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Solving Labyrinth's Goblin Riddle with Boolean Algebra

2025-03-06

This article demonstrates solving the classic Knights and Knaves logic puzzle from the movie *Labyrinth* using Boolean algebra. The author models the problem, using A for the answer, Q for the correct answer to the question, and G for whether the goblin is lying, deriving A = G⊕Q. By cleverly crafting the question to incorporate the other goblin's lying status, the equation simplifies, revealing the solution. The author argues that the formalized approach clarifies the steps and highlights the usefulness of formal systems as reasoning tools.

(the-nerve-blog.ghost.io)

Misc Boolean algebra logic puzzle

How AI Knowledge Gaps and System Prompts Stifle Tech Adoption

2025-02-14

This article explores how the knowledge cutoffs and system prompt biases of AI models influence developer technology choices. Because AI models' training data lags, new technologies often lack timely support, leading developers to favor technologies better supported by AI tools, even if suboptimal. Furthermore, some AI models exhibit biases toward specific technologies (like React and Tailwind), sometimes overriding user instructions to convert code to their preferred technologies. This results in AI-influenced technology selection, hindering the adoption and development of new technologies. The author suggests that AI companies should increase transparency, disclosing model biases to avoid negatively influencing software development directions.

(vale.rocks)

Development AI bias

Glicol: A Revolutionary AI Image Generator

2025-01-14

Glicol is more than just an image generator; it's a digital artist. Using unique algorithms and models, it transforms text descriptions into images with diverse styles and rich details. It goes beyond common image styles, producing stunning results with subtle user adjustments. Glicol heralds a new era in AI image generation, offering artists and designers unprecedented creative tools.

(glicol.org)

AI

First Fatal Crash Involving a Driverless Car

2025-01-26

First Fatal Crash Involving a Driverless Car

A multi-vehicle crash in San Francisco marks the first fatal collision in the U.S. involving a fully autonomous vehicle with no one behind the wheel. While a Waymo self-driving car was involved, it wasn't at fault; a speeding vehicle hit a line of stopped cars, resulting in one human fatality and the death of a dog. Despite Waymo's claim of superior safety records compared to human drivers, based on millions of miles driven, the incident raises serious questions about the safety of autonomous vehicles and will likely trigger further scrutiny of the technology.

(www.nbcbayarea.com)

Tech fatal accident autonomous vehicle safety

Webb-site.com to Shut Down: A Founder's Farewell Amidst a Cancer Battle

2025-02-12

David Webb, founder of Webb-site.com, announces the site's closure on March 31, 2025, due to his battle with metastatic prostate cancer. The article reflects on the site's contributions to public data transparency in Hong Kong since its 1998 launch, including uncovering government spending, tracking vaccination rates, and immigration data. An attempt to transfer the database to the University of Hong Kong failed due to the post-National Security Law environment. Webb will cease manual data collection, making existing data publicly available for download. The piece is a poignant reflection on the site's legacy, observations on Hong Kong's socio-political climate, and a peaceful farewell from a determined individual.

(webb-site.com)

Misc Hong Kong Data Transparency Public Interest

PostgreSQL Anonymizer: Declarative Data Masking for Postgres

2025-01-17

PostgreSQL Anonymizer is a powerful database extension enabling declarative definition of data masking rules directly within the database schema. It supports multiple masking methods including static, dynamic masking, and anonymous dumps, offering various masking functions like randomization, faking, partial scrambling, and custom functions. Designed for anonymization-by-design, it protects sensitive data like PII and commercially sensitive information during development. The extension includes detection functions to suggest columns needing anonymization. Quick start via Docker, complete tutorials, and success stories from organizations like the French Public Finances Directorate General (DGFiP) and bioMérieux are provided.

(postgresql-anonymizer.readthedocs.io)

Development Data Masking Anonymization

WFH: Longer Days, More Meetings, and Zoom Fatigue

2025-05-16

WFH: Longer Days, More Meetings, and Zoom Fatigue

A Harvard Business School study reveals that during the early days of the pandemic, remote workers experienced an 8.2% increase in their average workday (48.5 minutes). While meeting frequency rose, individual meetings shortened. Analyzing data from 3.1 million people across 16 global cities, researchers found that remote work blurred work-life boundaries, leading to longer hours and employee burnout. Managers are advised to focus on output, not hours worked, and to empathize with employees' unique circumstances.

(www.library.hbs.edu)

Tech work hours

Code in MS Paint? MS Paint IDE Makes it Possible!

2025-03-05

MS Paint IDE is a program that reads standard MS Paint image files and translates the text within into executable code. Write, compile, and run programs using the familiar MS Paint interface, with support for external libraries and multiple classes. It's like science fiction, but it's real!

(ms-paint-i.de)

Development

Sparks: A Typeface for Creating Sparklines in Text

2025-04-05

Sparks: A Typeface for Creating Sparklines in Text

After the Flood, a design consultancy, has released Sparks, a new typeface that leverages OpenType's contextual alternates feature to generate sparklines directly within text. By inserting data points in a specific format between numbers (e.g., `123{30,60,90}456`), users can create sparklines. Sparks is compatible with various browsers and software, offering bar, dot, and dot-line styles with five weight variations. While the underlying mechanism is complex, it offers a novel and convenient method for data visualization.

(github.com)

Design

Cool, but Obscure X11 Tools: A Retrospect of Unix Utilities

2025-03-24

This article presents a curated collection of lesser-known yet fascinating tools for the X Window System. From a 3D rendition of Pong to Free42, an HP calculator emulator, and from the filesystem visualizer FSV2 to XLennart, a modern twist on the classic XBill game, this compilation offers a nostalgic journey through Unix utilities. Installation instructions, GitHub links, and even compilation guides are provided for each tool. Whether you're a nostalgic programmer or an X11 enthusiast, this article is a worthwhile read.

(cyber.dabamos.de)

Development Unix tools

JReleaser: Effortless Project Releases

2025-01-21

JReleaser simplifies the project release process, supporting numerous languages like Java, Go, and Node.js. It effortlessly creates packages for various platforms (Homebrew, Snapcraft, etc.), publishes them to services like GitHub and GitLab, and even auto-generates changelogs and announces releases on Twitter. Whether you use CLI, Maven, Gradle, or Ant, JReleaser streamlines your workflow, letting you focus on development.

(jreleaser.org)

Development project release automation tool multi-language support

US Bans Chinese Vehicles, Impacting Polestar and Others

2025-01-15

US Bans Chinese Vehicles, Impacting Polestar and Others

The US finalized a rule effectively banning the import of Chinese-made connected vehicles, even those manufactured in the US, citing national security concerns. This impacts major automakers like Ford and GM, smaller companies like Polestar, and even Waymo. The ban covers technologies like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, aiming to prevent data collection by China. It takes effect in 2027 for software and 2030 for hardware, with exceptions for vehicles over 10,000 pounds. The auto industry strongly opposes the ban; Polestar stated it would prevent the company from selling cars in the US. This represents an escalation in US-China trade tensions and highlights growing concerns about data security and national security.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech US ban Chinese vehicles

Open Source Projects Could Monetize SBOM Fragments

2025-02-17

Open Source Projects Could Monetize SBOM Fragments

Scanning source code for licensing information is a laborious and often duplicated effort due to a lack of resource pooling among companies. This article proposes a solution: Open Source projects could sell SBOM fragments (components in CycloneDX or packages in SPDX with accurate licensing details). By sponsoring the project on GitHub, companies would gain access to continuously updated SBOM information, avoiding redundant work and ensuring licensing accuracy.

(www.thomas-huehn.com)

Development Open Source Licensing Software Supply Chain

Kylie Minogue's Obscure Techno-Pop Anthem About a Font

2025-03-25

Kylie Minogue's Obscure Techno-Pop Anthem About a Font

In 1997, pop icon Kylie Minogue teamed up with producer Towa Tei for the surprisingly catchy "GBI (German Bold Italic)", a song uniquely sung from the perspective of a typeface. This wasn't just a song; it was a creative font design experiment. Artist Hiro Sugiyama created the GBI font to accompany the track, included as a data track on Tei's album and available for download. The single and font design, a blend of late-90s techno and pop culture, remain relatively obscure today, but hold a unique place in design and music history, with occasional use by select artists.

(abcdinamo.com)

Design

Skies-ADSB v2.0: Real-time 3D Air Traffic in Your Browser

2025-02-12

Skies-ADSB v2.0: Real-time 3D Air Traffic in Your Browser

Skies-ADSB transforms your browser into a real-time 3D air traffic display. Leveraging ADS-B data from an RTL-SDR receiver, it allows exploration of local air traffic, surrounding airspace, and geography with customizable 3D maps. Built with JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, Python 3, and WebGL (Three.js), it runs on major modern browsers. Version 2.0 includes breaking changes from 1.x, requiring a fresh install. Users can report bugs, request features, and suggest improvements via the issue tracker. The project thanks Andre Thais CFI and Frank E. Hernandez for their contributions and utilizes public domain map data from Natural Earth and OpenStreetMap.

(github.com)

Development Air Traffic 3D Visualization Real-time Data

From Voltaire's Garden to Cultivating a Life: A Writer's Journey Through Gardening and Prose

2025-01-23

From Voltaire's Garden to Cultivating a Life: A Writer's Journey Through Gardening and Prose

This essay explores the meaning of "cultivating one's own garden" through the author's personal experiences and literary references. Beginning with her first gardening attempt in England, the author connects Voltaire's Candide and the metaphor of tending a garden to her own journey as a writer. The fictional Mars potato garden in Andy Weir's *The Martian* further illuminates this theme, illustrating the process of finding purpose and meaning amidst life's challenges. Gardening becomes a metaphor for the writer's craft, requiring patience, perseverance, and attention to detail, ultimately yielding both fruitful results and inner fulfillment.

(themillions.com)

Misc gardening

Tabby: Your Self-Hosted AI Coding Assistant

2025-01-12

Tabby: Your Self-Hosted AI Coding Assistant

Tabby is an open-source, self-hosted AI coding assistant offering a local alternative to GitHub Copilot. It's self-contained, requiring no DBMS or cloud service, features an OpenAPI interface for easy integration, and supports consumer-grade GPUs. Recent updates include Llamafile deployment integration, an enhanced Answer Engine user experience, the ability to switch between different backend chat models in the Answer Engine, and displaying recently shared threads on the main page. It also boasts IDE plugins and enterprise features like team management and secured access.

(github.com)

Development AI coding assistant

FiveM: The alt:V Integration Disaster

2025-02-20

This post details the disastrous integration of the former alt:V team into the FiveM project. The ex-alt:V team demonstrated a profound lack of teamwork, ignoring communication and unilaterally altering code and build systems, resulting in numerous regressions. They failed to test their changes, disregarded backward compatibility, and treated the original development team with arrogance. Specific examples highlight the ex-alt:V team's technical incompetence, lack of accountability, and malicious behavior towards the original team. Ultimately, the destructive actions of the ex-alt:V team led to the departure of the original FiveM developers and plunged the project into chaos.

(fivem.team)

Game

Resurrecting a Vintage JavaStation: A NetBSD Network Boot Adventure

2025-03-05

Resurrecting a Vintage JavaStation: A NetBSD Network Boot Adventure

Driven by nostalgia for childhood dreams, the author acquired a vintage JavaStation network computer. After a long wait and some initial setbacks, the author discovered the problem was a dead NVRAM battery and a lack of patience. Through serial port debugging and clever network configuration (RARP, TFTP, DHCP, NFS), the author successfully booted NetBSD on the JavaStation, completing a thrilling retro tech resurrection.

(fatsquirrel.org)

Hardware network boot

Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode Finally Hits Steam!

2025-01-26

The long-awaited Adventure Mode update for Dwarf Fortress officially launched on January 23rd, available on Steam and Itch.io. This free update transforms the iconic construction and management sim into a turn-based roguelike experience. Players can use custom characters, explore existing worlds from a new perspective, or embark on quests in newly generated ones. Adventure Mode retains Dwarf Fortress's signature world simulation and sandbox elements but emphasizes exploration and questing, offering a challenging and replayable strategic experience.

(gamerant.com)

Game Adventure Mode

Meta Glasses SDK Plea: Unleashing Developer Potential

2025-02-20

Meta Glasses SDK Plea: Unleashing Developer Potential

A developer is urging Meta to release a developer kit (SDK) for Meta glasses. Currently limited in functionality, the developer envisions a community built around an SDK, leveraging a potential background service API to allow third-party apps to send commands. This would enable voice commands like "Hey Meta" to control smart home devices, for instance. Access to a live camera feed, if provided by the SDK, would unlock countless possibilities. This would greatly enhance the customizability and user experience of Meta glasses.

(communityforums.atmeta.com)

Development Meta Glasses

DIY Web Archiving: Preserving the Web, One Zine at a Time

2025-01-23

This 22-page, full-color zine, "DIY Web Archiving," empowers everyone to participate in preserving online content they value. Created by five authors, it provides a practical guide to web archiving, requiring no special expertise. Based on a November 2024 workshop, the zine explains why web archiving is crucial and how to do it. A full-color PDF and a poster version are available now, with a black-and-white version and printing instructions coming soon.

(zinebakery.com)

Misc digital humanities

AI Cheats: Why You Didn't Notice Your Teammate Was Cheating

2025-04-03

AI Cheats: Why You Didn't Notice Your Teammate Was Cheating

Game cheating has evolved rapidly, from memory-reading aimbots to colorbots, and now AI-powered aim assist. A veteran cheat developer shares their journey, starting at age 12, detailing the inner workings of AI cheats. These cheats, essentially advanced colorbots, use AI models to identify enemies, making them incredibly difficult to detect. While modern cheats are expensive and risky, their subtlety makes them nearly invisible unless poorly configured. The article reveals the latest trends in game cheating and the challenges faced by anti-cheat technology.

(niila.fi)

Game

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community-Driven Features

2025-06-16

arXivLabs is a framework for collaborators to build and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Participants, individuals and organizations alike, embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners who share them. Got an idea for a valuable community project? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

AgentKit: Building Multi-Agent Networks with Deterministic Routing and Rich Tooling

2025-03-20

AgentKit: Building Multi-Agent Networks with Deterministic Routing and Rich Tooling

AgentKit is a framework for building multi-agent networks offering deterministic routing, support for multiple model providers, and rich tooling via MCP. Combined with the Inngest Dev Server and its orchestration engine, AgentKit makes your Agents fault-tolerant when deployed to the cloud. Core concepts include Agents (LLM calls combined with prompts, tools, and MCP), Networks (a simple way to get Agents to collaborate with a shared State, including handoff), State (combines conversation history with a fully typed state machine, used in routing), Routers (autonomy from code-based to LLM-based (ex: ReAct) orchestration), and Tracing (debug and optimize your workflow locally and in the cloud with built-in tracing). AgentKit supports multiple routing strategies, including code-based deterministic routing and agent-based autonomous routing, and offers a shared state mechanism for easier agent collaboration.

(github.com)

Development multi-agent network deterministic routing

Biden's Warning: The Tech Oligarchy Has Been Here for Years

2025-01-19

Biden's Warning: The Tech Oligarchy Has Been Here for Years

This article argues that the American tech oligarchy isn't a new phenomenon, but rather the culmination of years of gradual development. It criticizes the Democratic Party's long history of enabling tech giants through subsidies, tax breaks, and other incentives, fueling their rise to power. The author contends that tech giants control crucial digital infrastructure, wielding immense influence over information dissemination and social life, exceeding the power of lawmakers and the public. The article calls for antitrust measures, strengthened worker rights, higher taxes, and a fundamental shift in the Democratic Party's relationship with tech giants to curb their power.

(www.bloodinthemachine.com)

Tech Tech Oligarchy Politics

Tramway SDK: A Lightweight Game Engine Defying Turbobloat

2025-01-07

Tramway SDK is a lightweight game engine challenging the 'Turbobloat' of mainstream engines like Unity and Godot. Developed over three years, it aims to bring 3D game development to older hardware. Using software rasterization, it eschews the need for a graphics card and runs on 15-year-old hardware, lowering the barrier to entry and reducing e-waste. It ditches node-based systems in favor of entity class inheritance and streamlined coding. Optional editors and whitespace-separated value configuration files simplify the workflow. Tramway SDK also includes an RPG framework, supporting level streaming and Quake/Source style entity interaction for easy open-world RPG creation. While still early in development, its lightweight nature and ease of use hold immense potential.

(racenis.github.io)

Game lightweight low-spec

Vulnerability-Lookup: A Collaborative Vulnerability Management Platform

2025-02-06

Vulnerability-Lookup: A Collaborative Vulnerability Management Platform

Vulnerability-Lookup is a powerful open-source platform for quickly correlating vulnerabilities from various sources, streamlining the Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure (CVD) process. It supports importing from numerous sources including NIST NVD and CISA, and allows users to add vulnerability sightings, comments, and create bundles. Its API and Python library facilitate integration with other tools, enabling developers to easily build their own sighting tools. Vulnerability-Lookup is licensed under the GNU Affero GPL v3.0 and is developed by CIRCL, Alexandre Dulaunoy, Raphaël Vinot, and Cédric Bonhomme.

(github.com)

Development vulnerability management

Atop 2.11 Heap Overflow Vulnerability: CVE-2025-31160

2025-03-29

A heap overflow vulnerability (CVE-2025-31160) has been discovered in Atop 2.11. The vulnerability stems from Atop attempting to connect to the TCP port of the atopgpud daemon during initialization. If another program is listening on this port, Atop may connect to it and receive malicious strings, leading to parsing failures, heap overflows, and segmentation faults. This vulnerability has been present since the introduction of atopgpud in Atop 2.4.0. The solution involves: not connecting to the TCP port by default, only attempting to connect when the '-k' flag is used; improved string parsing to avoid heap overflows; and not searching for netatop or netatop-bpf by default, only when the '-K' flag is used.

(openwall.com)

Development

Tenerife Lunar Eclipse Shoot: A Battle Against the Odds

2025-03-24

Tenerife Lunar Eclipse Shoot: A Battle Against the Odds

Two photographers planned an ambitious shoot to capture a total lunar eclipse in Tenerife, using the Teide crater as a unique foreground. However, equipment malfunctions, severe weather, and even a car break-in threatened to derail their plans. Despite facing seemingly insurmountable challenges, their perseverance paid off, resulting in stunning images and timelapses of the lunar eclipse captured under extreme conditions. This story is a testament to the photographers' determination and passion for their craft.

(lrtimelapse.com)

Misc lunar eclipse Tenerife

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