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sixos: A Nixpkgs-based OS Replacing systemd with s6

2025-01-31
sixos: A Nixpkgs-based OS Replacing systemd with s6

Adam Joseph announced the release of sixos, a new operating system built on Nixpkgs and using s6 instead of systemd. Rejecting systemd's monolithic design, sixos employs the simpler infuse combinator for service management, mirroring Nixpkgs' package handling. It also integrates ownerboot for complete version control and secure management of firmware, eliminating the artificial distinction between firmware and software. Currently running on workstations, servers, routers, and more, sixos offers a lightweight and secure alternative.

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(media.ccc.de)
Development

Google Pixel 4a Update Halves Battery Life for Some Users

2025-01-31
Google Pixel 4a Update Halves Battery Life for Some Users

A recent Google software update for the Pixel 4a, intended to improve battery stability, has unexpectedly halved battery life for some users. Investigations revealed that the Pixel 4a uses two different battery types. The Lishen battery, after the update, experiences a reduced maximum charge voltage and a 50% capacity decrease. Google offers free battery replacements, $100 Google Store credit, or $50 cash compensation, but a rollback isn't possible. This highlights the potential unforeseen consequences of software updates and the importance of manufacturer response.

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(liliputing.com)
Hardware Battery Issues Software Update

A Minimalist Ruby X11 Window Manager: rubywm

2025-01-31
A Minimalist Ruby X11 Window Manager: rubywm

Frustrated with existing window managers, the author created rubywm, a minimalist window manager written in under 1000 lines of pure Ruby (including the X11 driver). It supports tiling and floating window layouts but lacks window decorations and drag-and-resize functionality. All keyboard handling is delegated to external tools like sxhkd, and communication happens via X11 ClientMessage events. Currently, it only supports single monitors and is experimental, prone to crashing. The author's primary goal is personal use, not a large user base.

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(github.com)
Development

North American Ski Resorts Face Existential Threat: Climate Change and Environmental Regulations

2025-01-31
North American Ski Resorts Face Existential Threat: Climate Change and Environmental Regulations

The North American ski industry is facing a crisis. Since the boom of the 1960s and 70s, over half of all ski resorts have closed, driven by climate change, environmental regulations, and shifting consumer demands. The study highlights the unsustainable water and energy consumption of artificial snowmaking, along with negative impacts on vegetation and wildlife. To survive, resorts must adopt sustainable practices, including investing in eco-friendly technologies, diversifying their offerings, implementing multi-resort passes, and exploring innovative ownership models to adapt to the changing climate and environmental pressures while maintaining profitability.

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(www.mdpi.com)
Tech ski resorts

Deploying the 671B Parameter DeepSeek R1 LLM Locally

2025-01-31

This post details the experience of deploying the 671B parameter DeepSeek R1 large language model locally using Ollama. The author experimented with two quantized versions: 1.73-bit and 4-bit, requiring at least 200GB and 500GB of memory respectively. On a workstation with four RTX 4090s and 384GB of DDR5 RAM, the 1.73-bit version showed slightly faster generation speed, but the 4-bit version proved more stable and less prone to generating inappropriate content. The author recommends using the model for lighter tasks, avoiding long text generation which significantly slows down the speed. Deployment involved downloading model files, installing Ollama, creating a model file, and running the model; adjusting GPU and context window parameters might be necessary to prevent out-of-memory errors.

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(snowkylin.github.io)
Development Model Deployment

Website Load Failure: JavaScript or Browser Issue

2025-01-31

An error occurred while loading the website, indicating that JavaScript is disabled or there are network issues, browser extensions, or browser settings problems. It is recommended to check your network connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.

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(pypi.org)
Misc

Phaser v4 Beta 5: Million Sprites Rendered with GPU Acceleration

2025-01-31
Phaser v4 Beta 5: Million Sprites Rendered with GPU Acceleration

Phaser 4 engine's Beta 5 release introduces the groundbreaking Sprite GPU Layer game object. This object can effortlessly handle over a million animated sprites on the GPU, dramatically boosting rendering performance. The article showcases its power through several demos, demonstrating its capabilities in handling massive backgrounds, animated characters, and particle effects, such as the 'Big Forest' demo with 1.4 million smoothly animated sprites. While lacking interactivity, its built-in animation features allow for rich visual effects. Beta 5 fixes issues from Beta 4 and marks significant progress towards a February final release.

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(phaser.io)
Game GPU Rendering

US Copyright Office: No New Laws Needed for AI-Assisted Works

2025-01-31
US Copyright Office: No New Laws Needed for AI-Assisted Works

The US Copyright Office declared this week that existing laws suffice to address copyright issues surrounding AI-assisted works, negating the need for new legislation. Over 10,000 comments urged stronger protections for artists in the age of AI. The office responded by referencing a 1965 precedent when similar authorship questions arose with the advent of advanced computer technology. Then, Register of Copyrights Abraham Kaminstein stated there's no one-size-fits-all solution. This remains the office's stance; only fully AI-generated content is ineligible for copyright protection. Works with human-authored expressive elements, even with AI assistance, retain copyrightability.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech AI Authorship

Video Game History Foundation Launches Digital Library

2025-01-31
Video Game History Foundation Launches Digital Library

The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) has launched its digital library, a treasure trove of historical video game materials. This includes scans of the 1999 E3 catalog and old PC Gamer magazines, even unearthing information on the obscure 3D racing game Pretzel Pete. Digitizing this information proved challenging, requiring the development of a custom text recognition tool to handle the complex layouts of 90s gaming magazines. While direct access to game ROMs is currently restricted by copyright, the VGHF continues to advocate for change.

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(arstechnica.com)
Game

Children's Literature: A Resistance to the Market and an Engine of Wonder

2025-01-31
Children's Literature: A Resistance to the Market and an Engine of Wonder

This essay explores the evolution and importance of children's literature. From its origins as moral instruction manuals to today's imaginative and diverse works, children's literature has moved beyond regulating children to focusing on their real needs and imaginations. The author argues that great children's literature not only brings joy but also cultivates critical thinking, moral awareness, and a deep understanding of the world, offering a bulwark against negativity and ultimately serving as an engine of wonder and hope.

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(www.lrb.co.uk)
Misc children's literature imagination

Reaktiv: A Reactive Programming Library for Python

2025-01-31
Reaktiv: A Reactive Programming Library for Python

Reaktiv is a reactive programming library for Python, inspired by Angular's reactivity model and featuring first-class async/await support. It simplifies building and managing data-dependent signals, automatically updating dependencies when data changes. With a straightforward API, Reaktiv supports both synchronous and asynchronous contexts, boasts automatic dependency tracking, zero external dependencies, and efficient memory management, significantly reducing the complexity of asynchronous programming.

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(github.com)
Development reactive programming

RCA: The Rise and Fall of a Roaring Twenties Tech Giant

2025-01-31

RCA was a household name in the 1920s, its stock price soaring 200-fold thanks to breakthroughs in radio broadcasting. However, after the 1929 crash and subsequent antitrust actions, RCA, despite a period of recovery, failed to find new avenues for growth. Ultimately, it was acquired by General Electric in 1986, ending its dramatic and ultimately short-lived reign. This article uses RCA's story as a case study to explore the rise and fall of technology companies, prompting reflection on the future of today's tech giants.

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(globalfinancialdata.com)
Tech Stock Market

Authors Guild Launches 'Human Authored' Certification to Combat AI-Generated Books

2025-01-31
Authors Guild Launches 'Human Authored' Certification to Combat AI-Generated Books

In response to the surge of AI-generated books on platforms like Amazon, the Authors Guild has launched a 'Human Authored' certification. This initiative aims to provide readers with clarity on authorship, distinguishing human-written books from AI-generated content. Currently limited to Guild members and single-author books, the certification will expand to include non-members and multiple authors in the future. While minor AI assistance like grammar checks is permissible, the certification emphasizes that the core literary expression must be of human origin. The Guild frames this not as anti-technology, but as a push for transparency and the recognition of the unique human element in storytelling.

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(www.theverge.com)
AI

Apple Q1 Earnings: Record Revenue, AI-Powered Future

2025-01-31
Apple Q1 Earnings: Record Revenue, AI-Powered Future

Apple announced its financial results for fiscal Q1 2025 (calendar Q4 2024), reporting record revenue of $124.3 billion, a 4% year-over-year increase. Earnings per share rose 10% to $2.40. Services, Mac, and iPad revenues saw significant growth, while iPhone and Wearables experienced slight declines. CEO Tim Cook highlighted this as Apple's best quarter ever, emphasizing the role of Apple Intelligence in enhancing user experience and driving future growth. Apple Intelligence will support more languages in April. The earnings call also provided guidance for the next quarter, projecting low-to-mid single-digit revenue growth.

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(www.macrumors.com)
Tech Apple Earnings Revenue Growth

A Global Collection of Modern Literary Novels

2025-01-31

This website celebrates the modern literary novel worldwide since the early 20th century, categorized by nationality. It's a personal yet extensive survey of literary fiction since 1900, constantly expanding. Discover over 1700 authors writing in or translated into English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish. Each entry includes biography, bibliography, and selected book reviews. Created by a translator, this is a personal collection aimed at providing a valuable resource for literature enthusiasts. As Mia Couto says, "Books are never written. When we read them, we write them."

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(www.themodernnovel.org)
Misc modern literature literary fiction world literature

Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems and the Future of Computation: A Mathematical Western

2025-01-30
Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems and the Future of Computation: A Mathematical Western

This poem, styled as a Western, narrates key events in mathematical history, from the paradoxes of set theory to the proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, the advent of Turing machines and von Neumann architecture, and finally the P vs NP problem. Using vivid metaphors and a highly narrative approach, it depicts the challenges and achievements of mathematicians in their quest for truth, and the impact of technological advancements on human society. Gödel's incompleteness theorems, like a landmine buried in the field of computation, hint at the limitations of computation and prompt reflection on the future direction of artificial intelligence.

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(taylor.town)
AI Gödel's incompleteness theorems computational theory

Jane Street's Decade-Long Journey: From Jenga to Dune

2025-01-30
Jane Street's Decade-Long Journey: From Jenga to Dune

Jane Street initially built Jenga, an OCaml build system, but its limitations led to its limited adoption and even a reversal of its open-source status. They then created the simpler Jbuilder, which unexpectedly gained popularity due to its speed, eventually evolving into Dune. After years of effort, the Jane Street team successfully migrated their internal build system from Jenga to Dune for their 70 million lines of code, boosting build speeds and setting a strong foundation for Dune's future.

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(blog.janestreet.com)
Development

The Science of Mocktails: Mimicking the Taste of Alcohol

2025-01-30
The Science of Mocktails: Mimicking the Taste of Alcohol

This article delves into the science behind creating alcohol-free cocktails that taste remarkably similar to their alcoholic counterparts. It challenges the common assumption that alcohol's flavor is dominant, instead highlighting the role of trigeminal nerve stimulation (the burning sensation) and its drying effect on the mouth. The article analyzes the bitterness and sweetness of low-alcohol beverages and how alcohol enhances other flavor compounds. By using spicy ingredients like ginger and chili to mimic the burn, and strong tea tannins to replicate the astringency, one can craft mocktails with a similar mouthfeel. The focus, however, isn't on perfectly replicating the taste of alcohol, but rather using these elements to enhance the overall flavor profile.

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(www.seriouseats.com)
Misc mocktails alcohol-free cocktails sensory science

India Welcomes Chinese AI: DeepSeek Deploys Amidst Massive Compute Center Launch

2025-01-30
India Welcomes Chinese AI: DeepSeek Deploys Amidst Massive Compute Center Launch

India's IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw announced that DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, will host its large language models on Indian servers, marking a rare opening for Chinese technology in India. This comes as India invests heavily in its own AI sector, unveiling a new AI compute facility boasting 18,693 GPUs and offering significant discounts to Indian firms. DeepSeek's R1 model, recently released to much fanfare for its performance relative to its development cost, has shaken the tech industry, impacting Nvidia's market cap. India aims to attract $30 billion in hyperscaler and data center investments over the next few years, fostering the development of homegrown AI models and establishing a regulatory body to ensure AI safety.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech China Tech

Google Offers Voluntary Exit Program for Platforms & Devices Team

2025-01-30
Google Offers Voluntary Exit Program for Platforms & Devices Team

Google announced a voluntary exit program for US-based employees in its Platforms & Devices group, encompassing Android, Pixel, Fitbit, and more. This follows last year's merger of Pixel hardware and Android software teams. The program offers severance packages and aims to ensure remaining employees are fully committed to the company's mission and focused on efficient product development. It's not a company-wide layoff but rather a response to integration challenges and role adjustments following the merger.

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(9to5google.com)
Tech restructuring

OpenAI Partners with US National Labs to Supercharge Scientific Research with AI

2025-01-30
OpenAI Partners with US National Labs to Supercharge Scientific Research with AI

OpenAI announced a partnership with US National Labs, leveraging AI to advance scientific research and serve national security and public good. Over 15,000 scientists will gain access to OpenAI's latest reasoning models, potentially leading to breakthroughs in materials science, renewable energy, astrophysics, and more. Key areas of focus include bolstering US global tech leadership, disease treatment and prevention, cybersecurity, power grid protection, threat detection, and furthering our understanding of the universe. The partnership aims to unlock the potential of natural resources and revolutionize the nation's energy infrastructure, while also significantly enhancing national security research.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech National Labs

The New Yorker's Obscure Punctuation Marks: Diaereses vs. Umlauts

2025-01-30
The New Yorker's Obscure Punctuation Marks: Diaereses vs. Umlauts

A viral article about The New Yorker's use of diaereses sparked a discussion about the difference between diaereses and umlauts. The article explains that The New Yorker uses diaereses in words like "coöperate" to indicate that the two vowels should be pronounced separately, not as a diphthong. However, diaereses and umlauts look similar but serve different purposes: diaereses separate adjacent vowels, while umlauts indicate a change in vowel pronunciation. The article traces the origins of both marks, explains their usage in English and German, and explores how the umlaut sound change has affected the spelling and pronunciation of English words. It concludes with a humorous summary of the differences between diaereses and umlauts, and reveals the historical and cultural reasons behind The New Yorker's continued use of diaereses, despite reader complaints.

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(www.arrantpedantry.com)
Misc style guide

Uzbekistan's Vanishing Sea and Eternal Flames: A Journey Through Life and Death

2025-01-30
Uzbekistan's Vanishing Sea and Eternal Flames: A Journey Through Life and Death

This article recounts the author's journey through Uzbekistan, exploring the remnants of the Aral Sea, desiccated by Soviet cotton farming, alongside historical sites like the Mizdakhan necropolis and Chilpik Kala. The journey interweaves ancient ruins with modern ecological disaster, showcasing the resilience of life in extreme environments and the destructive impact of human actions on the environment. From the vanishing Aral Sea to eternally burning gas craters, from ancient Zoroastrian sites to modern cemeteries, the author blends history, culture, ecological catastrophe, and human tenacity into a poignant and hopeful narrative.

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(www.noemamag.com)
Tech ecological disaster Uzbekistan

Distr: Simplifying Enterprise Software Distribution

2025-01-30
Distr: Simplifying Enterprise Software Distribution

Distr simplifies distributing enterprise software to customer-controlled or shared-responsibility environments. It features an intuitive web UI for viewing deployments and agents, a white-label customer portal for customer control, an API accessible via a rich SDK, and is fully open-source and self-hostable. The Distr Hub is distributed as a Docker image with a Docker Compose example deployment. Comprehensive documentation covers self-hosting and building from source, and a JavaScript SDK is available for application integration.

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(github.com)
Development Software Distribution

Unearthing the Oldest Lines in Your Git Repo

2025-01-30

The author shares a shell script to find the oldest lines of code in a Git repository. The script uses `git blame` along with `find` and `awk` to filter non-binary files and identify the earliest committed lines, revealing a glimpse into the project's history. While currently limited to commits after 2000, it offers a fascinating look at how the codebase has evolved.

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(milofultz.com)
Development Code History

Automating Customer Workflows: From Onboarding to Compliance

2025-01-30

This article outlines three automated customer workflows: customer onboarding (document collection, identity verification, account setup, welcome calls, and automated welcome materials), KYC (verifying client identity, assessing risk, collecting documentation, background checks, and maintaining compliance records), and contract review (initial draft review, legal team approval, stakeholder feedback, revision tracking, electronic signature collection, and final document storage). Automating these processes significantly improves efficiency, reduces risks, and enhances the customer experience.

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(www.workflow86.com)
Development customer workflow automation contract management

Massive California Law Enforcement Database Abuse Revealed

2025-01-30
Massive California Law Enforcement Database Abuse Revealed

A report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) exposes widespread abuse of sensitive criminal justice databases by California law enforcement agencies. In 2023 alone, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LACSD) accounted for a majority of the state's 7,275 reported violations of the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS), with 6,789 abuses primarily involving unauthorized background checks for concealed carry permits. Other abuses included using data for personal vendettas and password sharing. From 2019-2023, 761 investigations revealed at least 7,635 violations across the state, leading to suspensions, resignations, and firings of officers. The report highlights the need for stronger oversight of law enforcement databases.

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(www.eff.org)
Tech database abuse

Optical Frequency Combs: A Ruler for Light

2025-01-30
Optical Frequency Combs: A Ruler for Light

Optical frequency combs, Nobel Prize-winning technology, act like a ruler for light, precisely measuring the frequencies of light waves across the electromagnetic spectrum. This revolutionary technology bridges the gap between radio/microwave and optical frequencies, enabling advancements in atomic clocks, astronomy, atmospheric science, and even medical diagnostics. NIST scientists are at the forefront of this field, continuously improving the accuracy and miniaturization of these devices. Future applications include integration into microchips for broader commercial use.

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(www.nist.gov)
Tech optical frequency combs atomic clocks precision measurement
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