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Static Site Generators: Time Travel for Your Website

2025-09-02

Static Site Generators: Time Travel for Your Website

While revisiting old blog posts, the author discovered the power of using a static site generator (Eleventy) with Git for effortless time travel through their website's history. Eleventy's approach of fetching posts from a CMS and including them in each commit creates a full snapshot of the website at every commit. This contrasts with websites using databases (like WordPress), which make accessing past versions more difficult. While the author previously implemented a GitHub Action to take monthly screenshots, the combination of Eleventy and Git makes this less crucial.

(hamatti.org)

Development

Amazon Kills Prime Sharing, Likely to Boost Subscriptions

2025-09-02

Amazon Kills Prime Sharing, Likely to Boost Subscriptions

Amazon is ending its program that lets Prime members share their free shipping benefits with non-household members, effective October 1st, 2025. Instead, Amazon is replacing this with Amazon Family, limiting shared benefits to those residing at the same address. This move, mirroring similar actions by streaming services combating password sharing, is likely a response to missed Prime signup goals during the recent Prime Day event. Non-household members will be offered a discounted one-year Prime subscription.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Prime Membership Subscription

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-09-02

arXivLabs is an experimental framework enabling collaborators to build and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved share arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who adhere to them. Have an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Evolution's Surprise: Bursts of Change Rewrite the Story of Life

2025-09-02

Evolution's Surprise: Bursts of Change Rewrite the Story of Life

A new study challenges the traditional Darwinian view of gradual evolution, revealing bursts of rapid change in the history of life. Researchers used mathematical models to analyze evolutionary data from diverse organisms, including cephalopods, proteins, and human languages. They found that evolution isn't always slow and steady, but instead features concentrated periods of rapid evolution clustered at branching points in the evolutionary tree. This supports the punctuated equilibrium theory, suggesting species can remain stable for long periods before abruptly transforming into new species. The study offers a new perspective on the complexity and diversity of life's evolution.

(www.quantamagazine.org)

Tech punctuated equilibrium biological evolution

Moore's Law's End? The Bottleneck of Traditional Software Performance

2025-09-02

Over the past 20 years, certain aspects of hardware have advanced rapidly (e.g., core counts, bandwidth, vector units), but instructions per cycle, IPC, and latency have stagnated. This breaks old rules of thumb, such as "memory is faster than disk." The article argues that traditional software (single-threaded, non-vectorized) performance gains are limited by these stagnant metrics, leading to skyrocketing cache miss costs. The author suggests we need to rethink how we write software to fully utilize ever-improving hardware capabilities.

(www.bitflux.ai)

Tech software optimization

Mori-bito: A Powerful Terminal-Based LDAP Browser

2025-09-02

Mori-bito: A Powerful Terminal-Based LDAP Browser

Mori-bito (forest-person) is a terminal-based LDAP server explorer built with Go and BubbleTea, offering an interactive interface for browsing LDAP directory trees, viewing records, and executing custom queries. Features include interactive tree navigation, a record viewer with clipboard integration, a custom query interface with real-time results and pagination, flexible configuration, secure authentication, automatic update notifications, a modern TUI, and support for multiple connections. Installation is easy via Homebrew, manual download, or quick install scripts. A robust and user-friendly tool for managing LDAP servers.

(github.com)

Development

US Population Could Shrink for the First Time Ever: The Unintended Consequence of Trump's Immigration Policies?

2025-09-02

US Population Could Shrink for the First Time Ever: The Unintended Consequence of Trump's Immigration Policies?

The US population may shrink for the first time in its history in 2025, not due to war or plague, but potentially due to Trump's strict immigration policies. Data from the Pew Research Center shows a drop of over one million in the foreign-born population in the first half of the year. This, combined with the birth-death rate differential, could lead to population decline. This decline will have profound economic impacts, including labor shortages, rising food prices, housing shortages, and strain on the healthcare system. Additionally, a shrinking population will exacerbate fiscal pressures on Social Security and Medicare. The article explores the potential political and economic consequences of this demographic shift and potential future policy adjustments.

(www.derekthompson.org)

Tech

Toronto's Path: A Spontaneously Formed Pedestrian Subway Network

2025-09-02

Toronto's Path: A Spontaneously Formed Pedestrian Subway Network

Toronto's congested downtown spurred businesses to create a network of underground tunnels connecting offices to subway stations – "The Path." Over decades, this 30km+ system, independently managed by numerous owners, alleviated surface congestion and evolved into a thriving shopping mall. This unique case study in urban transportation planning raises the question: why hasn't a similar 'pedestrian metro' model been widely replicated in other cities?

(www.worksinprogress.news)

Misc underground tunnels

RubyMine Goes Free for Non-Commercial Use

2025-09-02

RubyMine Goes Free for Non-Commercial Use

JetBrains has announced that RubyMine, their popular Ruby and Rails IDE, is now free for non-commercial use! Whether you're learning, contributing to open source, creating dev content, or building personal projects, you can now enjoy the full power of RubyMine without cost. This move aims to lower the barrier to entry and support the vibrant Ruby community. Commercial use still requires a paid subscription. The free version offers the same features as the paid version, except for some limitations in Code With Me. Getting a free license is easy – just select the non-commercial use option within the IDE.

(blog.jetbrains.com)

Development Free IDE

Common Lisp's Tripartite Type System: Types, Classes, and the Machine's Truth

2025-09-02

This article delves into the unique aspects of Common Lisp's type system. It's not simply static or dynamic, but a sophisticated interplay of types, classes, and underlying machine implementation. Types govern function call compatibility, struct field compatibility, and compiler optimizations; classes dictate method dispatch and OO inheritance; while the machine hides implementation details like type tags. Through examples, the article shows how Common Lisp balances the fluidity of dynamic languages with runtime and compile-time type checking and optimization, ultimately boosting debuggability and performance.

(www.fosskers.ca)

Development

Learning to Love What You Hate: A Self-Experiment

2025-09-02

Learning to Love What You Hate: A Self-Experiment

The author proposes a unique hobby: trying to like things you dislike, using it as a tool to understand human nature. From disliking spinach to appreciating Michael Jackson, and the ongoing struggle with country music and television, the author demonstrates how our aversions often stem from self-perception rather than inherent qualities. Some preferences can be altered, while others are deeply ingrained, depending on the depth of subconscious programming and the difficulty of revising self-concept. The essay uses a lighthearted approach to prompt reflection on personal preferences and understanding.

(dynomight.net)

Misc preference change human nature

sd: A Blazing Fast CLI Find & Replace Utility

2025-09-02

sd: A Blazing Fast CLI Find & Replace Utility

sd is an intuitive command-line find and replace tool that's significantly faster and easier to use than sed and awk. It leverages regex syntax familiar from JavaScript and Python, offering a string-literal mode to avoid escaping hassles. sd boasts a clean, readable syntax and common-sense defaults. Its speed advantage is particularly noticeable with large files (e.g., a 1.5GB JSON file), outperforming sed by factors of 2.35x and even 11.93x. Features include in-place file modification, previewing changes, cross-project search and replace, and rich regex support, including capture groups and named capture groups. Install sd via cargo or various package managers.

(github.com)

Development

Firefox Launches New Tools for Focus, Privacy, and Smoother Mobile Browsing

2025-09-02

Firefox has rolled out several new features enhancing user privacy, focus, and mobile browsing experience. Android users get auto-locking private tabs for enhanced security, expanded language translation to Japanese, Chinese, Korean and more, while iOS users benefit from smarter password suggestions, a cleaner UI with an upgraded dark mode for a more focused browsing experience.

(www.mozilla.org)

Development Mobile Browsing

The Century-Long Keyboard War: QWERTY vs. Dvorak

2025-09-02

The Century-Long Keyboard War: QWERTY vs. Dvorak

This essay delves into the century-long history of the QWERTY and Dvorak keyboard layouts. QWERTY, far from being random, was ingeniously designed to solve mechanical limitations in early typewriters. Dvorak, conversely, aimed for efficiency and ergonomics. Despite Dvorak's demonstrated advantages in trials, historical factors like market inertia, switching costs, and a lack of sustained marketing prevented its widespread adoption. The article reveals the intricate interplay of technological progress, market forces, and human biases in shaping keyboard layouts, prompting reflection on technology standard selection and market competition.

(aresluna.org)

Tech qwerty dvorak

GRiSP: Tiny BEAM VMs for Embedded and Real-Time Systems

2025-09-02

GRiSP: Tiny BEAM VMs for Embedded and Real-Time Systems

The GRiSP family introduces three Erlang/Elixir runtimes: Metal, a tiny BEAM for microcontrollers fitting in 16MB RAM; Alloy, a Buildroot-based real-time Linux system supporting multiple VMs; and Forge, a Yocto-based solution offering customization and long-term support. All boast fast boot times, security, and direct BEAM boot, offering a compelling option for edge computing and real-time applications.

(www.grisp.org)

Development Real-time systems

Next.js Logging Nightmare: A Struggle with Production Logging

2025-09-02

Next.js Logging Nightmare: A Struggle with Production Logging

The author encountered a series of challenges while attempting to add production logging to a Next.js service. Next.js's middleware mechanism is heavily restricted, and AsyncLocalStorage couldn't bridge the rendering context, resulting in logging failures in pages and layout components. The author tried various methods, including a custom server, ultimately discovering that Next.js's design limited the implementation of logging features. A comparison with SvelteKit highlights Next.js's shortcomings in logging and the inefficiency of its GitHub issue tracker. The author expresses dissatisfaction with Next.js and considers alternatives for future projects.

(blog.meca.sh)

Development

ICEBlock: A Controversial App for Reporting ICE Sightings

2025-09-02

ICEBlock: A Controversial App for Reporting ICE Sightings

Joshua Aaron's ICEBlock app, designed to anonymously report ICE sightings, has garnered over a million downloads but faces significant controversy. Developed without input from immigrant advocacy groups, the app's unverified reports lead to numerous false positives, causing panic. The developer's refusal to open-source the app, coupled with a lack of transparency and apparent misunderstandings of security concepts, raises serious security concerns. While the developer's intentions may be good, the app's effectiveness and security are questionable and require improvement.

(micahflee.com)

Tech

Exclusive: Steve Ballmer on Microsoft, the Clippers, and Life

2025-09-02

Exclusive: Steve Ballmer on Microsoft, the Clippers, and Life

This episode of the Acquired podcast features an in-depth conversation with Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft. He reflects on Microsoft's triumphs and setbacks, including its partnership with IBM, the rise of Windows, missed opportunities in mobile and search, and the success of Azure. Ballmer also shares his insights on enterprise software and how he built the LA Clippers into a winning team. The conversation covers business strategy, leadership, and personal reflection, making for a compelling listen.

(www.acquired.fm)

Startup Steve Ballmer

50 Keyboards: A Retro Tech Extravaganza

2025-09-02

50 Keyboards: A Retro Tech Extravaganza

Marcin Wichary showcases his collection of 50 keyboards, ranging from antique typewriters to modern gaming keyboards, illustrating the evolution of keyboard design and technology. These keyboards are not merely input devices but snapshots of technological history, each with a unique story to tell. The accompanying images are stunning, highlighting the distinctive features of each keyboard.

(aresluna.org)

Hardware keyboard collection

LLMs: Lossy Encyclopedias

2025-09-02

Large language models (LLMs) are like lossy encyclopedias; they contain a vast amount of information, but this information is compressed, leading to data loss. The key is discerning which questions LLMs can answer effectively versus those where the lossiness significantly impacts accuracy. For example, asking an LLM to create a Zephyr project skeleton with specific configurations is a 'lossless' question requiring precise details, which LLMs struggle with. The solution is to provide a correct example, allowing the LLM to operate on existing facts rather than relying on potentially missing details within its knowledge base.

(simonwillison.net)

AI Information Loss Knowledge Base

Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou Overtakes Tokyo-Yokohama as Top Innovation Cluster

2025-09-02

Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou Overtakes Tokyo-Yokohama as Top Innovation Cluster

The UN's World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced that Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou has surpassed Tokyo-Yokohama to become the world's leading innovation cluster in its 2025 Global Innovation Index. This shift is due to WIPO's updated ranking criteria, which now incorporates venture capital investments, highlighting the translation of scientific knowledge into marketable products. The revised methodology led to a rise in US clusters and a boost for Indian clusters, while East Asian clusters saw a relative decline. China boasts the most clusters in the top 100, with 24.

(www.yahoo.com)

Tech Global Innovation Index Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou

The Thermocline of Truth in IT Projects

2025-09-02

This article explores the 'thermocline of truth' phenomenon in large IT projects: a barrier to accurate information within the organizational structure, where lower-level employees know the real progress while upper management holds an overly optimistic view. This stems from a lack of objective metrics, engineers' optimism, managers' reluctance to deliver bad news, and upper management rewarding good news and punishing bad news. The author uses personal anecdotes and real-world examples to illustrate this, emphasizing that breaking the 'thermocline' requires honesty from below, rewarding honesty from above, and avoiding unrealistic project timelines.

(brucefwebster.com)

Development

From Inkjet Printer to Pacemaker: The Legacy of Rune Elmqvist

2025-09-02

From Inkjet Printer to Pacemaker: The Legacy of Rune Elmqvist

Rune Elmqvist, a Swedish engineer and qualified physician, chose invention over medical practice, leaving behind a remarkable legacy. In 1949, he patented the Mingograph, the world's first inkjet printer, using a movable nozzle to deposit electrostatically controlled ink droplets onto paper. This innovation, initially used for real-time recording of electrocardiograms and electroencephalograms, laid the foundation for modern inkjet technology. More significantly, Elmqvist collaborated on the first fully implantable pacemaker, a life-saving device that has transformed cardiology. His story highlights not only technical brilliance but also the profound impact of engineering solutions on human lives, underscored by the compelling narrative of his creation of the pacemaker driven by a wife's desperate plea for her ailing husband.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech inkjet printing

A Programmer's Oath: Protect User, Data, and Truth

2025-09-02

Inspired by the Latin motto "Primum non nocere" (First, do no harm), the author proposes a new motto for programmers: "Tuere usorem, data, veritatem" (Protect user, data, truth). This emphasizes prioritizing user experience, ensuring data safety, and upholding truth in the face of technology's potential for misinformation. The author seeks feedback and discussion on this proposed ethical guideline.

(koas.dev)

Development programmer ethics

SpatialStudio Adds write_string Function

2025-09-02

SpatialStudio Adds write_string Function

SpatialStudio, a spatial video editing tool, recently added a new write_string function. This addition significantly enhances SpatialStudio's capabilities. Developer Daniel Habib shared the code on GitHub, encouraging users to check out the update. The related videos have already garnered over 200 views.

(www.splats.com)

Development Spatial Video

250 Years of Ice Cream Trucks: From Gang Wars to Electric Dreams

2025-09-02

250 Years of Ice Cream Trucks: From Gang Wars to Electric Dreams

This article chronicles the 250-year history of ice cream trucks in the UK, from humble beginnings to the eco-friendly electric vehicles of today. It explores the industry's ups and downs, including sanitation issues, gang wars, and the industry's efforts to adapt. Ultimately, the article highlights the unique charm and cultural significance of ice cream trucks and their transformation in modern society.

(longreads.com)

Misc ice cream trucks UK culture

From Return to Enter: A History of the Keyboard's Most Iconic Key

2025-09-02

From Return to Enter: A History of the Keyboard's Most Iconic Key

This article traces the fascinating evolution of the 'Return' key from typewriters to modern computer keyboards. Initially a mechanical lever, the typewriter's carriage return transformed into a key with the advent of electricity. Teletype machines decoupled carriage return and line feed for efficiency, adding complexity. Electronic word processors introduced 'soft' and 'hard' returns. Finally, the personal computer era saw IBM PCs adopt 'Enter' while Apple used 'Return,' establishing the current duality. The author reflects on the key's convoluted journey, highlighting the complexities inherited in modern software.

(aresluna.org)

Tech

Azure Cost Forecasts Explode After Migration Glitch

2025-09-02

Azure Cost Forecasts Explode After Migration Glitch

Several Microsoft Azure customers experienced a surge in cloud service cost forecasts due to a problematic account migration from the Microsoft Online Subscription Program (MOSP) to the Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA). Automated budget alerts went off, alarming users who saw costs unexpectedly skyrocket. One user's forecast jumped from £63 to £758.71. While Microsoft claims the underlying issue is resolved, users report difficulties contacting support and some forum comments being deleted. Microsoft advises users to monitor their portals and submit support requests if discrepancies persist.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech Billing Error

The End of Cheap Imports? US De Minimis Exemption Scrapped

2025-09-02

The End of Cheap Imports? US De Minimis Exemption Scrapped

A few years ago, I easily found a unicorn rug on Etsy for half the price of Anthropologie's. This was thanks to the US de minimis exemption, allowing small import goods to enter duty-free. Now, the Trump administration has ended this nearly century-old policy, meaning higher tariffs on goods from all countries. This will lead to price increases, reduced availability, and longer shipping times for many items, impacting consumer habits. The end of the exemption not only increases shopping costs but also might kill niche markets and force us to reconsider our consumption habits, avoiding unnecessary overspending.

(www.theatlantic.com)

Misc cross-border e-commerce

GenAI in Higher Ed: Students Speak Out

2025-09-02

GenAI in Higher Ed: Students Speak Out

A survey of 1047 students reveals widespread generative AI use in coursework, ranging from brainstorming to studying. While some use it for assignments or essays, many leverage it as a learning tool. Surprisingly, few students feel AI diminishes college value; almost all want proactive, not punitive, responses to academic integrity concerns. Students favor AI ethics education and clear usage guidelines over AI detection software or technology restrictions. The survey highlights the complex and varied impact of generative AI on student learning and critical thinking, presenting both opportunities and challenges.

(www.insidehighered.com)

Tech

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