ProPublica obtained thousands of videos uploaded by Parler users during the January 6th Capitol riot. These videos, archived before Parler went offline, offer a firsthand account of the events, revealing the actions and mindset of participants. Analysis of this footage provides a more comprehensive understanding of this dark chapter in American history.
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Legalyze.ai is an AI-powered legal tech tool that automates the creation of medical chronologies and summaries. It dramatically reduces medical record review time, from days to minutes or hours, by extracting key information from thousands of records. Supporting various file formats and boasting external security audits, Legalyze.ai integrates with practice management systems, assists with document drafting, and offers AI-powered document Q&A. This boosts lawyer efficiency and ultimately contributes to winning more cases.
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Sniffnet is a free and open-source, cross-platform network traffic monitoring tool available in multiple languages. Its intuitive interface allows users to easily monitor network traffic, view real-time charts, export PCAP files, and identify services and protocols. Sniffnet also supports custom themes, notifications, and filters, and includes a comprehensive Wiki. While older systems may require setting an environment variable to switch renderers, Sniffnet is a powerful and user-friendly tool overall.
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Monzo founder and former CEO Tom Blomfield challenges the narrative that Americans work harder than Europeans. He argues the difference lies in "positivity, optimism, and ambition." The deeply American belief that anyone can achieve anything through hard work contrasts sharply with British culture. He notes that top UK students gravitate towards finance or consulting, while US students are more entrepreneurial. This cultural divergence contributes to Europe's productivity gap with the US. Blomfield's own experience reflects this; he faced hurdles securing a banking license in the UK but found more support in the US.
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A spotted hyena, the first recorded in Southeastern Egypt in millennia, has been found. The lone hyena was discovered and killed near the Sudanese border. Researchers believe a regional weather cycle leading to increased rainfall and vegetation growth opened a migration corridor, providing sufficient prey. This discovery challenges existing knowledge of spotted hyena distribution and highlights the impact of climate change on animal migration.
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The LFortran compiler team successfully compiled and executed libprima/PRIMA, marking the eighth production-grade, third-party code compiled with bit-for-bit alignment to GFortran. This significant milestone brings LFortran closer to its goal of compiling ten such codes, a key step toward achieving beta-quality. Compiling PRIMA, a Fortran package for nonlinear optimization, presented challenges related to procedure variables, arrays with non-unit strides, and precision loss, all of which were overcome. Future efforts focus on compiling additional third-party codes, including fpm and LAPACK, to solidify LFortran's beta readiness.
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Aman Chadha has curated a comprehensive list of AI learning resources covering the entire process of building, training, and evaluating neural networks. From linear regression to large language models, and from data preprocessing to model evaluation, this resource has it all. Whether you're focusing on algorithms, training techniques, or model deployment and evaluation, this guide provides comprehensive support for AI learners of all levels, from beginners to seasoned researchers.
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Cloudflare built a new OAuth provider library almost entirely using Anthropic's Claude LLM. While the code is well-structured and tests pass, the author found security issues, such as overly permissive CORS settings, missing standard security headers, and incorrect OAuth spec implementation. Despite engineer review of Claude's output, critical vulnerabilities remain, highlighting the risks of AI-generated code even under scrutiny. This raises questions about the reliability and security of AI-assisted programming and the crucial role of human expertise in security-critical systems.
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After several delays, Blue Origin's massive New Glenn rocket successfully launched and reached orbit. The launch overcame engine chilling issues and a boat that strayed into the restricted zone. While the first stage booster failed to return to Earth, this marks Blue Origin's first-ever orbital flight in nearly 25 years of existence, a monumental achievement for the private space industry. This success is a major win for Blue Origin and its founder Jeff Bezos, injecting new hope into the future of space exploration.
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Observing his younger brother touching a hot stove and getting burned, the author draws a parallel to machine learning and pattern recognition. A baby's initial understanding of "hot" is built through experience, associating sensory inputs, similar to creating space embeddings in machine learning. As new experiences (like touching a radiator) arise, the baby updates its mental model, a Bayesian update adjusting its understanding of "hot." This highlights how both humans and machine learning rely on pattern recognition: compressing information, generalizing knowledge, and adapting to new evidence. However, humans can also over-find patterns (apophenia), seeing connections where none exist. The author concludes by emphasizing the importance of quiet reflection for fostering creativity and pattern formation.
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AMD released a blog post showcasing the impressive performance of its Instinct™ MI300X accelerator in Ansys Fluent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Benchmarks using four benchmark models (sedan car, aircraft wing, exhaust system, and F1 race car) on both AMD MI300X and NVIDIA H100 platforms showed up to a 10% improvement in time-to-solution for the MI300X. This is attributed to the MI300X's 192GB HBM3 memory capacity and high memory bandwidth, along with AMD Infinity Cache™. The blog details the testing methodology, system configurations, and a step-by-step guide to installing and running the benchmarks. The MI300X proves to be an excellent choice for applications requiring steady-state analysis.
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CodeCrafters boasts a remarkably quick interview process, completing all steps within 1-2 days. It involves: a 15-30 minute introductory Zoom call to get acquainted; a 2-3 hour CodeCrafters challenge completed semi-live over Zoom, using your preferred language, focusing on problem-solving and code structure (practicing beforehand is allowed); and a final 30-60 minute Zoom call to discuss work history and timelines.
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Handmade Cities (HMC) and Handmade Network (HMN) have officially parted ways, though both sides report an amicable split. Fundamental disagreements over brand direction led to the separation. HMC will focus on improving programming skills, with future conferences featuring 80% classic engineering presentations and 20% dedicated to tech worker rights. The author also announced the launch of the native desktop terminal software, Terminal Click, and updated his personal website to abner.page.
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The isle project has achieved a functionally complete decompilation of the classic game LEGO Island (Version 1.1, English) released in 1997. The goal is to create an accurate representation of the original game's code, matching recompiled instructions to the original machine code. Both ISLE.EXE and LEGO1.DLL are fully decompiled and functionally identical to the originals. Further work focuses on improving code accuracy, naming, documentation, and structure. While some bugs may remain, the game is playable. The project uses CMake and recommends Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2 for compiling for optimal accuracy.
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For months, strong polar vortex winds have been circulating the stratospheric polar region. However, forecasts predict a major disruption this weekend, with wind speeds dramatically decreasing and potentially reversing. This could lead to a sudden stratospheric warming, with temperatures potentially rising 25°C in just days. This event may displace the polar vortex or split it, potentially impacting spring weather with colder-than-normal Arctic air. The extent to which this affects the troposphere remains uncertain. This could signal a premature end to the polar vortex season, a phenomenon observed in past years.
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This comprehensive guide outlines best practices for crafting efficient, maintainable, and portable GNU Makefiles. It covers Makefile structure, variable usage, rule and target definitions, and strategies for handling large projects and parallel builds. The guide emphasizes using automatic variables, avoiding common pitfalls, and provides techniques for handling various scenarios such as cleanup tasks, dependency management, and multi-file processing. The ultimate goal is to empower developers to write clean, understandable, and easily maintainable Makefiles, thereby boosting development efficiency.
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DeepSeek R1, a new class of reasoning models, tackles complex tasks using chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning, albeit with a longer response time. These highly capable, distilled DeepSeek R1 models are now easily deployable on AMD Ryzen™ AI processors and Radeon™ graphics cards via LM Studio. The article provides a step-by-step guide to running various DeepSeek R1 distillations on different AMD hardware configurations, including recommended model sizes and quantization settings for optimal performance.
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Nintendo secured a US patent in February 2025 for a creature-capture system, seemingly targeting Palworld. This follows a lawsuit filed in Japan against Pocketpair, the Palworld developer, for intellectual property infringement. The new patent, similar to one granted late 2024, uses subtly different wording to broaden its scope, suggesting Nintendo might expand the legal battle globally. The outcome depends on pending US patent applications, with one previously rejected but appealed by Nintendo.
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This article recounts a unique correspondence between the author and the illustrator Edward Gorey. From childhood fascination with Gorey's distinctive style to adult exchanges with the eccentric artist, the author shares their mutual interest in literature, art, and the macabre. Their letters, filled with whimsical observations, ranged from murder mysteries to bizarre recipes, from London's cheap bookstores to the behavior of zombies, showcasing Gorey's unique writing style and meticulous attention to detail. The article concludes with the author's account of the mysterious disappearance of Gorey's letters and the lasting presence of a cover Gorey designed, reflecting on the unpredictable connections in life.
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ITXPlus is a Mini-ITX sized Macintosh Plus logic board clone built entirely from modern components. It uses a Pico-based VGA converter, a standard 24-pin ATX power supply, an onboard 50-pin internal SCSI header, and 4MB of soldered RAM. Leveraging open-source solutions like DosFox's sound chip replacement and an ATTiny-based RTC, ITXPlus aims for a fully functional, build-it-yourself experience. While floppy drive support isn't included by default, an expansion header allows for the addition of a real IWM. The board is almost entirely surface mount, using a traditional 68000 for easier assembly. The complete design will be open-source on GitHub.
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The author encountered a persistent issue where their Linux system, equipped with an AMD RX 570 GPU, would crash or hang after attempting to sleep, often resulting in a black screen upon waking. After over a year of intense debugging, involving journal analysis, systemd configuration tweaks, a debug shell, even Ghidra reverse engineering, the root cause was identified as an amdgpu driver bug related to VRAM backup during high memory usage. The solution, finally implemented, leverages the power management notifier API to preemptively back up VRAM before sleep, preventing memory exhaustion errors. This fix is expected in the stable Linux kernel 6.14 release.
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This article documents the author's journey to create the smallest possible 'Hello World' program. Initially using Rust, the author discovered that minimizing the binary size required a deep dive into low-level programming. Ultimately, assembly language was chosen, and through clever techniques such as removing debugging symbols and manually crafting the ELF header, a 64-bit Linux 'Hello World' program was reduced to an impressive 167 bytes! The article delves into the file size expansion during the linking process and the details of the ELF file format, making it highly valuable for low-level system developers.
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The Washington Post has abandoned its iconic 'Democracy Dies in Darkness' slogan, replacing it with 'Riveting Storytelling for All of America.' This shift has sparked internal controversy and is linked to owner Jeff Bezos' refusal to endorse Kamala Harris and a pursuit of aggressive growth targets. The new strategy emphasizes an AI-powered platform to deliver news to all Americans, aiming for 200 million paying users. This move is seen as a strategic pivot driven by commercial pressures, raising concerns about the Post's journalistic independence and values.
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The rise of AI technologies has brought about a new form of digital addiction: AI addiction. This article introduces Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous (ITAA), a 12-step fellowship supporting recovery from internet and technology addiction, including AI-related issues. It details symptoms, effects, and recovery strategies, offering a self-assessment questionnaire to help identify potential AI addiction. ITAA provides free, anonymous online and in-person meetings, encouraging members to recover through mutual support, abstinence, and seeking professional help when needed. The article emphasizes the serious impact of AI addiction, mirroring the effects of substance abuse on the brain and overall well-being.
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The author faced a challenge while building the new configuration language RCL: how to handle floating-point numbers. As a superset of JSON, RCL needs to balance JSON semantics, the type system, and code readability. The article delves into the trade-offs between integer and floating-point types, such as whether to distinguish between integer and floating-point types, and how to handle numerical equality and type conversion. Ultimately, the author chose a single numeric type, "Number," to simplify language design and improve user experience. This solution is implemented in RCL 0.8.0.
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Purelymail offers incredibly cheap email hosting, significantly undercutting competitors like Protonmail, Fastmail, and Google Workspace, especially for multiple users. It's IMAP and POP3 compatible, allows custom domains, and boasts unlimited users and storage. While lacking features like calendar syncing and boasting a somewhat unpolished UI, it's generally reliable (running on AWS), promises no data selling, and is surprisingly affordable. Currently in beta, it's a strong contender if you need simple, cheap, and reliable email.
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Brendan Carr's ascension to FCC chair signals significant regulatory changes for the tech and media industries. His involvement in Project 2025, proposing limitations on Section 230 immunity for tech companies and content prioritization disclosures, foreshadows a stricter regulatory environment. He also plans to leverage the FCC's power to revoke spectrum licenses for networks violating the equal time rule. However, Trump's shift on TikTok complicates Carr's approach to national security threats posed by the app. His success hinges on securing support from other Republican commissioners.
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released an evaluation concluding that Meta's Llama 3.1 Community License is not a free software license. The license not only denies users their freedoms but also attempts to grant licensors powers that should only be exercised through democratically-elected governments. Furthermore, its application to a machine learning application fails to address inherent software freedom challenges. The FSF urges the free software community to avoid using this license and any software released under it.
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This blog post explores the amazing diversity of bird tongues and their adaptations to different diets. From the hummingbird's forked tongue to the woodpecker's sharp, spiky tongue, and the penguin's incredibly barbed tongue, each species' tongue is uniquely evolved to suit its feeding habits. Hummingbirds, for example, use their tongues like tiny straws to lap up nectar, while woodpeckers use theirs to spear insects from tree holes. The post is richly illustrated, showcasing the variety and wonder of bird tongues and highlighting nature's ingenious designs.
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A Web3 veteran since 2018 confesses to rarely using crypto, highlighting the industry's stagnation. Despite billions invested, Web3 products fail to meet the needs of non-crypto users, largely offering volatility and online entertainment. The author reflects on the industry's focus on developer tools over consumer products, noting the shortcomings of traditional finance—high fees, inefficiency—without driving mass crypto adoption. Personal concerns about compliance, wallet management, time constraints, and risk aversion lead him to prioritize simpler investment strategies. He suggests Web3 might be better suited for a future generation.
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