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Belgian Court Rules Against TCF Consent Pop-ups: A Major Blow to Tracking-Based Advertising

2025-05-15
Belgian Court Rules Against TCF Consent Pop-ups: A Major Blow to Tracking-Based Advertising

A landmark Belgian court decision declared the Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF), used by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others to obtain consent for data processing on 80% of the internet, illegal. The ruling stems from a complaint coordinated by Dr. Johnny Ryan, highlighting the deceptive nature of TCF's consent mechanisms. The court upheld earlier findings that TCF violates the GDPR. This decision significantly impacts the Real-Time Bidding (RTB) advertising industry, forcing a shift away from its reliance on TCF and pushing for more privacy-respecting alternatives. The ruling has immediate effect across Europe.

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(www.iccl.ie)
Tech

Jane Jacobs: Rebellious Prophet of Urban Planning

2025-04-17

This article delves into the life and work of Jane Jacobs, a legendary figure whose book, *The Death and Life of Great American Cities*, revolutionized urban planning. Known for her insightful observations of traditional urban fabric and sharp critiques of modern urban renewal, Jacobs championed mixed-use zoning, short blocks, and other principles, successfully thwarting destructive projects in New York. However, the article also highlights limitations in Jacobs's thinking, such as an overemphasis on street layouts while neglecting socioeconomic factors. Ultimately, the piece argues that understanding the complexities of urban development requires considering diverse perspectives, including the contributions of Jacobs, Mumford, and even Moses.

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(salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
Design

Psychedelics and Breathwork: A New Dawn for Mental Health Treatment?

2025-04-17
Psychedelics and Breathwork: A New Dawn for Mental Health Treatment?

Recent studies have shown promising results for psychedelic-assisted therapies, such as psilocybin and MDMA, in treating treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. Multiple clinical trials indicate substantial and sustained improvements. Concurrently, breathwork therapies, including Holotropic Breathwork, are gaining traction, with research suggesting effectiveness in alleviating stress, anxiety, and depression. These therapies appear to work by altering brain activity and neurotransmitter levels, thus impacting mood and mental state. While further research is needed to confirm efficacy and safety, these findings offer new hope for mental health treatment and open exciting avenues for exploring the mysteries of the brain and consciousness.

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(www.nature.com)
AI psychedelic therapy breathwork therapy mental health treatment

US-Iran War: The Bunker Buster Arms Race Heats Up

2025-06-25
US-Iran War: The Bunker Buster Arms Race Heats Up

In 2025, the US launched Operation Midnight Hammer against Iranian nuclear sites, employing the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) for the first time. While the US claimed total destruction, early intelligence suggests Iran's nuclear program was only set back months. This highlights the ongoing arms race between bunker busters and ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC). UHPC's superior blast resistance renders traditional bunker busters less effective. Future developments may focus on functionally graded cementitious composites (FGCC) and hypersonic weapons.

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(www.popularmechanics.com)
Tech bunker busters UHPC

SerenityOS: A Nostalgic Yet Powerful Unix-like OS

2025-04-22

SerenityOS is a desktop operating system that's a love letter to the user interfaces of the 1990s, featuring a custom Unix-like core. It blends the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software with the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix systems. Built by developers for developers, it's an open-source project found on GitHub, complete with a Discord server, man pages, and even a bug bounty program.

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(serenityos.org)
Development Unix-like

Gemini 2.5 Pro: The New King of Code Generation?

2025-03-31
Gemini 2.5 Pro: The New King of Code Generation?

Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro, launched on March 26th, claims coding, reasoning, and overall superiority. This article focuses on a head-to-head comparison with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, another top coding model. Through four coding challenges, Gemini 2.5 Pro demonstrated significant advantages in accuracy and efficiency, especially with its million-token context window enabling complex task handling. While Claude 3.7 Sonnet performed well, it paled in direct comparison. Gemini 2.5 Pro's free access further enhances its appeal.

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(composio.dev)
AI

What's Algebraic About Algebraic Effects?

2025-09-22
What's Algebraic About Algebraic Effects?

This article delves into the meaning of "algebraic" in the context of programming, focusing on algebraic effects. The author argues that algebraicity in programming lies in its composability, achieved by constraining data structures and operations to guarantee specific system properties. CRDTs, for instance, leverage the algebraic structure of a semilattice to address data synchronization challenges in distributed systems. Algebraic effects extend this concept, allowing the composition of effects with guaranteed properties, thereby enhancing code composability and reliability. The author illustrates how to define algebraic properties to ensure specific behaviors using a key-value store example and points out that only dependent type languages like Coq or Lean can explicitly encode and prove these algebraic properties.

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(interjectedfuture.com)
Development

Simplified Chernobyl Analysis: Unveiling Design Flaws in the RBMK Reactor

2025-01-24

This paper uses simplified numerical models to analyze the Chernobyl accident. The study reveals that the accident was closely related to design flaws in the RBMK reactor. Its large size and weak power negative feedback coefficient made reactor power difficult to control, even with an automatic system, leading to easily triggered xenon oscillations. The safety rod design, when the upper half of the core experienced xenon poisoning, initially increased core reactivity. This resulted in a high-pressure increase, a strong shock wave in the fuel channels, and the destruction of pressure tubes. The subsequent depressurization (flash evaporation) further exacerbated the accident. The study also evaluates the fission energy released during the accident and discusses the reactor's stability and control strategies.

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(www.epj-n.org)
Tech Chernobyl RBMK reactor nuclear accident

Feather: A Lightweight, DX-First Web Framework for Rust

2025-05-04
Feather: A Lightweight, DX-First Web Framework for Rust

Feather is a lightweight web framework for Rust, inspired by the simplicity of Express.js but built for Rust's performance and safety. It features a middleware-first architecture, making route handlers, auth, and logging all composable. Recent versions include a Context API for easy state management. Feather boasts a minimal, ergonomic API, is modular and extensible, and offers great tooling out of the box. Essentially, Feather aims to bring the ease of Express.js to the Rust ecosystem without compromising performance or safety.

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(github.com)
Development

ThorVG: A Cross-Platform Vector Graphics Library Leading the WebGPU Revolution

2025-06-02
ThorVG: A Cross-Platform Vector Graphics Library Leading the WebGPU Revolution

ThorVG offers multiple raster engine implementations, letting you choose the best fit for your app and system. It's ahead of the curve, especially in web development. Leveraging WebGPU's compute shaders and low-overhead modern GPU access, ThorVG enables aggressive optimization and broader application. It fully supports vector rendering features on top of WebGPU and abstracts hardware acceleration (Metal, Vulkan, DirectX) for seamless cross-platform compatibility.

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(www.thorvg.org)
Development

Microsoft's Aurora: AI Weather Forecasting Model Outperforms Traditional Methods

2025-05-24
Microsoft's Aurora: AI Weather Forecasting Model Outperforms Traditional Methods

Microsoft has unveiled Aurora, a new AI weather forecasting model trained on massive datasets from satellites, radar, and weather stations. Outperforming traditional methods in speed and accuracy, Aurora successfully predicted Typhoon Doksuri's landfall and the 2022 Iraq sandstorm, even beating the National Hurricane Center in predicting 2022-2023 tropical cyclone tracks. While training requires significant computing power, Aurora's runtime efficiency is remarkably high, generating forecasts within seconds. A simplified version powers hourly forecasts in Microsoft's MSN Weather app, and the source code and model weights are publicly available.

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(techcrunch.com)
AI AI weather forecasting extreme weather prediction

SWE-Bench Pro: A Challenging Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs on Software Engineering

2025-09-22
SWE-Bench Pro: A Challenging Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs on Software Engineering

SWE-Bench Pro is a new benchmark for evaluating large language models (LLMs) and agents on long-horizon software engineering tasks. Given a codebase and an issue, the model is tasked with generating a patch that resolves the described problem. Inspired by SWE-Bench, it uses Docker and Modal for reproducible evaluations, requiring users to set up a Docker environment and Modal credentials to run the evaluation script.

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(github.com)
Development

Running a Minecraft Server Inside a FreeBSD Jail

2025-04-05
Running a Minecraft Server Inside a FreeBSD Jail

This tutorial walks you through setting up a secure Minecraft server within a FreeBSD Jail container, a more secure alternative to Docker or Podman on Linux. The author details the process of creating the jail, installing the FreeBSD base system, configuring network settings, building the Minecraft server from ports, and configuring crucial settings like memory allocation, EULA acceptance, and server properties. Finally, the guide demonstrates starting the server and connecting via a Minecraft client. This is a comprehensive guide for users comfortable with FreeBSD.

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(vermaden.wordpress.com)
Development

Historic Dwingeloo Radio Telescope Receives Signals from Voyager 1

2024-12-19

The historic Dwingeloo radio telescope in the Netherlands, a national monument built in 1956, has successfully received faint signals from Voyager 1, nearly 25 billion kilometers from Earth. Despite the telescope's design frequency not matching Voyager 1's 8.4 GHz telemetry, researchers overcame this by mounting a new antenna and correcting for the Doppler shift. This achievement showcases the ingenuity of adapting older technology for remarkable feats and highlights humanity's enduring quest for space exploration.

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(www.camras.nl)
Tech Voyager 1 radio telescope

Testing Isn't a Sunk Cost: How It Accelerates Your Team

2025-04-05
Testing Isn't a Sunk Cost: How It Accelerates Your Team

This article explores why software engineers commonly resist writing tests and emphasizes the importance of testing for improving code quality and team efficiency. The author uses personal experiences to illustrate that abandoning testing, even in high-pressure startup environments, is a mistake. The article highlights that testing isn't just about the distinctions between unit tests, integration tests, etc., but rather about verifying chunks of code that validate the core functionality. Tests should be on-demand, rapidly repeatable, replicable elsewhere, and automatable. The author also points out that writing tests forces developers to write more test-friendly code, leading to better code quality, increased modularity, and ultimately, improved team efficiency. The author concludes by urging engineers to prioritize testing, viewing it as key to increasing productivity and reducing bugs, and leveraging AI to assist with testing, but not relying on it entirely.

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(medium.com)
Development

Symbolic Reference and Hardware Models in Python: A New Approach to Boosting Hardware Design Efficiency

2024-12-31

This article introduces a novel approach to hardware modeling using Python – symbolic models. Traditional hardware design workflows involve multiple models (behavioral, architectural, RTL, etc.) for verification, but debugging can be challenging for complex algorithms and data management. The author proposes using Python symbolic models, tracking data origins instead of the data itself, to simplify the debugging process. Using an image downscaler as an example, the article details the construction and comparison of reference and hardware symbolic models, showcasing the advantages of symbolic models in improving design efficiency and confidence, especially when dealing with complex data management and specification changes.

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(tomverbeure.github.io)
Development hardware design symbolic models

KDE Plasma 6.4.0 Now in OpenBSD Packages

2025-07-06

KDE Plasma 6.4.0 is now available in OpenBSD packages thanks to the work of Rafael Sadowski and others. Significantly, the KDE Kwin team has split kwin into kwin-x11 and kwin (Wayland), signaling a reduced focus on X11 in favor of Wayland. This update also includes the Aurorae theme engine and bug fixes from June and July.

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(undeadly.org)
Development

Sid Meier's Pirates!: A Timeless Seafaring Adventure

2025-06-03
Sid Meier's Pirates!: A Timeless Seafaring Adventure

This article revisits the Amiga version of Sid Meier's Pirates!, praising its beautiful graphics and unique gameplay. The author recounts personal experiences playing the game with his father, highlighting its lasting impact. The open-ended world, rich storyline, and random events ensure each playthrough is unique. More than just a game, Pirates! is presented as a cherished memory, a time capsule of adventure and romance, transcending simple gameplay to become a cultural artifact.

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(shot97retro.blogspot.com)
Game Classic Game

The Truth About REST APIs: Beyond CRUD

2025-07-09

This article delves into the essence of the REST architectural style, revealing its core principle: Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State (HATEOAS). Many so-called "RESTful APIs" merely adhere to CRUD operations, neglecting the key constraint of HATEOAS, leading to tight coupling between client and server, hindering maintainability and scalability. Through Roy Fielding's arguments and examples, the article clarifies how true REST APIs guide client interaction through hypermedia links, enabling dynamic resource discovery and state transitions, ultimately building loosely coupled, evolvable distributed systems. The article also discusses the practical trade-offs often leading to simpler, RPC-like approaches.

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(florian-kraemer.net)
Development

Jane Street Quant: From Math Competitions to AI-Driven Trading

2025-03-16
Jane Street Quant: From Math Competitions to AI-Driven Trading

In Young Cho, a quantitative trader at Jane Street, shares her unconventional career path from pre-med to quantitative trading. She recounts her experiences interning and working at Jane Street, including using programming languages like OCaml and VBA for trading and development, and humorous anecdotes about interacting with brokers. The episode delves into Jane Street's trading research, from simple linear models to complex deep neural networks, and how they leverage machine learning in low-data, high-noise environments subject to frequent regime changes. In Young Cho details the four stages of her research process: exploration, data collection, modeling, and productionization, and discusses the tension between flexible research tools and robust production systems. Finally, she offers a glimpse into the future directions of Jane Street's machine learning research, including expanding into more asset classes and data modalities, and leveraging AI to enhance trader efficiency.

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(signalsandthreads.com)
AI

Jupiter Ace: A Retro British Computer Killed by Forth?

2025-04-10
Jupiter Ace: A Retro British Computer Killed by Forth?

In 1982, a small home computer called the Jupiter Ace was launched in the UK. Its unique feature was the inclusion of Forth, not BASIC, in its ROM. This article explores why embedding BASIC in ROM was so crucial back then, and whether replacing it with Forth was the key reason for the Jupiter Ace's failure. While Forth offered technical advantages, like faster speed and suitability for professional software development, its steeper learning curve and the Ace's outdated hardware (3KB RAM, no color graphics) ultimately doomed it. Most users prioritized games and memory over programming language.

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(nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com)
Tech

Aussie Ordered Uranium, Plutonium; Walks Free

2025-04-26
Aussie Ordered Uranium, Plutonium; Walks Free

A 24-year-old Australian man who ordered radioactive materials, including uranium and plutonium, online to complete his periodic table collection, received a lenient sentence of a two-year good behavior bond. The incident triggered a major hazmat response, but the judge cited mental health concerns and lack of malicious intent. The case highlights both the ease of acquiring such materials and the subsequent overreaction from authorities, sparking debate about regulatory frameworks and border control.

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(www.chemistryworld.com)
Misc nuclear materials hazmat lenient sentence

The Software Trust Crisis: Why We Have to Trust Software (Mostly)

2024-12-31
The Software Trust Crisis: Why We Have to Trust Software (Mostly)

This article explores the difficult problem of trusting software. The author argues that even secure messaging apps rely on trust in the vendor; the sheer volume of code in open-source software makes review impractical; code signing verifies integrity but relies on user diligence and is easily circumvented. The article delves into vulnerabilities in the software supply chain, including code signing, blocklisting, auto-updates, and package managers. It introduces techniques like reproducible builds and binary transparency to enhance software trust, but ultimately concludes that this is a far-from-solved problem, leaving us with the uncomfortable reality of having to trust software vendors.

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(educatedguesswork.org)
Tech code signing binary transparency

Chatham House Rule: The Bay Area's Embrace of Silence

2025-01-11
Chatham House Rule: The Bay Area's Embrace of Silence

From healthcare conferences to AI salons and even dinner parties, the archaic Chatham House Rule—prohibiting attribution of information to speakers or disclosure of attendees' identities—is surging in popularity across the San Francisco Bay Area. Fueled by the tech industry's obsession with secrecy, its widespread use is sparking debate. Proponents argue it fosters candid discussion, particularly on sensitive topics. Critics, however, contend it obscures accountability and weakens the impact and authenticity of speech. The article explores the phenomenon of the Chatham House Rule's prevalence in the Bay Area and its complex implications.

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(sfstandard.com)
Tech Chatham House Rule Tech Secrecy Bay Area Culture

GNU Radio: Open-Source Software Defined Radio Toolkit

2025-04-13

GNU Radio is a free and open-source software development toolkit that provides signal processing blocks to implement software-defined radios (SDRs). It can be used with readily-available, low-cost external RF hardware or without hardware in a simulation environment. Its modular, flowgraph-based framework and extensive library of processing blocks make it suitable for creating complex signal processing applications in research, industry, and hobbyist settings. While not a solution for specific hardware or radio standards out-of-the-box, it's highly adaptable for developing implementations of various communication standards.

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(wiki.gnuradio.org)
Development

Groundbreaking Study Reorganizes Psychopathology Using Data-Driven Approach

2025-09-22
Groundbreaking Study Reorganizes Psychopathology Using Data-Driven Approach

A large-scale online survey has revolutionized our understanding of psychiatric classification. Researchers analyzed data from 14,800 participants to reorganize DSM-5 symptoms, revealing 8 major psychopathology spectra (e.g., Externalizing, Internalizing, Neurodevelopmental) and 27 subfactors. Surprisingly, common disorders like Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD didn't emerge as distinct symptom clusters but rather dissolved into finer-grained, homogenous symptom groups. This challenges existing diagnostic criteria, suggesting that mental illnesses aren't fixed entities but variable combinations of symptoms. The findings have major implications for future psychiatric classification but also highlight the need for further research to refine the model.

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(www.psychiatrymargins.com)
AI

Non-Destructive Unrolling of Ancient Scroll via AI-Assisted X-ray Tomography

2025-08-19
Non-Destructive Unrolling of Ancient Scroll via AI-Assisted X-ray Tomography

German scientists used 3D X-ray tomography and AI to virtually 'unroll' a delicate antique Buddhist scroll crafted by Mongolian nomads, preserving its fragile state. The centuries-old scroll, tightly wound within silk pouches, revealed its contents—a Tibetan Buddhist mantra written in Sanskrit script—without physical manipulation. The analysis also unexpectedly uncovered metal particles in the ink. While labor-intensive, this technique offers invaluable opportunities for studying otherwise inaccessible artifacts.

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(www.popsci.com)
Tech X-ray tomography

Diffusion LLMs: A Paradigm Shift in Language Modeling

2025-03-06

Inception Labs has unveiled a groundbreaking Diffusion Large Language Model (dLLM) that challenges the traditional autoregressive approach. Unlike autoregressive models that predict tokens sequentially, dLLMs generate text segments concurrently, refining them iteratively. This method, successful in image and video models, now surpasses similar-sized LLMs in code generation, boasting a 5-10x speed and efficiency improvement. The key advantage? Reduced hallucinations. dLLMs generate and validate crucial parts before proceeding, crucial for applications demanding accuracy, such as chatbots and intelligent agents. This approach promises improved multi-step agent workflows, preventing loops and enhancing planning, reasoning, and self-correction.

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(rnikhil.com)
AI

Exploring the Obscure Corners of Unicode Math Symbols

2025-04-17

The author explores the Miscellaneous Mathematical Symbols block in Unicode, uncovering many rarely used but fascinating symbols. For instance, ⟂ represents both perpendicularity and relatively prime integers; ⟑ and ⟇ are used in geometric algebra; and four symbols denote database joins. The author also highlights the Unicode equivalents of LaTeX's \langle and \rangle: ⟨ and ⟩.

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(www.johndcook.com)
Misc Mathematical Symbols
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