.net)

Development

Programmers Craft a Whimsical Programming Game: Droste's Lair

2024-12-17

Programmers Craft a Whimsical Programming Game: Droste's Lair

Two programmers spent two weeks developing Droste's Lair, a whimsical programming environment game. Players build and count mathematical structures through intuitive drag-and-drop interactions, using an "amb" mechanism for branching execution and recursion. The game, themed around swords and sorcery, presents challenges such as reversing list elements, generating all face card combinations, and counting ways to cover a checkerboard with dominoes. Droste's Lair cleverly blends programming and game elements, offering a novel and engaging way to learn programming and mathematical concepts.

(vezwork.github.io)

Development programming game recursion visual programming

QuicklyPDF: Your All-in-One Online PDF Solution

2025-01-03

QuicklyPDF: Your All-in-One Online PDF Solution

QuicklyPDF is a free and easy-to-use online platform offering a comprehensive suite of PDF tools. From basic operations like merging, rotating, deleting, reordering, compressing, and extracting pages, to advanced features such as grayscale conversion and PDF repair, QuicklyPDF handles it all. It supports conversions between PDF and various formats including JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, Word, PowerPoint, TXT, and Excel. Security features include password protection and unlocking. Whether you're an individual or a business, QuicklyPDF streamlines your PDF workflow.

(quicklypdf.com)

Misc PDF tools online tools PDF conversion

PuzzleZilla: Online Jigsaw Puzzle Maker Launches

2024-12-15

PuzzleZilla is a new online platform allowing users to create custom jigsaw puzzles from any image uploaded from their device or the internet. The site offers a wide variety of pre-categorized puzzles, including cars, babies, cities, animals, flowers, nature, girls, landscapes, dinosaurs, castles, movies, anime, cats, dogs, paintings, food, and fantasy themes. Users can easily create and play their puzzles online.

(puzzlezilla.com)

Game online jigsaw puzzle image upload custom puzzle

Apache Cloudberry: Open-Source MPP Database, a Greenplum Alternative

2024-12-21

Apache Cloudberry: Open-Source MPP Database, a Greenplum Alternative

Apache Cloudberry, built by the original Greenplum Database developers, is an advanced and mature open-source Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) database. It features a newer PostgreSQL kernel and enhanced enterprise capabilities, serving as a data warehouse and supporting large-scale analytics and AI/ML workloads. Users can build from source or utilize a Docker-based sandbox for quick trials. A vibrant community provides support and encourages contributions ranging from code improvements to documentation enhancements.

(github.com)

Tech open-source database Greenplum alternative

Unraveling the Mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism: A 254:19 Cosmic Code

2024-12-15

Unraveling the Mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism: A 254:19 Cosmic Code

Discovered in the first century BCE, the Antikythera mechanism is a complex astronomical device capable of tracking the movements of the sun, moon, and planets. Its intricate gear system is astonishing. This article delves into a specific 254:19 gear ratio within the mechanism, revealing it's not arbitrary but a clever reflection of the sun and moon's movements over a 19-year Metonic cycle, demonstrating the remarkable understanding of astronomy possessed by ancient Greeks. The article corrects previous misunderstandings about the Saros and Metonic cycles and explains the mathematical principles behind this gear ratio, unveiling the profound insight of ancient Greeks into celestial mechanics.

(leancrew.com)

Tech Antikythera Mechanism Metonic Cycle Astronomy

Programmer Focus Indicator: The Birth of FlowLight

2024-12-15

Inspired by a research paper on the impact of work interruptions, programmer Shae Erisson DIYed a system called FlowLight to indicate whether a programmer is in a focused "flow" state. The system monitors idle time in the Emacs editor; when the programmer is inactive for a period, an Adafruit MagTag board's LED changes color (green for idle, red for busy). Erisson also wrote an HTTP server in CircuitPython to remotely control the LED color and display status. While the system has room for improvement, such as more granular idle time monitoring and a more visually appealing display, it effectively helps programmers avoid interruptions and improve productivity.

(www.scannedinavian.com)

Development programmer focus flow

Solving Computational Science Problems with AI: Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs)

2025-01-22

This article explores the use of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) to solve challenging problems in computational science, particularly partial differential equations (PDEs). PINNs overcome limitations of traditional numerical methods by incorporating physical laws directly into the neural network's loss function. This addresses issues like insufficient data, high computational cost, and poor generalization. The article explains PDEs, partial derivatives, and demonstrates PINNs' implementation using the 2D heat equation, covering network architecture, loss function definition, and training. Results show PINNs accurately and efficiently model heat diffusion, offering a powerful tool for various scientific and engineering challenges.

(mertkavi.com)

AI PDEs

Physically Based Rendering: A Milestone in Ray Tracing

2025-01-16

Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation is a seminal work in computer graphics, meticulously detailing the construction of modern photorealistic rendering systems through rigorous mathematical theory and executable code. Its impact extends beyond film and game production, influencing product design and architecture. The authors were even awarded an Academy Award for its contribution to filmmaking. The third and fourth editions are now freely available online, offering invaluable learning resources for developers.

(pbr-book.org)

Development ray tracing rendering

Whonix: The Ultimate Privacy OS

2025-01-12

Whonix: The Ultimate Privacy OS

Whonix is a Linux-based virtual machine operating system designed for maximum internet privacy and anonymity. It achieves this by routing all internet traffic through the Tor network and implementing multi-layered security measures, including browser fingerprinting protection, keystroke cloaking, and strict access controls, to protect users from tracking and malware. Whonix's design philosophy is 'all Tor,' and it offers features like anonymous web server hosting and Live Mode to ensure user security and anonymity online.

(www.whonix.org)

Development anonymity

Is Creating a Perfectly Spherical Prince Rupert's Drop Possible?

2024-12-14

An engineering question explores the possibility of creating a perfectly spherical Prince Rupert's drop. Prince Rupert's drops are glass objects formed by dripping molten glass into cold water, their unique internal stresses making them incredibly tough except at the tail. The article discusses how, theoretically, in a zero-gravity environment by controlling the cooling rate and removing the effects of gravity, a spherical Prince Rupert's drop could be made, but significant practical challenges remain.

(engineering.stackexchange.com)

Tech Prince Rupert's Drop Glass Material Science

EHT Reveals Turbulent Accretion Flow Around M87*'s Black Hole

2025-01-25

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has released a new analysis of the supermassive black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87*), combining observations from 2017 and 2018. The study confirms that M87*'s black hole rotational axis points away from Earth and highlights the significant role of turbulence within the accretion disk in explaining the observed shift in the ring's brightness peak. Using a vastly expanded simulation image library, the team confirmed the counter-clockwise 30-degree shift of the brightest region of the ring between 2017 and 2018. This research represents a major step forward in understanding the complex dynamics of black hole environments.

(eventhorizontelescope.org)

Tech Black Hole Event Horizon Telescope Accretion Disk

No More Adam: Learning Rate Scaling at Initialization is All You Need

2024-12-18

Researchers introduce SGD-SaI, a novel optimizer improving stochastic gradient descent. SGD-SaI addresses training imbalances by scaling learning rates at initialization for different parameter groups based on their gradient signal-to-noise ratios. Significantly more memory-efficient than AdamW, SGD-SaI matches or surpasses AdamW's performance across various Transformer-based tasks, including ImageNet classification and LLM pretraining. Its robustness and practicality are demonstrated across diverse applications, making it a compelling alternative.

(arxiv.org)

AI

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