Potential Issue with zpool import/export in Linux OpenZFS

2024-12-26

A potential issue exists in Linux OpenZFS versions (as of 2.3.0) regarding importing and exporting ZFS pools. Even if no filesystems within a ZFS pool have the 'sharenfs' property set, `zpool import` and `zpool export` still run `exportfs -ra`. This can wipe out manually added or modified NFS exports, impacting environments like high-availability systems using custom NFS export configurations. The problem stems from OpenZFS blindly executing `exportfs -ra`, regardless of whether NFS exports need changing.

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Development

How to Handle Go Security Alerts: A Practical Guide

2024-12-26
How to Handle Go Security Alerts: A Practical Guide

This article provides a practical guide on handling Go security alerts. Using the December 2024 Go security vulnerabilities in golang.org/x/net and golang.org/x/crypto packages as examples, it details how to use govulncheck and Docker Scout to scan Docker images and Go source code for vulnerabilities, and how to update dependencies. The article emphasizes the importance of differentiating between potential security issues and actual risks, and recommends automating security testing and patching for efficiency and compliance with new EU cybersecurity regulations.

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Programmer Tackles Advent of Code 2024 on OS/2 Warp 4 with Java 1.0.1

2024-12-26

A programmer took on the Advent of Code 2024 challenge using Java 1.0.1 on a 1996 IBM OS/2 Warp 4 system. This wasn't just a coding challenge; it was a retro journey pushing the limits of outdated hardware and software. The article details the challenges encountered, including bugs in Java 1.0.1, performance bottlenecks, and limitations of the old system, and how these were overcome. This showcases not only coding prowess but also the charm of early computing technology and the programmer's perseverance.

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Development

Rethinking Zoning to Increase Affordable Housing

2024-12-26

An article by the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO) argues that restrictive land use regulations and zoning laws contribute to higher housing prices, reduced construction, and lower housing supply elasticity. Historically used to increase property values and sometimes exclude certain populations, zoning now hinders communities' ability to adapt. The article details the historical link between zoning and racial/income segregation and its negative environmental and health impacts. Six recommendations are proposed: eliminating single-family zoning, bundling zoning reforms, increasing density near transit, eliminating off-site parking requirements, allowing ADUs and SROs, and incentivizing reform at federal and state levels. Houston is cited as an example of a city where removing zoning restrictions led to increased housing construction. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for context-specific zoning reform.

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ELIZAGEN: Unveiling the History of the First Chatbot, ELIZA

2024-12-26
ELIZAGEN: Unveiling the History of the First Chatbot, ELIZA

ELIZAGEN.org is a comprehensive online resource dedicated to preserving and exploring the history of ELIZA, the world's first chatbot. The site houses various implementations of ELIZA across different programming languages (including the original MAD-SLIP, Lisp, and BASIC versions), along with historical documents, original code, experimental records, and papers. ELIZAGEN showcases ELIZA's evolution across platforms, from PDP-10s to modern web browsers. It offers a fascinating look into the origins, development, and impact of ELIZA, highlighting its lasting influence on AI and computer culture.

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Hardware-Efficient UNORM and SNORM to Float Conversion

2024-12-26
Hardware-Efficient UNORM and SNORM to Float Conversion

This blog post delves into the efficient hardware implementation of converting UNORM and SNORM integer formats to IEEE 754 binary32 floating-point numbers. The author details handling special values for 8-bit and 16-bit UNORM and SNORM, demonstrating how bit shifts and additions achieve precise conversion without complex division. Normalization and rounding are explained to ensure accuracy. The post concludes by summarizing the hardware cost, highlighting its efficiency.

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Hardware float conversion

DeepSeek-V3: A 671B-Parameter Open-Source Mixture-of-Experts Language Model

2024-12-26
DeepSeek-V3: A 671B-Parameter Open-Source Mixture-of-Experts Language Model

DeepSeek-V3 is a powerful 671-billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model activating 37 billion parameters per token. Utilizing Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) and the DeepSeekMoE architecture, it innovatively employs an auxiliary-loss-free load balancing strategy and a multi-token prediction training objective. Pre-trained on 14.8 trillion high-quality tokens, followed by supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning, DeepSeek-V3 outperforms other open-source models and achieves performance comparable to leading closed-source models with remarkable training efficiency—only 2.788M H800 GPU hours.

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AI

W3C HTML Working Group: Driving HTML Standard Evolution

2024-12-26
W3C HTML Working Group: Driving HTML Standard Evolution

The W3C HTML Working Group is dedicated to bringing WHATWG's HTML and DOM review drafts to W3C Recommendations. This group comprises global experts collaboratively ensuring the continued evolution and improvement of HTML standards to meet the ever-changing needs of the web. The group features a defined mission, participation process, and patent policy, and regularly publishes updates and event information.

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Node.js Enables --experimental-strip-types by Default, Enhancing TypeScript Support

2024-12-26
Node.js Enables --experimental-strip-types by Default, Enhancing TypeScript Support

A significant update to Node.js enables the `--experimental-strip-types` flag by default. This means developers can now execute TypeScript files without additional configuration. The change aims to improve TypeScript support and catch more bugs. While still experimental, this marks a major step towards simpler TypeScript development in Node.js, offering developers a more streamlined experience.

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Development Development

The Trap of 'I'm Not an Extrovert'

2024-12-26
The Trap of 'I'm Not an Extrovert'

This article recounts a story of Aditya, a college student who used introversion as an excuse to avoid social interaction, ultimately leaving his club. The author argues that introversion and extroversion are not absolute but rather choices. In the workplace, proactive communication and collaboration are essential skills, not inherent traits. Using the example of two engineers, Ram and Shyam, the author highlights the importance of communication skills for career advancement. While deep thinking requires energy, effective communication and collaboration lead to greater success. The author concludes that true friendships often stem from deep conversations, not superficial small talk.

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The Rise of Post-Literate History: A Growing Gap Between Scholars and the Public

2024-12-26
The Rise of Post-Literate History: A Growing Gap Between Scholars and the Public

This article explores the widening gap between the findings of professional historians and public understanding of history. Using Darryl Cooper's controversial interpretation of World War II as an example, the author points out that the public's understanding of history often remains simplistic and one-sided, ignoring years of in-depth academic research. The article compares the different accounts of the Crusades by Runciman and Riley-Smith, highlighting how Runciman's more literary style resonated more with the public while Riley-Smith's rigorous scholarship remained largely unknown. The author argues that limitations of modern academic publishing, declining levels of public culture, and shrinking attention spans contribute to the difficulty of disseminating quality historical work, potentially leading to the decline of historical research.

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Minecraft Server Crafted in COBOL: A Retro Rewind

2024-12-26
Minecraft Server Crafted in COBOL: A Retro Rewind

CobolCraft is a Minecraft server audaciously built using the legacy COBOL programming language. Despite COBOL's limitations in low-level data manipulation, this project surprisingly supports features like infinite terrain generation, dynamic chunk loading, and multiplayer capabilities. It even handles Minecraft's data files, showcasing the unexpected potential of this often-overlooked language and challenging perceptions of its capabilities. This project serves as a testament to programming ingenuity and an interesting experiment in using unconventional tools.

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Development Server Development

Racket School 2019: Designing Your Own Languages

2024-12-26

The "How to Design Languages" track at Racket School 2019 offered a deep dive into language-oriented programming and language building using Racket. The curriculum covered core concepts like macro expansion, modules, and type checking, reinforced with hands-on labs. Participants built simple macros and typed languages, gaining a practical understanding of language design principles. Lectures and labs provided a balanced learning experience, culminating in the ability to design and build custom languages.

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Undersea Power Cable Linking Finland and Estonia Damaged

2024-12-26
Undersea Power Cable Linking Finland and Estonia Damaged

An undersea power cable connecting Finland and Estonia, Estlink 2, suffered an outage on December 25th. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo confirmed the incident and stated that the possibility of sabotage cannot be ruled out. Fingrid, Finland's national electricity transmission grid operator, assured the public that Finland has sufficient power reserves. Estonian authorities also reported adequate capacity to meet their energy needs. This incident is the latest in a series of damaging events targeting undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, raising concerns about the security of critical infrastructure in the region.

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Design Space for Code Search Queries: ast-grep's Innovative Approach

2024-12-26
Design Space for Code Search Queries: ast-grep's Innovative Approach

ast-grep is an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)-based code search tool designed for ease of use, expressiveness, and precision. This blog post delves into the design space of code search queries, categorizing them into informal queries, formal queries based on existing programming languages, formal queries using custom languages, and hybrid queries. Each type's strengths and weaknesses are analyzed. ast-grep employs a hybrid approach, allowing users to write queries using familiar programming language syntax and offering more powerful expressiveness through YAML configuration files or a programmatic API for precise code search.

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Blender Addon: Differential Growth Simulates Organic Forms

2024-12-26

Boris Okunskiy has released Differential Growth, a Blender add-on that procedurally generates organic shapes and patterns inspired by nature. This free, open-source addon allows users to simulate growth processes, creating textures and forms reminiscent of lichen, lettuce, and algae. The author encourages users to download, experiment, and share their creations within the community.

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Trio: A Harmonious Blend of Musical Talents

2024-12-26

Trio is a musical ensemble comprised of three exceptionally talented musicians. Their music seamlessly blends diverse genres, creating a unique and captivating auditory experience. Their masterful skills and seamless collaboration infuse each note with emotion, making every movement memorable. Their musical journey, much like life itself, is filled with ups and downs, hope and challenges, culminating in a moving symphony.

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arXiv: How Preprints Revolutionized Research Sharing

2024-12-26
arXiv: How Preprints Revolutionized Research Sharing

From papyrus to preprints, the dissemination of scientific research has undergone a dramatic transformation. This article traces the history of peer review and highlights the emergence of arXiv and its impact on the scientific community. arXiv, as a preprint server, broke down the barriers of traditional journals, enabling rapid and open sharing of research findings. However, it also faces challenges related to quality control and information overload. The author explores the conflict and convergence between preprint culture and traditional academic publishing models, and the profound impact it has on the future direction of scientific research.

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SiYuan: A Privacy-First, Self-Hosted Personal Knowledge Management System

2024-12-26
SiYuan: A Privacy-First, Self-Hosted Personal Knowledge Management System

SiYuan is a privacy-first, self-hosted, fully open-source personal knowledge management software written in TypeScript and Go. It boasts features like fine-grained block-level referencing, Markdown WYSIWYG editing, custom attributes, SQL query embedding, web clipping, and PDF annotation link export. Available via app stores (App Store, Google Play, F-Droid) and Docker, SiYuan offers a powerful yet user-friendly experience. Most features are free for both personal and commercial use.

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Development knowledge management

Coccinelle: A Powerful Tool for Linux Kernel Development

2024-12-26

Coccinelle is a powerful tool for Linux kernel development, used for pattern matching and text transformation. It enables the application of complex, tree-wide patches and detects problematic coding patterns. This document details Coccinelle's installation, usage, various modes (patch, report, context, org), and advanced features such as parallelization, using a single semantic patch, controlling processed files, debugging, and .cocciconfig support. Coccinelle leverages Semantic Patch Language (SmPL) and offers multiple modes for generating patches, reports, context information, and Org-mode reports, catering to diverse needs.

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Development

egui: An Immediate Mode GUI in Rust

2024-12-26

egui is a lightweight and efficient immediate mode GUI (graphical user interface) library written in Rust. Its clean and simple API allows developers to rapidly build interactive interfaces. Unlike traditional retained-mode GUIs, egui redraws the entire UI every frame, leading to more flexible layouts and simpler state management. This makes it ideal for games, data visualization, and applications requiring high responsiveness. Its ease of use and powerful features make egui a compelling choice for Rust developers building GUIs.

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Development

Black Candy: A Self-Hosted Music Streaming Server

2024-12-26
Black Candy: A Self-Hosted Music Streaming Server

Black Candy is a self-hosted music streaming server, your personal music center. It offers easy installation via Docker, allowing you to quickly set up your own music streaming service. A demo is available for testing. While SQLite is the default database, PostgreSQL is also supported. Data persistence is managed by mounting the /app/storage directory. For improved performance, Nginx proxy is supported, and mobile apps are available.

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Development self-hosted

POSIX Time: Not What You Think

2024-12-26

This article debunks a common misconception about POSIX time (Unix time): it's not simply the number of seconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00. Due to leap seconds, the number of seconds in a UTC day isn't a constant 86,400, leading to discrepancies between POSIX time and the actual number of seconds. The article delves into the impact of leap seconds on time calculations and recommends alternatives like CLOCK_MONOTONIC or TAI for precise timekeeping, avoiding errors caused by leap seconds.

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Development POSIX time leap seconds

Visualizing the YC Company Landscape

2024-12-26

Mike Alche has created a visualization tool showcasing the Y Combinator (YC) company landscape. This interactive tool provides a clear overview of the industries represented, investment relationships, and growth trajectories of YC-backed companies. Its intuitive design and clear charts offer a unique perspective on the YC ecosystem, revealing connections and trends among startups. This is a valuable resource for entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone interested in the tech industry.

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Startup Startups

A 50-Year-Old Bug in C's File I/O: Unraveling a Legacy Mystery

2024-12-26

While improving a DOS emulator, a developer stumbled upon a seemingly trivial bug in file I/O: appending text to a file using the `echo` command produced unexpected results. Debugging revealed a flaw in how C runtime libraries handle switching between reading and writing, a flaw tracing back to the 1970s and even earlier UNIX systems. The article delves into the historical context, from early K&R C to modern C standards, exploring implementation differences across various UNIX versions and C compilers. The root cause is identified as limitations in early C libraries' handling of update mode, with variations in how different operating systems and compilers addressed these limitations. The author concludes that even today, for portable C code, an explicit `fseek` call is necessary when switching between reading and writing a file.

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Development file I/O legacy bug

Super Snowflake Maker: A Winter Technological Wonder

2024-12-26
Super Snowflake Maker: A Winter Technological Wonder

The 'Super Snowflake Maker' is not just a toy; it's a technological marvel that uses physics to create intricately shaped ice crystals resembling snowflakes. A precise control system sprays water droplets into an ultra-low temperature environment, instantly freezing them into various snowflake forms. Its design blends scientific rigor with artistic creativity, offering a captivating spectacle. Science enthusiasts and art lovers alike will find unique enjoyment and inspiration.

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Tech Physics Art

Nordic Unveils VPR: Its First RISC-V Processor, Ushering in a New Era of Heterogeneous Computing

2024-12-26
Nordic Unveils VPR: Its First RISC-V Processor, Ushering in a New Era of Heterogeneous Computing

Nordic Semiconductor has launched VPR, its first RISC-V processor, integrated into the new nRF54H and nRF54L SoCs. VPR, an RV32EMC processor running at up to 320MHz, is designed for software-defined peripherals. The article details VPR's architecture, initialization process, and collaboration with the Arm Cortex-M33. Zephyr's sysbuild simplifies building and deploying VPR applications, enabling heterogeneous computing for enhanced performance and functionality.

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Postgres Reads Causing Writes: MVCC, Page Pruning, and Hint Bits

2024-12-25

This article delves into the seemingly paradoxical behavior in PostgreSQL where simple SELECT queries can trigger data writes. Starting with the Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC) mechanism, it explains concepts like row versions, pages, and tuples. Through code examples, it analyzes how hint bit updates and page pruning cause read operations to modify pages, ultimately leading to disk writes. The article also discusses the HOT update optimization strategy and uses page inspection tools to illustrate how data is stored and updated within pages.

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Development Database Performance

Hertz Desperate to Offload Tesla Inventory, Offers Deep Discounts

2024-12-25
Hertz Desperate to Offload Tesla Inventory, Offers Deep Discounts

Rental car giant Hertz is aggressively selling off its Tesla Model 3 inventory at drastically reduced prices. A Hertz customer posted on Reddit a screenshot showing a 2023 Model 3 with 30,000 miles for just $17,913 – significantly below market value. While buying used rental cars carries risks, the low price and remaining battery warranty are tempting many. Hertz's move is likely a response to high depreciation on its large Tesla fleet and a push to clear inventory before year-end.

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