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Cretaceous Amber Yields a Wasp with a Venus Flytrap-Like Abdomen

2025-03-28

Cretaceous Amber Yields a Wasp with a Venus Flytrap-Like Abdomen

A new genus of wasp, †Sirenobethylus, has been discovered in mid-Cretaceous Kachin amber. This remarkable insect possesses a unique abdominal apparatus resembling a Venus flytrap, hypothesized to temporarily grasp and immobilize prey during oviposition. The discovery suggests a broader range of parasitoid strategies in mid-Cretaceous Chrysidoidea than exists today, highlighting the evolutionary diversity of this group.

(bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com)

Tech entomology parasitoid wasp

The Rise of Hyperlegibility: Information Overload in the Modern Age

2025-03-28

The Rise of Hyperlegibility: Information Overload in the Modern Age

Once, accessing information required Herculean efforts, like scaling a treacherous cliff to find an inscription. Now, information is readily available, even unavoidable. The author coins the term "Hyperlegibility" to describe this ease of information access and dissemination. This stems not only from technological advancements but also from people's proactive pursuit of clarity. To stand out in competition, they openly share ideas and strategies. It's a game-theoretic outcome: information is no longer a scarce resource, yet it shapes new competitive landscapes, giving rise to a new generation of "Hyperlegibility Natives" with supercharged information processing abilities.

(www.notboring.co)

Misc information dissemination

Your TV Is Spying on You: The Rise of Streaming Ads and the Privacy Trade-off

2025-03-28

Your TV Is Spying on You: The Rise of Streaming Ads and the Privacy Trade-off

Streaming platforms are increasingly relying on ads for revenue, even monitoring user viewing habits for personalized ad targeting. The article uses Roku as a case study, detailing its transformation from a hardware company into an advertising powerhouse, acquiring ad-tech companies to gather user data for precise ad placement. This trend isn't unique to Roku; many TV manufacturers and tech giants employ similar tactics, utilizing Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) to monitor what users watch and leverage this data for analytics and targeted advertising. While personalized ads can enhance user experience, significant privacy concerns arise. The article concludes by suggesting that opting for older, non-smart TVs and avoiding connection to smart devices is the best way to evade ads and data collection.

(www.vox.com)

Tech streaming ads

Japan's Citizen-Created Sex Offender Map Sparks Legal Debate

2025-03-28

Japan's Citizen-Created Sex Offender Map Sparks Legal Debate

In response to a lack of a national sex offender registry and numerous cases of child sexual abuse, a website called Amyna has emerged in Japan, offering a map of alleged sex offenders. Created by a former UN worker, Amyna aims to fill the gap in official systems, but its legality is highly questionable. Japan's strict personal information protection laws heavily restrict data disclosure, potentially leaving Amyna vulnerable to privacy violation claims. While the site argues it protects children, its lack of robust verification processes and handling of sensitive information risks false accusations and secondary victimization. The initiative has sparked a wide-ranging debate about privacy, citizen rights, and government responsibility, highlighting shortcomings in Japan's legal framework for child protection.

(unseen-japan.com)

Misc sex offender citizen action

US Robotics Firms Urge National Strategy Amidst China's Rise

2025-03-28

US Robotics Firms Urge National Strategy Amidst China's Rise

American robotics companies are pushing for a national robotics strategy to compete with China's growing dominance in the field. While the US boasts advancements in AI and robotics, the lack of a cohesive national strategy risks losing its lead. Proposed solutions include tax incentives, funding for research and training, and a dedicated federal robotics office. China's significant investment and progress are undeniable, but the long-term viability may favor more practical, polyfunctional robots over humanoids. This race is not just about technological supremacy but also national strategy and economic future.

(apnews.com)

Tech

NSO Group's Pegasus Spyware Fails to Stay Hidden: Journalists Expose Flaws

2025-03-28

A new report details attempted hacks against Serbian journalists using NSO Group's Pegasus spyware. Amnesty International researchers traced phishing links directly to NSO Group's infrastructure, exposing serious flaws in the company's and its clients' attempts at stealth. Pegasus has been used to target at least 130 individuals globally, including journalists and activists, over the years. Apple has also helped expose attacks by notifying victims. NSO Group's sale of its software to countries that misuse it is contributing to its exposure. The incident highlights NSO Group's operational security failures and the threat its spyware poses to human rights.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech

Say Goodbye to Dependency Headaches: Simplifying Python Script Distribution with uv and PEP 723

2025-03-28

Tired of managing external library dependencies for your single-file Python scripts? This article shows how uv and PEP 723 make distribution a breeze. By embedding dependency metadata directly into your script, uv eliminates the need for `requirements.txt` and complex package managers. It automatically creates isolated virtual environments, installs dependencies, and runs your script—all without manual intervention. Adding a shebang makes execution even easier, directly launching your script from anywhere.

(thisdavej.com)

Development

FTC Staff Ordered to Stop Calling Agency 'Independent'

2025-03-28

FTC Staff Ordered to Stop Calling Agency 'Independent'

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has instructed its staff to stop referring to the agency as 'independent' in complaints, marking another move by the Trump administration to assert greater control over the historically independent body. This follows President Trump's executive order allowing the White House to review independent agencies and the firing of two Democratic commissioners, leading to a lawsuit. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson publicly supports Trump's actions, claiming the President's authority will be upheld. This highlights the ongoing challenges to the independence of US government agencies and the influence of political interference.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Optimized FP32 Matrix Multiplication on AMD RDNA3 GPU: Outperforming rocBLAS by 60%

2025-03-28

Optimized FP32 Matrix Multiplication on AMD RDNA3 GPU: Outperforming rocBLAS by 60%

This post details the optimization journey of creating an FP32 matrix multiplication kernel for AMD RDNA3 GPUs that surpasses rocBLAS by 60%. The author iteratively refines eight kernels, starting with a naive implementation and progressing to ISA-level optimizations. Techniques include LDS tiling, register tiling, global memory double buffering, LDS utilization optimization, and ultimately ISA-level VALU optimization and loop unrolling. The final kernel outperforms rocBLAS, achieving nearly 50 TFLOPS.

(seb-v.github.io)

Development matrix multiplication

Meta's Interoperability Proposal: Why XMPP is the Real Solution

2025-03-29

Designated a gatekeeper under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), Meta must ensure interoperability between WhatsApp and Messenger. However, Meta's proposed solution, relying on restrictive NDAs, proprietary APIs, and centralized control, falls short of true interoperability. The article argues that the established open standard XMPP offers a superior alternative, enabling seamless federation, decentralized control, enhanced privacy, and scalability. The author urges Meta to adopt XMPP to create a truly open and competitive messaging ecosystem.

(xmpp.org)

Tech Interoperability

13 Lessons Learned Building an Open-Source Autorouter

2025-03-28

13 Lessons Learned Building an Open-Source Autorouter

The author shares 13 lessons learned from building an autorouter for tscircuit, an open-source electronics CAD kernel. The post highlights the power of the A* algorithm and its adaptability in optimizing autorouting, including using multi-level A* for hyperparameter optimization and replacing inefficient quadtrees with spatial hash indexes. The author stresses the importance of algorithms over programming language, advocating for cacheable algorithms and visualization tools for debugging and optimization. Finally, the post discusses the pros and cons of recursive functions, Monte Carlo algorithms, and weighted A* algorithms.

(blog.autorouting.com)

Development A* algorithm autorouting spatial hash index

Paged Out!: Resurrection and Evolution of a Tech Zine

2025-03-29

Paged Out!: Resurrection and Evolution of a Tech Zine

After a four-year hiatus caused by pandemics and various challenges, the tech zine *Paged Out!* has been successfully revived and is back on track. This blog post chronicles the magazine's journey from stagnation to resurgence, introducing the new management team and operational model. It also outlines future plans, including improvements to PDF processing, achieving financial self-sufficiency, and expanding the scope of topics covered.

(pagedout.institute)

Misc zine publishing

LibreOffice: 200 Million Users and the Endurance of Open-Source Office Suites

2025-03-28

LibreOffice: 200 Million Users and the Endurance of Open-Source Office Suites

While not tracking user data, LibreOffice advocates estimate around 200 million users. Gartner analyst Jason Wong notes continued interest in LibreOffice as a desktop alternative to paid office suites, particularly for clients aiming to maintain on-premises implementations given Microsoft and Google's cloud focus. While cost-effective, LibreOffice requires specialized resources and new skills for maintenance.

(www.computerworld.com)

Development office suite

Kerala's Economic Miracle: From Poverty to Prosperity

2025-03-28

Kerala's Economic Miracle: From Poverty to Prosperity

Kerala, a relatively small state in southwestern India, was once among the poorest in the country. However, in a few decades, it experienced a remarkable economic transformation, surpassing the national average per capita income. High literacy rates, excellent healthcare, and low population growth played crucial roles. Furthermore, the long-standing social welfare policies of Left-wing governments, coupled with deep integration into the global economy, remittances from the Gulf, and booming private sector investment, contributed to Kerala's economic miracle. However, overdevelopment and climate change pose new challenges, requiring Kerala to balance economic growth with environmental sustainability.

(aeon.co)

Startup Kerala

The Real Book: A Bootlegged Jazz Bible

2025-03-28

The Real Book: A Bootlegged Jazz Bible

Since the mid-1970s, nearly every jazz musician has owned a copy of 'The Real Book,' an illegally copied collection of jazz standards. Its story begins with earlier 'fake books' – simplified sheet music – evolving from Tune-Dex cards. Two Berklee College of Music students created a modern, updated version, reflecting contemporary jazz styles. Its popularity led to widespread bootlegging, until Hal Leonard legally published it. The book’s legacy, however, sparks debate about copyright and the very nature of jazz, with some criticizing its simplification of this complex art form.

(99percentinvisible.org)

Misc Music History

Swiftly 1.0: Streamlining Swift Toolchain Management

2025-03-28

Swiftly 1.0 has officially launched! This Swift version manager simplifies installing, managing, and updating your Swift toolchain. Supporting macOS and various Linux distributions, it allows developers to easily install different Swift versions and use Swift outside of Xcode. Written in Swift and self-updating, Swiftly supports stable releases, nightly snapshots, and older versions, enabling effortless switching between them. A `.swift-version` file facilitates team-wide version consistency. Swiftly makes Swift development more convenient and efficient.

(swift.org)

Development Toolchain Version Management

Running Go Code on a PS2: A Hackery Adventure

2025-03-28

Running Go Code on a PS2: A Hackery Adventure

The author embarked on a challenging project: running Go code on a PlayStation 2. Go's lack of native PS2 support necessitated using the TinyGo compiler and the ps2dev SDK. The author overcame compatibility issues between Go and the PS2's Emotion Engine CPU (based on MIPS R5900), including differences in the N32 ABI and 64-bit instruction sets. A significant hurdle was the missing DDIVU instruction, solved by modifying the TinyGo compiler. A simple Go program was successfully run and verified on the PCSX2 PS2 emulator. Future plans include improving floating-point support and creating a custom LLVM MIPS CPU.

(rgsilva.com)

Development PS2 Development

Banned from MSG for a T-Shirt He Designed Years Ago?

2025-03-29

Banned from MSG for a T-Shirt He Designed Years Ago?

Frank Miller, a graphic designer, was banned for life from Madison Square Garden (MSG) and its properties, including Radio City Music Hall, for an incident he claims he wasn't even involved in. The ban stems from a "Ban Dolan" T-shirt he designed in 2017, referencing a conflict between Knicks owner James Dolan and Charles Oakley. Although Miller wasn't wearing the shirt and hadn't attended an MSG event in almost two decades, he was identified, likely via facial recognition technology, and denied entry to a concert on his parents' anniversary. MSG claims his actions violated their code of conduct, but Miller argues this highlights the potential misuse of facial recognition and corporate power, raising concerns about privacy and surveillance.

(www.theverge.com)

Misc

Hollywood's Silent Deal: AI-Generated Fake Movie Trailers Flood YouTube

2025-03-28

Hollywood's Silent Deal: AI-Generated Fake Movie Trailers Flood YouTube

AI-generated fake movie trailers are flooding YouTube, so realistic they've even fooled French national television. Created for fun or profit, these trailers garner billions of views. Hollywood studios' response is baffling: instead of enforcing copyright, some are sharing ad revenue with creators. This has drawn criticism from SAG-AFTRA, who see it as disregard for actors' rights. The article explores the impact of AI on movie marketing and copyright, and Hollywood's ambiguous stance on this emerging challenge.

(deadline.com)

Tech

Hackers Win Big at Google's bugSWAT: 579MB Binary Leaks Internal Source Code

2025-03-28

In 2024, a security research team once again won the MVH award at Google's LLM bugSWAT event. They discovered and exploited a vulnerability in Gemini allowing access to a sandbox containing a 579MB binary file. This binary held internal Google3 source code and internal protobuf files used to communicate with Google services like Google Flights. By cleverly utilizing sandbox features, they extracted and analyzed the binary, revealing sensitive internal information. This discovery highlights the importance of thorough security testing for cutting-edge AI systems.

(www.landh.tech)

AI Bug Bounty

DIY Acoustic Camera: Locating Sound Sources on a Budget

2025-03-29

DIY Acoustic Camera: Locating Sound Sources on a Budget

This project details the construction of a low-cost acoustic camera using readily available hardware and open-source software. The author utilizes a miniDSP UMA-16 microphone array and custom Python scripts to capture synchronized 16-channel audio and video. Beamforming is achieved using the Acoular library, visualizing sound pressure levels and merging the results with the video stream. The post includes code examples and a comparison with an earlier attempt using a ReSpeaker 4 microphone array and a GCC-PHAT algorithm, demonstrating a surprisingly effective and affordable approach to sound localization.

(navat.substack.com)

Hardware acoustic camera

India's Demographic Dividend: An AI-Driven Doomsday Scenario?

2025-03-28

India's Demographic Dividend: An AI-Driven Doomsday Scenario?

India's economic aspirations have long rested on its demographic dividend – a young, burgeoning workforce. However, a new Bernstein analysis paints a concerning picture. Rapid AI advancements threaten to undermine this advantage, potentially creating a 'doomsday scenario'. The $350 billion services export sector, employing over 10 million, is at risk, with AI systems capable of performing tasks with higher precision and speed at a fraction of the cost of human labor. This threat extends to both high-end IT services and low-skill jobs. Despite leading in AI skills penetration, India's lack of domestic technological innovation and reliance on Western platforms leaves it vulnerable. The demographic dividend, once a promise of prosperity, could become a burden if sufficient quality jobs aren't created.

(indiadispatch.com)

Tech Demographic Dividend India Economy

Atop 2.11 Heap Overflow Vulnerability: CVE-2025-31160

2025-03-29

A heap overflow vulnerability (CVE-2025-31160) has been discovered in Atop 2.11. The vulnerability stems from Atop attempting to connect to the TCP port of the atopgpud daemon during initialization. If another program is listening on this port, Atop may connect to it and receive malicious strings, leading to parsing failures, heap overflows, and segmentation faults. This vulnerability has been present since the introduction of atopgpud in Atop 2.4.0. The solution involves: not connecting to the TCP port by default, only attempting to connect when the '-k' flag is used; improved string parsing to avoid heap overflows; and not searching for netatop or netatop-bpf by default, only when the '-K' flag is used.

(openwall.com)

Development

Bodyoids: The Ethical and Technological Tightrope of Future Medicine

2025-03-28

Bodyoids: The Ethical and Technological Tightrope of Future Medicine

Scientists propose 'bodyoids,' human-like constructs grown from cells, for medical research and organ transplantation. While offering potential solutions to ethical dilemmas like animal testing, this technology raises profound ethical questions. Do bodyoids deserve human rights? How do we define their life status? How do we secure informed consent for cell donation? These issues demand careful consideration for responsible development and application.

(www.technologyreview.com)

Tech bioethics

EU's Reliance on Russian Gas Undermines 2027 Target

2025-03-28

EU's Reliance on Russian Gas Undermines 2027 Target

A new report reveals that EU imports of Russian gas surged by 18 percent in 2022, undermining its goal of ending reliance on Russian fossil fuels by 2027. Despite stable gas demand, increased imports from Italy, Czechia, and France were facilitated by the use of 'shadow' vessels and 'whitewashing' of origins. The EU spent €21.9 billion on Russian fossil fuels last year, exceeding aid to Ukraine. Experts criticize the EU's lack of legally binding targets and a concrete plan, arguing continued reliance on Russian gas jeopardizes security, exposes the bloc to price volatility and blackmail, and undermines support for Ukraine.

(e360.yale.edu)

Tech russian gas

Superellipses and Superhyperbolas: Beyond Classical Geometry

2025-03-28

This article introduces superellipses and superhyperbolas, generalizations of ellipses and hyperbolas, respectively. The shapes are controlled by a parameter 'p'. When p=2, they reduce to standard ellipses and hyperbolas. Increasing p makes superellipses more rectangular, but with continuous curvature; superhyperbolas become blunted at the vertices. The article explores why superellipses are far more common than superhyperbolas, speculating on naming conventions and the lack of effective advocacy for the latter.

(www.johndcook.com)

Misc Superellipse

Extending Futhark's Backend: Not Easy, But Not Impossible

2025-03-28

This post delves into the complexities of adding a new backend to the Futhark compiler. Futhark uses a staged compilation process: the frontend parses and type-checks, the middle-end optimizes and transforms, and the backend translates the intermediate representation (IR) to target code. Backend implementation isn't a simple tutorial; it involves multiple IR dialects and a deep understanding of internal APIs. The author suggests choosing the appropriate IR dialect based on the target language's level of abstraction and leveraging existing infrastructure to simplify development. The ultimate goal is a new backend invokable via the command line.

(futhark-lang.org)

Development backend development

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Hits Record Low Maximum

2025-03-28

Arctic Sea Ice Extent Hits Record Low Maximum

Arctic sea ice extent reached its annual maximum on March 22, 2025, at 14.33 million square kilometers, the lowest in 47 years of satellite record. This is 1.31 million square kilometers below the 1981-2010 average and 80,000 square kilometers below the previous record low in 2017. While subject to revision, the preliminary data highlights the accelerating impact of climate change on the Arctic.

(nsidc.org)

Tech Arctic sea ice satellite observation

Misophonia: A Journey Through the Science and Personal Experience of Sound Aversion

2025-03-28

This article chronicles the author's experience with misophonia, a poorly understood condition characterized by extreme aversion to specific sounds, beginning at age 13. It traces the scientific journey of misophonia from obscurity to growing recognition, detailing research efforts from initial clinical observations to fMRI studies exploring its neurological basis and recent therapeutic advancements. The author intimately describes their symptoms and resulting struggles, reflecting on the complexities of diagnosis and the challenges faced by sufferers. The piece explores potential etiologies, highlighting the interplay between biological vulnerabilities, environmental factors, and learned responses. Ultimately, the author offers a blend of personal reflection and scientific understanding, expressing hope for future cures and advocating for empathy and support for those affected.

(asteriskmag.com)

Misc sound aversion

Emacs Solo: A Minimalist Emacs Configuration

2025-03-27

Emacs Solo: A Minimalist Emacs Configuration

Emacs Solo is a minimalist Emacs configuration that leverages only built-in packages, eschewing external dependencies. Recently showcased live on the System Crafters Weekly Show, it demonstrates a powerful and efficient workflow. The configuration includes numerous customizations, such as enhanced icomplete-verical, an experimental git-gutter alternative, supercharged eshell, and more, aiming for a lightweight, fast, yet fully functional Emacs experience.

(www.rahuljuliato.com)

Development Minimalism

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