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Rediscovering RSS: A Simple, Efficient Way to Read Blogs

2025-08-29

NetNewsWire, a free iPhone RSS reader, has become my go-to app. RSS, while an older technology, provides a surprisingly efficient way to consume blog content. By subscribing to RSS feeds, you get updates directly in the app, eliminating email clutter, website hopping, and distracting ads. All your blog content is centralized for easy reading, maximizing your downtime productivity.

(evanverma.com)

Misc Blog Reading

Python: The Documentary – Now Streaming!

2025-08-29

CultRepo's documentary, "Python: The Documentary," is now available on YouTube! This 90-minute film chronicles the incredible journey of Python, from a side project in 1990s Amsterdam to powering AI, data science, and some of the world's largest companies. Featuring interviews with Guido van Rossum, Travis Oliphant, Barry Warsaw, and many more, the documentary explores Python's rise, its community-driven evolution, internal conflicts, and its profound impact on the world. A preview was shown at EuroPython.

(lwn.net)

Development

TuneD: A Powerful Linux System Tuning Service

2025-08-28

TuneD is a robust system tuning service for Linux that monitors connected devices via udev, applies configuration profiles (sysctl, sysfs, kernel boot parameters), and uses a plugin architecture for flexible system optimization. It supports hot-plugging and can be controlled via the command line or D-Bus, integrating easily into existing admin solutions like Cockpit. TuneD uses a hierarchical configuration system simplifying maintenance and offers full rollback capabilities for testing and experimentation. Predefined profiles for various use cases (high throughput, low latency, powersave, etc.) are included, along with customizable profiles for specific applications (SAP, dBase, etc.). While documentation is still under development, resources include the Fedora Power Management Guide and a DevConf 2019 presentation. Development, bug reports, and downloads are managed on GitHub, welcoming community contributions.

(tuned-project.org)

Development system tuning

Cloudflare's Web Bot Auth: Secure Your Bots with Cryptographic Signatures

2025-08-28

Cloudflare's Web Bot Auth: Secure Your Bots with Cryptographic Signatures

Cloudflare introduces Web Bot Auth, an authentication method using cryptographic signatures in HTTP messages to verify requests originate from automated bots. This guide details integrating Web Bot Auth into Cloudflare, covering key generation (Ed25519), hosting a key directory, bot registration, and request signing. By adhering to IETF drafts, developers ensure their bot requests are verified, enhancing security and preventing abuse.

(developers.cloudflare.com)

Development

From $20K to $35M: A Startup Founder's Bank Adventure

2025-08-28

A young founder opened a business account at Chase bank early in his startup journey. As his company raised multiple funding rounds (from $1M to $24M), he interacted with a bank manager, Alex, who repeatedly called to 'check in' on his account, leaving him bewildered. Eventually, the founder moved the company's funds to Silicon Valley Bank and closed the Chase account. A year later, he was recognized at a Chase branch in LA as the founder of HashiCorp, revealing that local Chase employees knew about his company's massive account activity and used it as an internal training case. Even more shockingly, his previously unclosed Chase account revealed fraud, requiring him to withdraw a $1M cashier's check to close it, a process filled with unexpected challenges. This story highlights the naivete of startup founders concerning banking and the inner workings of large banks.

(mitchellh.com)

Startup

Lobster: A Lightweight Programming Language for Game Development

2025-08-28

Lobster is a programming language combining the benefits of static typing and compile-time memory management with a lightweight, user-friendly syntax. While general-purpose, its current implementation leans towards games and graphics, boasting 'batteries-included' functionality. Open-source (Apache v2), Lobster offers rapid prototyping, JIT and C++ compilation, strong type inference, vector operations, multithreading, a rich standard library, and a graphical debugger. It's cross-platform, supporting Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, and WebAssembly.

(www.strlen.com)

Development

Conway's Law and the Unexpected Power of Weak Ties

2025-08-28

Conway's Law and the Unexpected Power of Weak Ties

This article explores the unexpected implications of Conway's Law in team organization and project collaboration. The author argues that formal service line architectures often fail to reflect the reality of team collaboration. Many projects are driven by informal, cross-team 'weak ties', sparked by casual conversations, leading to unexpected projects and innovations. These weak ties, as described by Granovetter's 'strength of weak ties' theory, connect different teams and knowledge domains, sparking new ideas, highlighting inefficiencies, and uncovering opportunities hidden within silos. The author contrasts Slack and Microsoft Teams in their ability to foster weak ties, emphasizing the importance of choosing the right collaboration tools, as they shape team communication patterns and ultimately, product design.

(frederickvanbrabant.com)

Development Weak Ties

86-DOS: The Untold Story Behind the PC Revolution

2025-08-28

86-DOS: The Untold Story Behind the PC Revolution

In April 1980, a young programmer at Seattle Computer Products (SCP), Tim Paterson, began developing a small disk operating system, codenamed QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), for the new Intel 8086-based board. This project, initially designed as a quick fix for SCP's 8086 computer, unexpectedly evolved into Microsoft's MS-DOS, dominating the PC industry for over a decade. The article details QDOS's development, including the controversy surrounding its compatibility with CP/M's API, and Microsoft's acquisition of QDOS and its renaming to MS-DOS. The simplicity and CP/M-inspired API of QDOS, despite the resulting controversy, allowed for a quick release and made it a cornerstone of the PC era.

(nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com)

Tech

Mosh: A Superior Remote Terminal Protocol

2025-08-28

Mosh is a remote terminal protocol designed to address the challenges of high latency and network switching on the internet. Developed by Keith Winstein and others, it utilizes UDP packets for data transfer and features predictive echo and state synchronization for a smooth terminal experience even under poor network conditions or frequent network changes. Mosh prioritizes security, employing OCB3 encryption and boasting a strong security track record.

(mosh.org)

Development remote terminal mosh

Trump, the Fed, and the Distorted Reality of ZIRP: The Hidden Economic Risks Behind the Stock Market's Euphoria

2025-08-28

Trump, the Fed, and the Distorted Reality of ZIRP: The Hidden Economic Risks Behind the Stock Market's Euphoria

This article analyzes Trump's attempts to interfere with the Fed's independence and the distorting effects of the long-term zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) on the economy. Trump's attempt to fire a Fed governor is motivated by a desire to force interest rate cuts, threatening the Fed's independence and potentially leading to economic catastrophe. The article points out that ZIRP led to irrational expectations about future cash flows, fueling tech bubbles and financial risks. The stock market's optimistic response to Trump's actions contrasts sharply with the bond market's concerns about economic risks – a divergence that will eventually lead to market correction. The author argues that the Fed's independence is crucial and that the long-term effects of ZIRP represent a serious economic risk.

(www.splinter.com)

Tech Zero Interest Rate Policy Economic Risk

Chorus' Creator Incubator: Controversy and Hope

2025-08-28

Chorus' Creator Incubator: Controversy and Hope

Chorus, an organization aiming to support progressive content creators, launched a creator incubator program to help them produce high-quality political content. However, the program has faced controversy. Some creators accused Chorus of using their images for fundraising without permission and attempting to become a middleman between progressive political leaders and independent media. Despite this, many creators applied to join the program, hoping to gain funding and resources to produce better content and influence the political process. The future direction of the program and whether it can truly help independent media remains to be seen.

(www.wired.com)

Misc

ELEGANTBOUNCER: Mobile Exploit Detection Without Samples

2025-08-28

ELEGANTBOUNCER is a novel mobile security tool that detects malware by analyzing file structure instead of signatures. Without access to actual malicious samples, it detects known exploits leveraging vulnerabilities in JBIG2, WebP, TrueType, and DNG formats, such as FORCEDENTRY, BLASTPASS, and TRIANGULATION. The tool features parallel processing and a terminal UI, and can analyze iOS backups to detect threats hidden in messaging app attachments. It represents a paradigm shift in mobile threat detection: effective detection without a vault of secret samples, but by understanding the fundamental mechanics of exploitation.

(www.msuiche.com)

Tech exploit detection structural analysis

TrueNAS on a Raspberry Pi 5: A Hacky but Educational Journey

2025-08-28

The author attempts to run TrueNAS, a network storage system typically used on more powerful hardware, on a Raspberry Pi 5. Due to the Raspberry Pi's lack of official UEFI support, a community project, rpi5-uefi, is used. While successfully installing TrueNAS, limitations in UEFI mode—including missing fan, GPIO, and built-in Ethernet support, plus restrictions on multiple PCIe devices—prevent some hardware from being recognized. The author concludes that while a challenging learning experience, higher-end Arm hardware is still recommended for high-performance needs.

(www.jeffgeerling.com)

Hardware

Google's Device-Bound Session Credentials: The End of Session Hijacking?

2025-08-28

Session hijacking has long been a major threat to online security. Traditional cookie-based session management is vulnerable, leaving systems open to attack. To combat this, Google has introduced Device-Bound Session Credentials (DBSC), leveraging public-key cryptography. DBSC generates a key pair for each session, securely stored on the device (e.g., using TPM on Windows). This renders session identifiers useless on other devices, effectively preventing hijacking. Currently in beta for Google Workspace Chrome users (Windows), widespread adoption by other browser vendors could finally make session hijacking a relic of the past.

(www.feistyduck.com)

Tech session hijacking public-key cryptography

The Two Child Problem: Intuition vs. Reality in Probability

2025-08-28

The Two Child Problem: Intuition vs. Reality in Probability

A family has two children, and at least one is a girl. What's the probability both are girls? Intuition might suggest 1/2, but the correct answer is 1/3. This article uses probability trees and sample space to explain the counter-intuitive solution, highlighting the pitfalls of relying on intuition and neglecting problem details. It advocates for computer simulation to verify probability results, emphasizing the importance of precise problem definition, stating assumptions clearly, and avoiding reliance on 'common sense'.

(blog.engora.com)

Misc conditional probability paradox

Apple Removes Torrent Client iTorrent from AltStore in EU, Demonstrating App Store Control

2025-08-28

Apple Removes Torrent Client iTorrent from AltStore in EU, Demonstrating App Store Control

Apple has removed the iPhone torrent client, iTorrent, from the AltStore PAL alternative iOS app store in the EU. This action highlights Apple's continued ability to control apps outside its official App Store. Developer Daniil Vinogradov states Apple revoked his distribution rights across all alternative iOS stores, not just AltStore PAL. While Apple bans torrent apps from its own store, the EU's Digital Markets Act allows for third-party app stores. iTorrent's addition to AltStore last July raises the question of why Apple acted now.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

The VC Bubble Bursts: A Looming Winter?

2025-08-28

An analysis based on SEC Form D filings reveals an impending VC bubble burst. By tracking the number of Form Ds containing phrases like "Fund I", "Fund II", etc., the author shows that VC fund raising peaked in Q3 2022 before sharply declining. This is linked to the surge in VC funds during low-interest rate periods and the rise of "SPV-as-a-service" companies. The author predicts a significant decrease in available VC funding, driven by the typical 10-year lifespan of funds and a 2-4 year deployment period, now passing its peak. This coincides with the AI investment boom, leading to inflated valuations. The author concludes that future funding will drastically decrease, valuations will fall, many companies will struggle, and the AI hype cycle will cool.

(tj401.com)

Startup

LLMs: The End of OCR as We Know It?

2025-08-28

LLMs: The End of OCR as We Know It?

From the 1870s Optophone, a reading machine for the blind, to today's OCR, document processing has come a long way. Yet, challenges remain due to the complexities of human writing habits. Traditional OCR struggles with non-standardized documents and handwritten annotations. However, the advent of multimodal LLMs like Gemini-Flash-2.0 is changing the game. Leveraging the Transformer architecture's global context understanding and vast internet training data, LLMs can comprehend complex document structures and even extract information from images with minimal text, like technical drawings. While LLMs are more expensive and have limited context windows, their advantages in document processing are significant, promising a solution to document processing challenges within the next few years. The focus will shift towards automating the flow from document to system of record, with AI agents already proving helpful.

(cloudsquid.substack.com)

AI Document Processing

Beyond Booleans: Improving Software Design

2025-08-28

This article argues against the overuse of booleans in software design. The author contends that many seemingly appropriate boolean values can be replaced with richer data types like datetimes and enums. Using booleans often leads to information loss and makes code harder to maintain. The author suggests carefully analyzing the underlying data meaning behind booleans and choosing more appropriate types, such as using datetimes to record event times and enums to represent statuses or types. Booleans are only justifiable as temporary variables for intermediate calculation results. This approach improves software design quality, prevents potential bugs, and enhances code maintainability and readability.

(ntietz.com)

Development data types booleans

GPUPrefixSums: Portable GPU Prefix Sum Library for High-Performance Computing

2025-08-28

GPUPrefixSums: Portable GPU Prefix Sum Library for High-Performance Computing

GPUPrefixSums brings state-of-the-art GPU prefix sum techniques from CUDA to portable compute shaders. It introduces 'Decoupled Fallback,' a novel technique enabling prefix sum calculations even on devices lacking forward thread progress guarantees. The D3D12 implementation includes a comprehensive survey of algorithms, benchmarked against Nvidia's CUB library. Versions are available for Unity and as a barebones testbed. GPUPrefixSums aims to improve efficiency and portability, supporting parallel computing tasks like sorting, compression, and graph traversal.

(github.com)

Development prefix sum

The Tech Industry's Inclusion Illusion: A Schizoaffective Programmer's Story

2025-08-28

The Tech Industry's Inclusion Illusion: A Schizoaffective Programmer's Story

A programmer with schizoaffective disorder recounts their experience of being systematically excluded from over 20 tech companies over the past few years, each time after disclosing their mental health condition. This powerful essay details the systemic discrimination faced in healthcare, the workplace, and personal relationships, exposing the gap between tech companies' performative diversity initiatives and the reality of supporting employees with severe mental illnesses. The author calls for genuine inclusion across healthcare, professional environments, communities, and personal relationships, moving beyond superficial awareness.

(kennethreitz.org)

Tech workplace discrimination

Stricter Memory Safety Rules: Introducing Child Groups

2025-08-28

This article introduces a stricter memory safety rule by introducing the concept of "child groups." The old rule was too lenient; the new rule more precisely defines which references need to be invalidated when an object is mutated. Using the `Entity` struct as an example, the article explains how to distinguish between the object itself and its "child groups" (e.g., elements in a list, objects pointed to by pointers). The new rule states that when an object might be modified, references to the object itself remain valid, but references to child groups become invalid. Through code examples, the article clearly demonstrates how the new rule enhances memory safety and avoids dangling pointers.

(verdagon.dev)

Development references

Pleasure Reading Plummets 40% in the US: A Digital Age Warning?

2025-08-28

Pleasure Reading Plummets 40% in the US: A Digital Age Warning?

A new survey reveals a stark 40 percent decline in daily pleasure reading among US adults between 2003 and 2023. Researchers highlight this isn't a minor dip, but a sustained 3 percent annual decrease. This trend correlates with increased consumption of digital media. While those who still read are doing so for slightly longer, the decline is sharper among Black Americans, lower-income individuals, and those living outside cities, highlighting socioeconomic disparities. The research team urges targeted strategies, such as community-led initiatives, to reverse this concerning trend.

(www.sciencealert.com)

Misc declining readership socioeconomic disparity

AI Inference Costs: Not as Expensive as You Think

2025-08-28

AI Inference Costs: Not as Expensive as You Think

This article challenges the narrative that AI inference is prohibitively expensive and unsustainable. By calculating the costs of running AI inference on H100 GPUs, the author demonstrates that input processing is incredibly cheap (fractions of a cent per million tokens), while output generation is significantly more expensive (dollars per million tokens). This cost asymmetry explains the profitability of some applications (like coding assistants) and the high cost of others (like video generation). The author argues that this cost disparity is often overlooked, leading to an overestimation of AI inference costs, which may benefit incumbents and stifle competition and innovation.

(martinalderson.com)

AI AI inference cost model economics

Real-time AI Rendering of an ASCII Game: Challenges and Breakthroughs

2025-08-28

Real-time AI Rendering of an ASCII Game: Challenges and Breakthroughs

The author renders a prehistoric dinosaur game, "Thunder Lizard," in real-time using AI, transforming its ASCII graphics into high-definition visuals. This presented significant challenges: completing AI image generation, transmission, and display within 30 milliseconds. Leveraging fal.ai's low-latency inference capabilities and WebSocket connections, the author achieved 10 FPS rendering, albeit with noticeable latency. Model selection involved experimenting with ControlNet and image-to-image models, ultimately settling on a fast model and training custom LoRA weights to improve image quality. While the results aren't perfect, the experiment demonstrates the feasibility of real-time AI game rendering, opening exciting possibilities for future game development.

(blog.jeffschomay.com)

Game image generation models

Code Time Machine: Automatic Change Detection & One-Click Rollback

2025-08-28

This tool automatically monitors your entire project for file changes without any setup. Create instant snapshots of your project before risky changes with one click. A built-in diff viewer clearly shows changes between snapshots, tracking additions, modifications, and deletions. Instantly restore your project to any previous snapshot – a true code time machine for fearless experimentation. It seamlessly integrates with Claude Desktop via MCP protocol, automatically creating checkpoints upon task completion, and provides full project backups for peace of mind.

(claude-checkpoints.com)

Development code version control project backup diff viewer

Mastering the Core Math of Machine Learning: From Bayes to Attention

2025-08-28

This blog post provides a comprehensive guide to the most crucial mathematical equations in machine learning, covering probability, linear algebra, and optimization. It explains concepts like Bayes' Theorem, entropy, gradient descent, and backpropagation with clear explanations and Python code examples. Furthermore, it delves into advanced topics such as diffusion processes and the attention mechanism, providing practical implementations. This is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the core mathematical foundations of machine learning.

(chizkidd.github.io)

AI math equations

Deep Dive into GANs: The Math Behind Generative Adversarial Networks

2025-08-28

This post delves into the mathematical foundations of Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). Starting with the basic concepts, the author meticulously explains the loss functions of the generator and discriminator, deriving conditions for optimal discriminator and generator. Using mathematical tools like binary cross-entropy and JS divergence, the adversarial process between generator and discriminator during GAN training is clearly illustrated. The ultimate goal is to make the distribution of generated data as close as possible to that of real data. The post also briefly introduces GAN training methods and highlights subtle differences in formulas compared to Goodfellow's original paper.

(jaketae.github.io)

AI Generative Adversarial Networks

Synthetic Gasoline: A Green Alternative to Fossil Fuels?

2025-08-28

Synthetic Gasoline: A Green Alternative to Fossil Fuels?

Synthetic gasoline, also known as synthetic fuel or e-fuel, is a liquid fuel manufactured through chemical processes rather than extracted from crude oil. It uses readily available raw materials like CO2 and H2, converting them into hydrocarbon chains resembling conventional gasoline via processes like Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Its environmental impact hinges on the CO2 source: atmospheric capture or biomass combustion could lead to carbon neutrality or even negativity, while fossil fuel-derived CO2 diminishes its benefits. Currently expensive, its cost is expected to decrease with technological advancements and scale, potentially playing a significant role in sectors like aviation and shipping.

(iere.org)

Tech synthetic gasoline sustainable fuel

Insect Diapause: The Science of Manipulating Life's Pause Button

2025-08-28

Insect Diapause: The Science of Manipulating Life's Pause Button

From bears hibernating to insects entering diapause, nature is full of mysteries of life's pause button. This article delves into insect diapause – a programmed state of developmental arrest – and its immense potential in agriculture, disease control, and insect farming. For millennia, humans have indirectly controlled pest diapause through methods like crop rotation. Now, scientists are attempting to manipulate the hormones and environmental factors governing diapause for more precise pest control and to improve the efficiency of beneficial insect farming. Research on diapause not only promises huge economic benefits but also helps us better understand the very mysteries of life itself.

(www.asimov.press)

Tech insect diapause biological control

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