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Rust Compile Times: From 25 Minutes to 2 Minutes

2025-04-17

Rust Compile Times: From 25 Minutes to 2 Minutes

The Feldera team encountered excessively long compile times when compiling large SQL-generated Rust code. An 8,562-line SQL program translated to ~100k lines of Rust took 25 minutes to compile. Techniques like type erasure and code deduplication yielded minimal improvements. The breakthrough came from splitting the generated Rust code into 1,106 smaller crates, enabling parallel compilation and dramatically reducing compile time to under 2 minutes, fully utilizing multi-core processors.

(www.feldera.com)

Development compile optimization multi-core parallelism

DocumentCloud: An Online Document Collaboration Platform

2024-12-31

DocumentCloud is an online platform that allows users to upload, collaboratively edit, and share various types of documents. It offers powerful search and organizational features, making it easy to manage large volumes of files. For journalists, researchers, and organizations needing team collaboration, DocumentCloud is a valuable tool that increases efficiency and facilitates information sharing.

(legacy.www.documentcloud.org)

Development document collaboration online platform information sharing

SignalGate: A Wake-Up Call on Digital Security

2025-04-24

SignalGate: A Wake-Up Call on Digital Security

The SignalGate scandal exposes a major digital security lapse within the U.S. government. High-ranking officials, including the Secretary of Defense, inadvertently shared highly sensitive military operation plans via unauthorized channels like Signal and personal phones. This not only violates federal laws but also highlights the vulnerability of the U.S. government to increasingly sophisticated cyber espionage. The article underscores the risks of using personal devices for sensitive communications, making them susceptible to targeted attacks and surveillance, even with encryption. It also emphasizes the dangers of advertising intelligence firms collecting user data, which can be exploited by hostile actors. The article concludes with a call for tighter regulation of the surveillance industry and stronger measures to protect sensitive information.

(www.foreignaffairs.com)

Tech digital espionage

American Science & Surplus: A Maker's Paradise Facing the E-commerce Tide

2025-06-04

American Science & Surplus: A Maker's Paradise Facing the E-commerce Tide

American Science & Surplus, founded in 1937, has seen its share of ups and downs. From its origins selling lenses and lab equipment, it has expanded to include science toys, craft supplies, and a vast array of electronic components and tools, embodying the maker ethos. However, the rise of e-commerce has impacted some previously popular items, such as telescopes, leading to decreased sales. The store's long history, its unique inventory, and its relationship with a now-defunct Radio Shack paint a nostalgic picture of a bygone retail era, while its current offerings still inspire creativity and innovation.

(arstechnica.com)

Misc maker culture

Conquering Operational Toil: The 'Do-Nothing' Scripting Approach

2025-02-08

Conquering Operational Toil: The 'Do-Nothing' Scripting Approach

Every ops team struggles with manual procedures. This article introduces 'do-nothing' scripting: a technique where each step of a manual process (like user account provisioning) is encapsulated in a function within a script. While the script itself doesn't automate the steps, it provides a structured framework, lowering the barrier to entry for future automation. This approach improves focus, reduces errors from missed steps, and builds a library of reusable functions, ultimately leading to efficient toil reduction over time.

(blog.danslimmon.com)

Development DevOps automation

iOS 26's Savior: iPhone Recovery Without a Mac or PC

2025-06-23

iOS 26's Savior: iPhone Recovery Without a Mac or PC

iOS 26 introduces a new Recovery Assistant feature that allows you to restore your iPhone without needing a Mac or PC. This feature, automatically triggered when the iPhone encounters a startup issue, puts the device into Recovery mode and attempts to resolve the problem. It also allows for recovery via another Apple device (like an iPad), downloading and installing a newer iOS version to revive a malfunctioning iPhone. This expands upon a recovery feature first introduced on iPhone 16 models last year, offering a more convenient repair solution.

(www.macrumors.com)

Development Recovery Assistant iPhone Repair

The Hidden Copyright War Behind Windows 95's Plug and Play

2025-06-29

The Hidden Copyright War Behind Windows 95's Plug and Play

Implementing Plug and Play in Windows 95 wasn't easy. To make older hardware work with the new feature, engineers employed ingenious workarounds. One amusing example involved manufacturers adding the string "Not Copyright Fabrikam Computer" to their BIOS. This was a clever trick to fool LitWare Word Processor's licensing check, unlocking the full version without actually being a licensed Fabrikam PC. This highlights the challenges of early PC compatibility and the lengths manufacturers went to for software licensing.

(devblogs.microsoft.com)

Development Plug and Play

Apple's Password Monitoring Service Gets a 40% Performance Boost with Swift Rewrite

2025-06-15

Apple's Password Monitoring Service Gets a 40% Performance Boost with Swift Rewrite

Apple migrated its global Password Monitoring service from Java to Swift, resulting in a 40% throughput increase and a significant reduction in memory usage—freeing up nearly 50% of Kubernetes capacity. The switch addressed performance bottlenecks stemming from Java's garbage collection and high memory footprint. Swift's deterministic memory management and faster startup times drastically improved scalability and responsiveness. Handling billions of daily requests with stringent latency requirements, the service benefited greatly from Swift's performance. This migration reflects a broader industry trend toward performance-oriented languages for extreme-scale services.

(www.infoq.com)

Tech

Animations Without Keyframes: A New CSS Trick

2025-01-12

Animations Without Keyframes: A New CSS Trick

CSS's new `@starting-style` allows creating animations without `@keyframes`. This isn't a replacement for traditional animation, but a useful CSS trick in certain situations. The article demonstrates two examples: an infinitely rotating square, and a more complex animation manipulating background color, translation, and rotation via an animated variable `--i`. While not always superior, it offers a fresh way to express animations, expanding CSS animation possibilities.

(css-tip.com)

Development CSS animation keyframeless animation

Ronin the Rat: A World Record for Landmine Detection

2025-04-14

Ronin the Rat: A World Record for Landmine Detection

Ronin, an African giant pouched rat, has set a new world record for landmine detection. Between August 2021 and February 2025, he located 109 landmines and 15 unexploded ordnance in Cambodia. Ronin's incredible sense of smell highlights the vital role animals can play in clearing landmines, a significant threat in post-conflict zones. His achievement underscores the ongoing need for landmine clearance efforts, given the millions of unexploded devices still buried worldwide. Ronin's work with APOPO, a Belgian nonprofit, showcases the effectiveness of using rats for this dangerous task.

(www.cnn.com)

Tech landmine detection animal

Revolutionizing Race Timing: StoryTiming Demo

2025-01-20

StoryTiming reimagines race timing, prioritizing timing information and letting the race action follow. This demo, using data from the 2024 IMSA Rolex 24, showcases an innovative interactive experience. Users navigate the race effortlessly via keyboard shortcuts or mouse controls, viewing data through various perspectives, including a driver tracker overlay. Aimed at enhancing digital broadcasts, this project is the work of an independent software developer and is still under development.

(storytiming.racing)

Misc race timing interactive video

All Roses Were Once Yellow: A Genomic Analysis Reveals the Truth

2025-05-01

All Roses Were Once Yellow: A Genomic Analysis Reveals the Truth

A groundbreaking genomic analysis reveals that all roses—red, white, pink, and peach—descended from a single-petaled yellow rose. Researchers from Beijing Forestry University sequenced the genomes of 205 rose samples, tracing the genus's evolutionary history and geographic distribution. Their findings point to an ancestor with seven leaflets and a single whorl of yellow petals. This discovery not only enhances our understanding of rose evolution but also opens new avenues for breeding more resilient and low-maintenance rose varieties, aiding in the conservation of endangered species.

(phys.org)

Tech rose evolution botany

The Ocean Cleanup's Record-Breaking 2024: Over 11 Million Kilos of Plastic Removed

2025-01-05

The Ocean Cleanup's Record-Breaking 2024: Over 11 Million Kilos of Plastic Removed

In 2024, The Ocean Cleanup achieved unprecedented success in its fight against ocean plastic. They removed over 11 million kilograms of plastic from oceans and rivers—surpassing all previous years combined. This success stemmed from scaling up operations in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with System 03, and expanding their river cleanup efforts globally with new Interceptors deployed in Thailand, Guatemala, and Jamaica. Beyond cleanup, The Ocean Cleanup is exploring innovative ways to repurpose recovered plastic and continues crucial scientific research to inform policy decisions. 2024's results demonstrate the feasibility of a plastic-free ocean, while highlighting the ongoing need for continued effort.

(theoceancleanup.com)

Tech Ocean Cleanup Plastic Pollution Environmental Conservation

Encrypted ZFS Backups with zfsbackrest: An Experimental Tool

2025-09-01

Encrypted ZFS Backups with zfsbackrest: An Experimental Tool

zfsbackrest is an experimental tool providing pgbackrest-style encrypted backups for ZFS filesystems. It requires the age tool for key generation; encryption is mandatory. It supports full, diff, and incremental backups, and offers cleanup for expired and orphaned backups. Restoring requires your age identity file (private key). zfsbackrest leverages zfs snapshots for backup and restore, without directly modifying zfs datasets.

(github.com)

Development

Bayes, Bits & Brains: A Probability and Information Theory Adventure

2025-09-01

This website delves into probability and information theory, explaining how they illuminate machine learning and the world around us. Intriguing riddles, such as predicting the next letter in Wikipedia snippets and comparing your performance to neural networks, lead to explorations of information content, KL divergence, entropy, cross-entropy, and more. The course will cover maximum likelihood estimation, the maximum entropy principle, logits, softmax, Gaussian functions, and setting up loss functions, ultimately revealing connections between compression algorithms and large language models. Ready to dive down the rabbit hole?

(bayesbitsbrains.github.io)

AI

Workday Cuts 8.5% of Workforce, Embraces AI-Driven Efficiency

2025-02-05

Workday Cuts 8.5% of Workforce, Embraces AI-Driven Efficiency

Workday Inc., a leading provider of human capital management software, announced it is cutting approximately 8.5% of its workforce, impacting around 1,750 employees. CEO Carl Eschenbach cited the need for a new approach given the current economic climate and the company's scale. While aiming for increased efficiency and faster decision-making, Workday plans to invest in strategic AI initiatives and expand its international presence. This move, though surprising given Workday's previous avoidance of large-scale layoffs, may signal concerns about demand recovery or user growth. The restructuring is expected to yield cost savings between $230 million and $270 million by the end of April 2025.

(finance.yahoo.com)

Tech

Web Tool Generates Amazfit Band 7 Watch Faces

2025-04-15

Web Tool Generates Amazfit Band 7 Watch Faces

The author bought a cheap Amazfit Band 7 and wanted to create custom watch faces. Finding the process tedious, they built a web tool that generates the necessary digit and symbol images from a chosen font, size, color, and other parameters. This simplifies Amazfit Band 7 customization and can be used for other purposes. The tool is available at gingerbeardman.com/amazfit/.

(blog.gingerbeardman.com)

Hardware Custom Watch Faces Web Tool

Dr. Demento Retires After 55 Years of Broadcasting Novelty Music

2025-06-19

Dr. Demento Retires After 55 Years of Broadcasting Novelty Music

Radio personality Barret "Dr. Demento" Hansen announced his retirement this week, ending a 55-year career dedicated to comedy and novelty music. His show, which began in 1970, will conclude in October with retrospective episodes culminating in a final broadcast of the program's top 40 songs. Dr. Demento's show, initially a freeform rock program, evolved into a platform for comedic songs and musical oddities, introducing audiences to artists like "Weird Al" Yankovic, whom he's largely credited with discovering. The show's long run spanned various mediums, from reel-to-reel tapes to online streaming, showcasing Hansen's enduring influence on radio and comedy.

(sopghreporter.com)

Misc

OSI's 2025 Election: Transparency Crisis Shakes Open Source Trust

2025-04-25

OSI's 2025 Election: Transparency Crisis Shakes Open Source Trust

The Open Source Initiative (OSI)'s 2025 board elections are embroiled in controversy. OSI removed votes for three candidates after the voting period, severely damaging its credibility. The core issue involves a reform platform pushed by three candidates (including a former OSI director) proposing to repeal the newly adopted Open Source AI Definition and revise the board member agreement. OSI's last-minute requirement for candidates to sign the agreement, with a short deadline, disqualified some candidates. Critics claim this violates election procedures, lacks transparency, and suggests a conflict of interest. Community speculation about OSI's motives and potential corruption has intensified, leading to demands for the release of unaltered election results to restore trust and credibility.

(codeberg.org)

Misc election controversy

Intel Xeon 7: Can 18A and 3D Packaging Turn the Tide?

2025-08-29

Intel Xeon 7: Can 18A and 3D Packaging Turn the Tide?

With AMD holding over 40% revenue and 27% shipment share of the x86 server CPU market in the first half of 2025, Intel is betting on its Xeon 7 processors (Clearwater Rapids and Clearwater Forest), launching in 2026, to regain ground. These CPUs leverage the 18A process, 2.5D EMIB interconnect, and Foveros 3D stacking—technologies first deployed (with delays) in the datacenter with the ill-fated Ponte Vecchio. The success of Xeon 7 hinges on stemming AMD's momentum and countering the rise of hyperscaler's custom Arm server CPUs. While the energy-efficient E-core variants have a niche market, they aid Intel in refining its 18A process and 3D packaging. This article details the architecture of the Clearwater Forest E-core processor, including its improved RibbonFET transistors, PowerVia backside power delivery, and 3D packaging, and analyzes its performance potential.

(www.nextplatform.com)

Hardware

Meta's Llama 4: Second Place Ranking and a Messy Launch

2025-04-08

Meta's Llama 4: Second Place Ranking and a Messy Launch

Meta released two new Llama 4 models: Scout and Maverick. Maverick secured the number two spot on LMArena, outperforming GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Flash. However, Meta admitted that LMArena tested a specially optimized "experimental chat version," not the publicly available one. This sparked controversy, leading LMArena to update its policies to prevent similar incidents. Meta explained that it was experimenting with different versions, but the move raised questions about its strategy in the AI race and the unusual timing of the Llama 4 release. Ultimately, the incident highlights the limitations of AI benchmarks and the complex strategies of large tech companies in the competition.

(www.theverge.com)

AI AI benchmark

OpenAI's UAE Deal: A Façade of Democracy?

2025-06-09

OpenAI's UAE Deal: A Façade of Democracy?

OpenAI's partnership with the UAE to build large-scale AI data centers, touted as aligning with "democratic values," is raising eyebrows. The UAE's poor human rights record casts doubt on this claim. The article analyzes OpenAI's justifications, finding them weak and arguing the deal empowers the UAE's autocratic government rather than promoting democracy. The author concludes that OpenAI's casual approach to its mission is concerning, highlighting the crucial need to consider power dynamics in AI development.

(helentoner.substack.com)

AI AI partnership

Adobe Lightroom's AI Adds Bitcoin to Photo

2025-01-12

Adobe Lightroom's AI Adds Bitcoin to Photo

A photographer using Adobe Lightroom's AI highlight removal tool discovered a bizarre error: a bitcoin appeared in their photo of a seagull where none existed before. The unexpected addition of a cryptocurrency logo to the image sparked outrage and debate among photographers, raising concerns about the reliability of AI image processing technology.

(bsky.app)

Tech

SpaceX Starship Debris Rains Down on Turks and Caicos

2025-02-01

SpaceX Starship Debris Rains Down on Turks and Caicos

The upper stage of a SpaceX Starship rocket exploded over the Atlantic Ocean near Turks and Caicos after its seventh test flight, scattering debris across the islands. While no injuries were reported, residents discovered wreckage near homes and on beaches, prompting concerns about safety and environmental impact. SpaceX's rapid iterative development strategy and its response to the incident have drawn criticism, with locals demanding cleanup and environmental assessment. The event highlights the potential risks of large rocket launches near populated areas.

(www.cnn.com)

Tech rocket debris

Cracked Sudoku: A New Sudoku Variant Based on Voronoi Diagrams

2025-03-13

Cracked Sudoku: A New Sudoku Variant Based on Voronoi Diagrams

Tired of traditional Sudoku? Cracked Sudoku is here! This new Sudoku variant uses irregular Voronoi diagrams as its game board. The rules remain familiar to Sudoku fans, but 'rows' and 'columns' are replaced by 'runs'—connected sequences of cells without repeating numbers. The shapes of these runs are determined by the Voronoi diagram, creating a unique solving experience. The author shares the design philosophy and algorithms, and calls for experienced puzzle constructors to collaborate on creating more sophisticated levels, injecting more vitality into this innovative game.

(danielchasehooper.com)

Game Voronoi Diagrams

Paradigm: Hiring Founding Engineers for AI-Native Workspace

2025-04-08

Paradigm: Hiring Founding Engineers for AI-Native Workspace

Paradigm, a San Francisco-based AI-native workspace startup backed by Y Combinator and prominent tech founders, is seeking experienced generalist founding engineers. Ideal candidates possess experience building production AI applications, thrive in fast-paced environments, and ideally have experience with GoLang, TypeScript, and related technologies. Competitive salaries and benefits, including equity, are offered.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development Founding Engineers

Hubble Confirms First Lone Black Hole

2025-04-21

Hubble Confirms First Lone Black Hole

A team of astronomers, using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia spacecraft, has confirmed the existence of the first isolated stellar-mass black hole. Initially spotted in 2022, this approximately seven-solar-mass black hole was detected through its gravitational microlensing effect. Unlike previously discovered black holes which all had companion stars, this discovery offers a new window into these mysterious objects and paves the way for future searches using the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

(phys.org)

Tech

On Tyranny: A Graphic Guide to Resisting Authoritarianism

2025-03-28

On Tyranny: A Graphic Guide to Resisting Authoritarianism

A graphic edition of Timothy Snyder's bestselling 'On Tyranny' has been released, bringing his twenty lessons on resisting modern authoritarianism to life. Illustrated by Nora Krug, the book uses historical examples from Nazism and Communism to illuminate crucial points such as the dangers of misused symbols, the importance of independent research, and the need for precise language. This visually striking edition serves as a powerful call to action, urging readers to actively participate in the fight against authoritarianism.

(timothysnyder.org)

Misc resistance graphic novel

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-05-29

arXivLabs is a framework for collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved are committed to arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv only partners with those who share these values. Got an idea to improve the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Living Organisms Emit Faint Light That Dims Upon Death

2025-05-19

Living Organisms Emit Faint Light That Dims Upon Death

Researchers at the University of Calgary have discovered that all living organisms emit a faint light, a phenomenon known as ultraweak photon emission (UPE). Studies on mice and plants revealed that living organisms exhibit significantly higher UPE intensity than deceased ones, with plant UPE varying based on stress factors like temperature changes, injury, and chemical treatments. UPE is linked to reactive oxygen species produced during cellular metabolism. This research suggests UPE imaging could become a non-invasive tool for both basic biological research and clinical diagnostics.

(phys.org)

Tech ultraweak photon emission biophoton biological research

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