Design Tokens: The Key to Scalable and Consistent UI Architectures

2024-12-18

This article explores the role of design tokens in modern UI architecture. By representing design decisions as data, design tokens serve as a single source of truth, enabling automated code generation across platforms for faster updates and improved design consistency. It details the layered organization of design tokens (option, decision, and component tokens), automated distribution processes, and how to choose the appropriate number of layers and token scope. Finally, it discusses when design tokens are appropriate and their limitations, helping readers determine their suitability for their projects.

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Jupyter Notebooks: E2E Testing and Documentation in One

2024-12-18

While developing a quantum computing library, the author leveraged Jupyter Notebooks as both user guides and end-to-end tests. By reading environment variables (like SERVER_URL) within the notebooks, they achieved parameterization, allowing execution by users and automated CI/CD pipelines. Two methods for running notebooks were explored: nbclient for simplicity, and nbconvert/jq for more control but increased complexity. The author opted for nbclient's ease of use, effectively integrating documentation maintenance and code testing, ensuring the integrity of both with every merge request.

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Development E2E testing

Python Meta-Circular Interpreter: Implementing a Python Interpreter in Python

2024-12-18

This article demonstrates how to create a Python meta-circular interpreter (MCI) using Python itself. An MCI is an interpreter written in the language it interprets, allowing implementation of a subset or superset of the host language. The author details the MCI's implementation, covering parsing Python source code, building an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST), traversing the AST and executing statements, and crucial concepts like scoping, symbol tables, and handling control flow statements (e.g., while loops and if statements). This example provides a deep understanding of interpreter mechanics and showcases how to leverage Python's AST module and built-in functions to build more complex interpreters.

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Starlink Sells Out in Zimbabwe Amidst High Demand

2024-12-17

Starlink's high-speed satellite internet service quickly sold out in Zimbabwe within weeks of its launch, driven by the country's slow, unreliable, and expensive traditional internet infrastructure. High demand led to sell-outs in major cities like Harare, and even spread to other African countries. Despite higher initial costs, Starlink's unlimited data and superior speeds are proving attractive to many, forcing local providers to lower their prices. While currently facing capacity issues in urban areas, Starlink's potential in rural and underserved regions is significant, boosting related industries such as installation services and accessory sales.

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Voxon: Revolutionizing 3D Volumetric Holograms

2024-12-17

Voxon's groundbreaking VLED technology creates real-time interactive volumetric holograms, using millions of points of light floating in 3D space. Viewable from 360 degrees, these immersive holograms are transforming entertainment, communication, and data visualization. Their products, the VX2 and VX2-XL, cater to individual and commercial needs, offering high-quality volumetric displays. Voxon actively seeks partnerships to explore further applications of this revolutionary technology, ushering in a new era of interactive digital experiences.

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Mystery Drone Sightings Continue to Plague US East Coast

2024-12-18

A wave of mysterious drone sightings is causing widespread concern and airspace closures along the US East Coast. These SUV-sized drones have been reported near military bases and airports in New Jersey and New York, disrupting air travel. While federal agencies are investigating, explanations remain elusive, with speculation ranging from political conspiracies to other unknown causes. The ongoing mystery fuels public anxiety and calls for swift resolution to prevent further disruptions and potential threats.

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Interpol Drops 'Pig Butchering' Term

2024-12-18

Interpol announced it will no longer use the term "pig butchering" to describe online scams, citing its potential to shame and discourage victims from reporting. The organization believes the term dehumanizes victims and prefers "romance baiting," a term it believes is more sensitive and respectful. This change highlights a shift towards prioritizing victim support and emphasizes the need for more considerate language when discussing sensitive crimes. However, many US law enforcement agencies continue to use the original term.

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FastVideo: Open-Source Framework Accelerates Large Video Diffusion Models

2024-12-17

FastVideo is an open-source framework designed to accelerate inference and training of large video diffusion models. Supporting models like FastMochi and FastHunyuan, it achieves up to 8x faster inference speeds. The framework leverages knowledge distillation techniques and supports distillation, fine-tuning, and inference for video DiT models based on PCM. Furthermore, FastVideo features scalable training capabilities with FSDP, sequence parallelism, and selective activation checkpointing, while enabling memory-efficient fine-tuning.

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Frankfurt Silver Amulet Rewrites Early Christian History

2024-12-18

Archaeologists unearthed a groundbreaking artifact in a 3rd-century Roman grave near Frankfurt, Germany: a silver amulet, the "Frankfurt Silver Inscription." Dating back to 230-270 CE, this amulet predates previously known Christian artifacts in the region by almost 50 years. Its inscription, deciphered using advanced technology, contains exclusively Christian content, including invocations to Jesus Christ and biblical quotations. This discovery significantly pushes back the timeline of Christianity's presence north of the Alps, shedding light on its early spread and influence in Roman Germania. The find has major implications for archaeology, theology, and Roman history.

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USDA Strengthens Food Safety Measures After Deadly Listeria Outbreaks

2024-12-18

Following two deadly Listeria monocytogenes outbreaks linked to Boar's Head deli meats and Yu Shang ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, resulting in dozens of illnesses and multiple deaths, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has finally acted. Despite prior knowledge of deficiencies at the Boar's Head facility, FSIS failed to intervene until after the outbreak. The agency announced stronger measures, including expanded testing, improved inspector training, and enhanced facility oversight, to prevent future incidents. This highlights vulnerabilities in food safety regulation and the critical need for prompt and effective intervention.

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Castle Game Engine Update: Web Target, IFC Support, and mORMot Collaboration

2024-12-18

The Castle Game Engine team announced updates including a web target (using JS+WebAssembly for browser-based game execution), support for the IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) format, and collaborative editing using mORMot2. The web target currently handles basic functions and is improving WebGL support. IFC support allows loading, modifying, and saving models, with future enhancements planned. Collaborative editing is still under development but already enables 3D world modification and server synchronization.

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Development game engine

Brisk: A Cross-Platform C++20 GUI Framework for High-Performance Rendering

2024-12-18

Brisk is a modern, cross-platform C++20 GUI framework built for creating responsive, high-performance applications with ease. Leveraging an MVVM architecture and reactive capabilities, Brisk boasts scalable GPU-accelerated rendering, making it ideal for graphics-intensive projects. It supports multiple backends (D3D11, D3D12, Vulkan, OpenGL, Metal, WebGPU) and features declarative GUI, stylesheets, and full Unicode support. Currently under active development, contributions are welcome.

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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.

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AI

ImPlot3D: A High-Performance Immediate Mode 3D Plotting Library Based on Dear ImGui

2024-12-18

ImPlot3D is an open-source library built on top of Dear ImGui, offering developers an easy-to-use, high-performance way to create 3D plots. Independent of ImPlot, ImPlot3D supports various 3D plot types, including line plots, scatter plots, surface plots, and mesh plots, with interactive rotation, panning, and zooming. Its intuitive API, similar to Dear ImGui and ImPlot, allows for quick integration and customization of markers, lines, surfaces, and mesh styles, with options for built-in or custom colormaps. A comprehensive demo application aids users in learning and utilizing its features.

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Development 3D plotting

US Weighs Ban on TP-Link Routers Over Hacking Fears

2024-12-18

The US government is considering a ban on TP-Link routers, a popular Chinese brand, due to national security concerns linked to cyberattacks. Investigations are underway by the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and Justice. TP-Link holds a 65% US market share, largely due to its low prices. A Microsoft report implicated TP-Link routers in ransomware and other cyberattacks launched by Chinese hackers. Investigators allege TP-Link fails to address vulnerabilities, and refuses to cooperate with cybersecurity experts. TP-Link claims its security practices meet industry standards and is committed to addressing US national security concerns. This action reflects broader US concerns about Chinese technology and efforts to restrict imports from China.

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Attention as Electromagnetic Field Line Management: A New Model of Consciousness

2024-12-17

Qualia Research Institute proposes a novel model of attention, conceptualizing it as the management of dynamic patterns in the brain's electromagnetic field. By simulating electric field lines arising from weighted sums of harmonic oscillations, researchers demonstrate how attention controls charge density by modulating underlying resonant modes, explaining seemingly random fluctuations and drifts in attentional behavior. This model also offers a potential explanation for psychedelic experiences, suggesting that psychedelics disrupt the normal flow of attention by altering the configuration of harmonic modes. The research provides a new lens for understanding consciousness and developing novel neuro-interventions, such as inducing exotic states of consciousness by non-invasively perturbing the phase locking of attention.

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Post-WWII Highways: Debunking Myths and Unveiling the Truth

2024-12-17

This article explores key events and misconceptions surrounding the development of highways after World War II. It clarifies that Germany's Autobahn was not initially designed for military purposes, but rather to stimulate the economy and enhance national prestige. While Allied forces utilized the Autobahn in the later stages of WWII, this wasn't its original intent. The article debunks the myth that the US Interstate system was designed with one mile in five being straight and level for emergency bomber landings, explaining its true purpose was civilian benefit and economic development, although it also served military needs, such as troop movement and industrial production. Finally, the article reviews post-WWII attempts and exercises by various militaries to utilize highways as emergency runways for aircraft, highlighting their limitations and ultimate replacement by dedicated airfields.

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Tech highways WWII

Whittaker's Keynote at NDSS 2024: AI, Encryption, and a New Era of Threats

2024-12-18

At the 2024 NDSS Symposium, Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, delivered a keynote address reflecting on the 'Crypto Wars' of the 90s. She highlighted how political, technical, and commercial pressures have shaped today's encryption landscape. Whittaker warned against viewing the current situation as simply 'Crypto Wars 2.0,' arguing that an economic engine driven by personal data, surveillance technology, and AI/ML poses a fundamentally different threat than the government-dominated encryption landscape of the 90s. She stressed the need for a new approach, with NDSS research at the forefront of this response.

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Cultural Evolution of Cooperation Among LLM Agents

2024-12-18

Researchers investigated whether a 'society' of Large Language Model (LLM) agents can learn mutually beneficial social norms despite incentives to defect. Experiments revealed significant differences in the evolution of cooperation across base models, with Claude 3.5 Sonnet significantly outperforming Gemini 1.5 Flash and GPT-4o. Furthermore, Claude 3.5 Sonnet leveraged a costly punishment mechanism to achieve even higher scores, a feat not replicated by the other models. This study proposes a new benchmark for LLMs focused on the societal implications of LLM agent deployment, offering insights into building more robust and cooperative AI agents.

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Open-Source 5-Band Equalizer a5eq.lv2 Released

2024-12-18

ashafq has released a5eq.lv2, an open-source 5-band equalizer LV2 plugin. This plugin features a low shelf, three peaking filters, and a high shelf, designed for precise audio sculpting by both amateur and professional audio engineers. It boasts high-precision filter coefficients, stereo processing, and a user-friendly interface. Compatible with any LV2-supporting host software such as Ardour and Audacity, it's easily installed and used via command line. Users can submit issues or contribute code via GitHub.

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IncludeOS: Run Applications in the Cloud with Zero Overhead

2024-12-17

IncludeOS is a lightweight operating system that lets you run your application in the cloud without a traditional OS. It integrates OS functionality directly into your application, creating high-performance, secure, and resource-efficient virtual machines. IncludeOS applications boot in tens of milliseconds and require only a few megabytes of disk and memory. Simple command-line tools facilitate building and deployment, and ample examples and documentation help developers get started quickly.

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ISO 8583: The Secret Language of Credit Cards

2024-12-18

Every time you tap your card or pay online, you're interacting with the ISO 8583 protocol. This 1987 standard defines the format of real-time transaction messages between banking networks. It includes core fields like message type indicators, bitmaps, and data elements, but networks vary in their extensions and serialization, leading to compatibility challenges. This article delves into the complexities of ISO 8583's structure, field encoding, nested message handling, and demonstrates building a robust ISO 8583 parser to handle network variations and error scenarios.

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RTO Mandates Lead to Tech Talent Exodus, Study Finds

2024-12-17

A study tracking over 3 million employees at 54 S&P 500 high-tech and financial firms reveals that return-to-office (RTO) mandates are causing companies to lose top talent and struggle to find replacements. The research found a 14 percent average increase in employee turnover after RTO policies were implemented, with senior and skilled employees more likely to leave. Women experienced nearly three times the attrition rate of men. Furthermore, RTO mandates prolonged hiring times and increased costs. Companies' attempts to enforce RTO policies through surveillance tactics, such as VPN tracking and badge swipe monitoring, fueled employee resentment and furthered the exodus. The study suggests that RTO mandates reflect a culture of distrust and ineffective management, leading to decreased employee engagement.

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Cerbos Leverages CRDTs for Collaborative Playground

2024-12-17

Cerbos built a collaborative IDE and testing environment, the "Playground," to simplify complex authorization logic. To enable seamless collaboration, they utilize Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs), which automatically resolve conflicts in distributed systems. The article explores CRDTs, comparing popular libraries like Yjs and Automerge, and discusses the challenges and possibilities of building a custom CRDT. Cerbos integrates CRDTs with a backend-for-frontend (BFF) architecture, using WebSockets for data transfer and IndexedDB for local persistence, creating a robust collaborative platform. The challenges of global collaboration and data persistence are also addressed.

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Network Protocols: A Seemingly Simple Miracle

2024-12-17

This article provides a clear explanation of the network protocol stack, from reliable data transmission to the intricacies of the physical layer hardware, revealing its surprising complexity and ingenuity. Using an 88.5MB video download as an example, it illustrates how protocols like IP, TCP, and Ethernet work together to overcome network instability and packet loss, ultimately achieving reliable and efficient data transmission. The author reveals the complex routing algorithms, congestion control, and packet reassembly techniques hidden behind seemingly simple network operations, as well as the interdependencies and constraints between various protocols, and explains why the Ethernet packet size is set to 1500 bytes and other historical issues.

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CSIRO Launches AI-Powered Map Visualizing Open Access Water Security Research

2024-12-18

CSIRO has released the 'Atlas of Open Water Security Science,' an interactive map visualizing the geographical distribution of open-access water science publications from its Water Security Program since 2010. Powered by AI, this 3-month trial version extracts locations and context from publications, but may contain inaccuracies. Users can explore the evolution of research, click on publications for details, and learn more about CSIRO's AI innovation in environmental science. Use with caution.

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Modular Unveils MAX 24.6: A Native GPU Generative AI Platform

2024-12-17

Modular has released MAX 24.6, a native GPU generative AI platform designed to redefine how AI is developed and deployed. At its core is MAX GPU, a vertically integrated generative AI serving stack eliminating reliance on vendor-specific computation libraries like NVIDIA CUDA. Built on the high-performance AI model compiler and runtime MAX Engine and the Python-native serving layer MAX Serve, it supports the entire AI development lifecycle, from experimentation to production deployment. MAX 24.6 supports various hardware platforms, including NVIDIA A100, L40, L4, and A10 accelerators, with planned support for H100, H200, and AMD GPUs. It's compatible with Hugging Face models and provides an OpenAI-compatible client API. MAX 24.6 achieves a throughput of 3860 output tokens per second on Llama 3.1, matching vLLM's performance with a smaller Docker image size.

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OpenAuth: A Universal, Self-Hosted OAuth 2.0 Server

2024-12-17

OpenAuth is a universal, standards-based, open-source authentication provider. Deployable as a standalone service or embedded within existing applications, it's framework-agnostic and runs on Node.js, Bun, AWS Lambda, or Cloudflare Workers. Adhering to OAuth 2.0, OpenAuth offers a customizable, themeable UI. Unlike most open-source auth solutions which are libraries, OpenAuth is a centralized server designed for easy self-hosting on your infrastructure. It intentionally omits user management, instead providing callbacks for custom user lookup/creation. Data storage is minimal (refresh tokens, etc.) using a simple KV store (Cloudflare KV, DynamoDB). A pre-built UI is available, but you can easily customize or replace it entirely. Created by the SST team, OpenAuth simplifies authentication for your applications.

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The Moon: A Captivating Cosmic Journey

2024-12-17

This article takes a captivating journey through the intricacies of the Moon's motion, the Earth-Moon system, and the dynamics of a three-body system within our solar system. Using interactive demonstrations, the author explains phenomena like lunar orbits, tides, solar and lunar eclipses, and reveals the formation of lunar surface features and the reasons behind the Moon's brightness. Covering concepts such as gravity and the conservation of angular momentum, the article explains complex astronomical phenomena in an accessible way, making it a scientifically engaging and entertaining read.

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Misc Moon Cosmos
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