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Arizona Reports First Pneumonic Plague Death Since 2007

2025-07-13

Arizona Reports First Pneumonic Plague Death Since 2007

A northern Arizona resident has died from pneumonic plague, marking the first death from this form of the disease in the US since 2007. While plague is rare in the US, averaging about seven cases annually, pneumonic plague is the deadliest and most easily spread form, transmitted through infected flea bites or contact with infected bodily fluids. Health officials urge caution when handling dead or sick animals.

(www.cnn.com)

Misc infectious disease

Apple Shuffles Secret Robotics Team Away From AI Chief

2025-04-25

Apple Shuffles Secret Robotics Team Away From AI Chief

Apple is restructuring its secretive robotics unit, moving it from the AI division headed by John Giannandrea to the hardware engineering group under Senior Vice President John Ternus. This shift, confirmed by sources familiar with the matter, reflects Apple's ongoing adjustments in its AI strategy and suggests a potential recalibration of its approach to robotics.

(www.bloomberg.com)

Hardware

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-07-07

arXivLabs is a framework for developing and sharing new arXiv features directly on the website, collaboratively. Participants must embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. Got an idea to improve the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs!

(arxiv.org)

Development

GS-Calc: A Spreadsheet That Handles Millions of Rows with Ease

2025-04-25

GS-Calc is a modern spreadsheet redefining what "big data" means for desktop software. It effortlessly handles massive CSV and XLSX files with millions of rows and thousands of columns, boasting unlimited worksheets and subfolders. Its performance optimizations significantly outperform other spreadsheet solutions in tasks like loading text files, copy-pasting, and VLOOKUP/MATCH functions. Beyond this, GS-Calc provides powerful features including robust pivot tables, Monte Carlo simulations, regular expression support, and Python integration, making it an ideal tool for large-scale data analysis.

(citadel5.com)

Development

DeepSeek: A Chinese AI Dark Horse Emerges

2025-01-31

DeepSeek: A Chinese AI Dark Horse Emerges

DeepSeek, an AI company incubated by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, has taken the world by storm with its highly efficient models, DeepSeek V3 and R1. DeepSeek V3 boasts low training costs (significantly higher than the publicized $6 million) and powerful performance, along with innovative Multi-head Latent Attention technology, resulting in substantial advantages in inference costs. While DeepSeek's success is tied to its massive GPU investment (around 50,000 Hopper GPUs) and emphasis on talent, its low-pricing strategy raises questions about cost sustainability. Google's Gemini Flash 2.0 Thinking also presents a challenge to DeepSeek's leading position. DeepSeek's rise reflects the growing strength of Chinese AI technology, while also prompting reflection on international tech competition and export controls.

(semianalysis.com)

AI Chinese AI

Martin: The AI Assistant That's Light Years Ahead of Siri and Alexa

2025-07-15

Martin: The AI Assistant That's Light Years Ahead of Siri and Alexa

Martin is a revolutionary AI personal assistant accessible via text, call, or email. Managing your inbox, calendar, to-dos, notes, calls, and reminders, Martin has completed over 500,000 tasks for 30,000 users in just 5 months, with a 10% weekly growth rate. Backed by top investors like Y Combinator and Pioneer Fund, and notable angels, Martin's lean team is seeking ambitious AI and product engineers to build the next iPhone-level consumer product.

(www.ycombinator.com)

AI Personal Productivity

Microsoft Doubles Down on Europe Amidst Geopolitical Uncertainty

2025-05-01

Microsoft Doubles Down on Europe Amidst Geopolitical Uncertainty

Responding to growing concerns about data sovereignty and US-EU trade tensions, Microsoft unveiled a five-point plan to bolster its European presence and reassure customers. This includes a 40% increase in European datacenter capacity over the next two years, a European board of directors composed solely of European nationals, and a commitment to defend European customer data in court if necessary. The plan also emphasizes enhanced cybersecurity measures and support for open-source development within Europe. This strategic move aims to mitigate risks associated with US data legislation and maintain Microsoft's market share in Europe.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech European Datacenters Data Sovereignty

Perplexity AI Bids to Merge with TikTok to Avoid US Ban

2025-01-18

Perplexity AI Bids to Merge with TikTok to Avoid US Ban

With a US ban on TikTok looming, AI search engine Perplexity AI has surprisingly submitted a bid to merge with TikTok US. The proposal would create a new entity combining Perplexity, TikTok US, and new equity partners, bringing more video content to Perplexity's search engine while allowing most ByteDance investors to retain their equity. While ByteDance has repeatedly stated its unwillingness to sell TikTok, Perplexity hopes a merger, rather than an acquisition, will overcome this obstacle. This unexpected move has sent ripples through the tech world, with its success or failure having significant implications for US tech regulation and the convergence of AI and social media.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech

CHM Releases Xerox Alto Source Code: A Glimpse into Computing History

2025-01-31

CHM Releases Xerox Alto Source Code: A Glimpse into Computing History

The Computer History Museum (CHM) has released the source code for the Xerox Alto, a groundbreaking personal computer that pioneered many features we take for granted today, including bitmapped displays, the mouse, and WYSIWYG word processing. The article recounts the evolution of personal computing, from mainframes to early homebrew computers and finally the Xerox Alto, showcasing the rapid advancements in technology and Alto's lasting influence. The released source code includes the Alto's operating system, applications, and Ethernet networking software, offering invaluable resources for researchers and enthusiasts.

(computerhistory.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

Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby Fall Out of Tiobe's Top 20

2025-04-14

Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby Fall Out of Tiobe's Top 20

The latest Tiobe Programming Community index shows Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby dropping out of the top 20 most popular programming languages. According to Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen, these languages have lost traction and are declining. The decline is attributed to their primary use in specific mobile platforms (Kotlin for Android, Swift for iOS), with cross-platform alternatives now readily available. Furthermore, Python's dominance leaves less room for Ruby.

(www.infoworld.com)

Development Tiobe index

Fixing the Loading Issues in Myst IV: Revelation

2024-12-13

Fixing the Loading Issues in Myst IV: Revelation

This article documents the author's journey in fixing the notoriously slow loading times in Myst IV: Revelation. The game suffers from a two-second load time per click, even on SSDs. Using profiling tools, the author pinpointed the issue to the game's inefficient image loading via the LEADTOOLS library, which loads images row by row. The solution involved extracting game assets, converting images to the DDS format for faster loading, and implementing multithreading. However, challenges remain, such as crashes related to water effects, requiring further optimization.

(medium.com)

3

Game game optimization performance profiling

Learning C3: A Real-Time Account of My Experience

2025-05-29

This article documents the author's real-time experience learning the C3 programming language. C3 aims to improve upon C by adding modern features such as a module system, operator overloading, and generics. The author explores various aspects of C3, including foreach loops, the defer keyword, structs, error handling, contract programming, and macros, culminating in building a basic calculator. While praising features like foreach loops, defer, and the error handling system, the author also notes shortcomings such as the incomplete package management and language server support. Overall, the author views C3 as a promising language still under development.

(alloc.dev)

Development C3 Programming Language Learning to Program

Startup Necromancy: Exploiting Abandoned Google Apps Domains

2025-01-15

Startup Necromancy: Exploiting Abandoned Google Apps Domains

A security researcher discovered a critical vulnerability: improperly shutting down Google Workspace accounts leaves defunct startup domains vulnerable. New owners can reactivate former employees' Google accounts, granting access to third-party services (Slack, ChatGPT, Zoom, etc.) accessed via Google OAuth. Sensitive data, including tax documents and internal communications, becomes exposed. Google initially dismissed it, but after the researcher's Shmoocon presentation, they reevaluated, offering a bounty. This highlights the risk of insufficient account closure procedures and potential weaknesses within OAuth authentication.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

Intel and TSMC JV: A Lifeline for the Struggling Chip Giant?

2025-04-04

Intel and TSMC JV: A Lifeline for the Struggling Chip Giant?

Intel and TSMC have reportedly reached a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture to operate Intel's US factories, with TSMC taking a 20% stake. This move could be a lifeline for Intel, which has struggled after missing the AI boom, suffering massive losses, and witnessing a significant stock price drop. Intel's previous attempts to manufacture chips for external clients faced challenges due to lagging customer service compared to TSMC, resulting in delays and failed tests. The success of this collaboration remains to be seen.

(finance.yahoo.com)

Tech

Iranian Software Engineer's Online Odyssey: Sanctions and Censorship

2025-09-23

Iranian Software Engineer's Online Odyssey: Sanctions and Censorship

An Iranian software engineer recounts his experiences with Microsoft deleting his app, Notion wiping his data, and other website bans due to sanctions. He emphasizes that these companies aren't malicious but are simply following the rules. However, he pleads for more empathy, urging consideration of the human impact of these regulations. He concludes by expressing his dissatisfaction with the current situation in Iran and supporting movements for freedom.

(gist.github.com)

Development

Lit: Build Lightweight, Blazing-Fast Web Components

2025-09-03

Lit is a lightweight library for building web components, based on web component standards. Weighing in at around 5KB, it provides reactivity, declarative templates, and a streamlined developer experience. It renders blazing fast by only updating dynamic parts of the UI, ensuring compatibility with any framework. Lit components are standard custom elements, supporting scoped styles and reactive properties, simplifying the creation of shareable components, design systems, and future-proof applications.

(lit.dev)

Development

Zig Software Foundation's 2025 Financial Report & Fundraiser: A Plea for Sustainability

2025-09-03

The Zig Software Foundation released its 2024 financial report, showcasing efficient resource allocation where the majority of funds went directly to compensating contributors. Despite a slight dip in donations, user activity exploded, leading to a surge in issues and pull requests. To address this growing demand, the foundation expanded its core team and is now seeking sustained donations to maintain operations and project momentum. They prefer donations via Every.org, and encourage various support methods including company matching, venture capital investment, and individual contributions.

(ziglang.org)

Development Zig programming language

CVE Program Faces Funding Cliff, Threatening Global Cybersecurity

2025-04-16

CVE Program Faces Funding Cliff, Threatening Global Cybersecurity

MITRE's CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) program, a cornerstone of global cybersecurity, faces a potential shutdown due to expiring funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The program assigns standardized identifiers to software vulnerabilities, crucial for communication and coordinated responses. A lapse would severely disrupt vulnerability tracking, patch management, and threat intelligence, impacting governments, businesses, and individuals. While historical CVE data will remain on GitHub, the cessation of new vulnerability assignment would cripple the global cybersecurity community's ability to respond to emerging threats. Experts urge immediate government intervention to prevent catastrophic consequences and advocate for stable, long-term funding to ensure the CVE program's continued operation.

(www.forbes.com)

Tech

Coding ≠ Programming: A Turing Award Winner's Perspective on Abstraction

2025-05-05

Coding ≠ Programming: A Turing Award Winner's Perspective on Abstraction

Leslie Lamport, an 84-year-old Turing Award winner, delivered a keynote speech emphasizing the crucial difference between coding and programming. He argued that abstract thinking before coding is paramount, leading to fewer errors and more efficient code. His own TLA+ specification language, used in the Rosetta spacecraft's development, serves as a prime example, demonstrating significant code reduction and architectural improvements. Lamport criticizes programmers' tendency to focus on languages instead of abstract design, advocating for designing the program's abstract model first, then coding. This approach minimizes debugging and revision, resulting in cleaner, more maintainable code.

(thenewstack.io)

Development abstract thinking

Malicious VS Code Extension Uses Typosquatting to Deliver Multi-Stage Malware

2025-02-10

Malicious VS Code Extension Uses Typosquatting to Deliver Multi-Stage Malware

Researchers uncovered a malicious VS Code extension, `truffelvscode`, which typosquatted the popular `truffle` extension. This extension acts as a Trojan horse for multi-stage malware. The malware downloads and executes several stages of malicious code, ultimately installing and configuring the ScreenConnect remote access tool, granting attackers remote control of the compromised system. Obfuscation techniques were used to hide the malicious code, but researchers used deobfuscation and sandbox analysis to reveal the entire attack chain. This incident highlights the importance of caution when installing VS Code extensions and underscores the growing threat of software supply chain attacks.

(www.mend.io)

Development

EU Slams SHEIN with Warning Over Deceptive Practices

2025-05-27

EU Slams SHEIN with Warning Over Deceptive Practices

The European Commission issued a warning to SHEIN, citing various violations of consumer protection laws on its website. These include fake discounts, pressure selling, misleading information, deceptive product labeling, and hidden contact details. SHEIN has one month to respond; failure to comply could result in substantial fines. This action comes as SHEIN already faces US tariffs, creating significant hurdles for its global expansion. China, which sees SHEIN as a key exporter, will likely view the EU's warning as a setback to its economic development strategy.

(www.theregister.com)

Startup

Bluesky's Decentralized Success Story: Blacksky's Two Million Users

2025-08-26

Bluesky's Decentralized Success Story: Blacksky's Two Million Users

Blacksky, a decentralized social network built on Bluesky's AT Protocol, has rapidly grown to two million users organically, showcasing the potential of decentralized platforms. Prioritizing Black voices and community safety, Blacksky uses its custom-built, open-source tools and a community-based moderation system to maintain its unique identity, independent from Bluesky. Its success highlights the power of decentralized infrastructure in fostering inclusive and self-governed online spaces.

(newpublic.substack.com)

Tech

Atari 1200XL: The Short-Lived 8-Bit Champion

2025-04-17

Atari 1200XL: The Short-Lived 8-Bit Champion

The Atari 1200XL, the third in Atari's 8-bit computer line, aimed to replace the increasingly expensive Atari 800 and compete with the Commodore 64. Featuring 64K RAM and a sleek 1980s design, its $800 price tag and incompatibility with popular software like Letter Perfect doomed it to a short lifespan, discontinued after only six months. Despite this, its excellent keyboard and fixable compatibility issues make it a sought-after collectible today, even retaining practical use.

(www.goto10retro.com)

Hardware 8-bit

The TAKE IT DOWN Act: A Threat to Free Speech?

2025-03-08

The TAKE IT DOWN Act: A Threat to Free Speech?

The Senate is debating the TAKE IT DOWN Act, aiming to expedite the removal of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII). However, the bill's mandated 48-hour notice-and-takedown system lacks safeguards, potentially leading to censorship of lawful speech and threatening user privacy and due process. The bill's broad definitions and tight deadlines could force online services to rely on automated filters, wrongly flagging legitimate content. Furthermore, the Act threatens encrypted services, potentially leading to the abandonment of privacy protections. Existing laws already provide sufficient tools to address NCII; Congress should focus on enforcing and improving these, rather than implementing a broad takedown regime prone to abuse.

(www.eff.org)

Tech

Merliot Hub: Your Private AI-Powered Device Hub

2025-05-17

Merliot Hub: Your Private AI-Powered Device Hub

Merliot Hub is an AI-integrated device hub allowing natural language control (via LLMs like Claude Desktop or Cursor) over your self-built devices using Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and other components. Its distributed architecture ensures data privacy; no third-party access or data exploitation. A web app (no phone app needed), it's Docker-deployable and runs on free Koyeb cloud VMs. Build your own private smart home ecosystem!

(github.com)

Hardware

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-08-04

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop 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. Got an idea for a project that will benefit the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Prince's Custom Font: A 90s Tech Legend

2025-06-09

Prince's Custom Font: A 90s Tech Legend

In 1993, Prince's name change to an unpronounceable symbol created chaos for his record label and computer users. His solution? A custom font featuring his new glyph, distributed on floppy disks and CompuServe. This unconventional move not only highlighted Prince's personality but also showcased his early adoption of technology. While later known for his skepticism of streaming, this anecdote reveals his early enthusiasm for computers and innovation, and how he integrated technology into his artistic expression.

(nymag.com)

Misc

Culture Wars: The New Fault Line in Politics

2025-05-13

Culture Wars: The New Fault Line in Politics

A new study by Gennaioli and Tabellini challenges the traditional class-based understanding of political polarization. They argue that political divisions are increasingly driven by cultural identities, not economic interests. People choose identities based on prevailing social conflicts; economic issues highlight class divisions, while cultural issues (immigration, morality) create opposing cultural groups. Political parties exploit this, investing in identity-based propaganda to amplify cultural stereotypes and radicalize positions. A survey of US citizens supports this, showing cultural identity, not economic status, dictates views on welfare, taxes, etc. The "China shock" provides empirical evidence, showing that in economically impacted areas, culturally conservative voters reduced support for redistribution and increased anti-immigration sentiment. This shift explains the rise of right-wing populism despite growing inequality. The left's focus solely on inequality ignores the powerful influence of cultural identity, leading to electoral losses.

(www.unibocconi.it)

Misc political polarization cultural identity

WhatsApp's Private Processing: AI with End-to-End Privacy

2025-05-02

WhatsApp's Private Processing: AI with End-to-End Privacy

WhatsApp unveils Private Processing, an optional feature enabling AI processing of messages within a secure, confidential environment. Leveraging Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs), this technology allows users to request AI-powered features like message summarization without Meta or WhatsApp accessing their data. Built on principles of optionality, transparency, and user control, Private Processing employs robust security measures including confidential processing, verifiable transparency, and non-targetability. WhatsApp is publishing components of Private Processing and expanding its bug bounty program to foster independent security research, ensuring user privacy remains paramount.

(engineering.fb.com)

Development

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