Self-Domestication: How Wolves May Have Tamed Themselves

2025-02-25
Self-Domestication: How Wolves May Have Tamed Themselves

A new study suggests that dog domestication may not have been entirely human-driven. Using a statistical model, researchers found that over 15,000 years, wolves could have self-domesticated by choosing to live near humans for consistent food scraps and selectively mating with similarly docile partners. This 'food-driven' strategy allowed wolves to adapt to human life, eventually evolving into domestic dogs. The research offers new insights into animal domestication mechanisms and sheds light on the long-term co-existence between humans and animals.

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Stop Building GPT Wrappers, Build a World Model Instead

2025-05-16
Stop Building GPT Wrappers, Build a World Model Instead

Foundry is building core infrastructure for browser agents, not GPT wrappers. They argue that every SaaS app and enterprise tool without an API will soon be automated by browser agents, but current browser agent technology is in its infancy. Foundry aims to build hyper-realistic, deterministic web simulations, a comprehensive annotation framework, reliable benchmarks, and robust RL training environments to improve browser agent reliability and efficiency. They are seeking a senior software engineer to build core ML systems and RL infrastructure from scratch.

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Supermarket Soft Plastic Recycling: A Well-Intentioned Lie?

2025-05-26
Supermarket Soft Plastic Recycling: A Well-Intentioned Lie?

In 2021, supermarkets launched soft plastic recycling schemes, promising to tackle plastic waste. Marketing and updated labels reassured customers that soft plastics were recyclable and recycled, encouraging them to collect items like bags and packaging for in-store drop-off. However, only about 10% of local councils offer kerbside soft plastic recycling, and industry experts acknowledge significant challenges, deeming large-scale recycling almost impossible. Is this initiative a well-intentioned lie or greenwashing?

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The End of Moore's Law and the Growing Heat Problem in Chips

2025-04-16
The End of Moore's Law and the Growing Heat Problem in Chips

The slowdown of Moore's Law has led to increasing power density in chips, making heat dissipation a critical bottleneck affecting performance and lifespan. Traditional cooling methods are insufficient for future high-performance chips, such as the upcoming CFET transistors. Researchers have developed a new simulation framework to predict how new semiconductor technologies affect heat dissipation and explored advanced cooling techniques, including microfluidic cooling, jet impingement cooling, and immersion cooling. System-level solutions, such as dynamically adjusting voltage and frequency, and thermal sprinting, also aim to balance performance and heat. Future backside functionalization technologies (CMOS 2.0) like backside power delivery networks, backside capacitors, and backside integrated voltage regulators, promise to reduce heat by lowering voltage but may introduce new thermal challenges. Ultimately, solving the chip heat problem requires a multidisciplinary effort, with system technology co-optimization (STCO) aiming to integrate systems, physical design, and process technology for optimal performance and cooling.

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Apple Notes to Support Markdown Export: A Controversial Upgrade?

2025-06-05
Apple Notes to Support Markdown Export: A Controversial Upgrade?

9to5Mac reports that Apple is adding Markdown export to Apple Notes. John Gruber, creator of Markdown, has mixed feelings. He argues Markdown is ideal for web writing and plain text storage, not the core function of a note-taking app. Apple Notes' excellent WYSIWYG editor and streamlined formatting better fit the Macintosh philosophy. While Markdown export is an improvement, Gruber worries turning Notes into a Markdown editor would be counterproductive, harming its ease of use and simplicity. He prefers Apple Notes focus on core improvements rather than chasing the 'Markdown trend'.

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Development

A Masochist's Guide to WebAssembly: A C/C++ Dev's Web App Odyssey

2025-06-06

An experienced C developer documents their journey of porting a complex Rubik's Cube solver to WebAssembly using Emscripten. The post details the challenges encountered, from simple 'Hello World' programs to multithreading, persistent storage, and the intricacies of Web Workers and IndexedDB. It highlights the realities of leaky abstractions in web development, showcasing the unexpected complexities that arise when bridging the gap between C/C++ and the browser environment. Despite the difficulties, the project culminates in a successful web application deployment, offering valuable lessons learned along the way.

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Development

New Lower Bound on Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter Mass

2025-05-15
New Lower Bound on Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter Mass

A new study in Physical Review Letters establishes a new lower bound on the mass of ultralight bosonic dark matter particles. By analyzing stellar kinematics in the Leo II dwarf galaxy, researchers reconstructed the dark matter wave function density. They found that dark matter particles lighter than 2.2 × 10⁻²¹ electron volts cannot reproduce the observed dark matter density distribution. This significantly improves the lower bound on dark matter mass and challenges popular fuzzy dark matter models.

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Tech bosons

Google DeepMind Unveils Music AI Sandbox and Lyria 2: Milestones in AI Music Creation

2025-04-25
Google DeepMind Unveils Music AI Sandbox and Lyria 2: Milestones in AI Music Creation

Google DeepMind recently released two groundbreaking AI music projects: Music AI Sandbox and Lyria 2. Developed by a team of dozens of engineers and researchers, these projects represent the combined efforts of DeepMind, Alphabet, and the YouTube team. Music AI Sandbox and Lyria 2 mark significant advancements in AI music creation, promising new possibilities for music composition and transformative changes for the music industry.

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AI

Execution Units are Often Pipelined

2024-12-30

This blog post explores the pipelining of execution units in out-of-order microarchitectures. The author initially assumed execution units remain occupied until µop completion, but using the Firestorm microarchitecture (A14 and M1) as an example, demonstrates that two integer execution units can handle multiple multiplications concurrently, each taking three cycles. By comparing dependent and independent instruction sequences, the author reveals that many execution unit/µop combinations are heavily pipelined, allowing a µop to be issued while the unit processes others. This reduces execution time for independent instructions from a predicted 6 cycles to 4. Finally, the author explains why instruction latency and bandwidth tables specify reciprocal throughput – it's equivalent to cycles/instruction.

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Delve: An Enterprise-Grade Data Analytics Platform – Alpha Release

2025-06-18
Delve: An Enterprise-Grade Data Analytics Platform – Alpha Release

Delve is an enterprise-grade data analytics platform currently in alpha pre-release, licensed under the AGPL-3.0 license. It boasts robust capabilities for ingesting, analyzing, and visualizing data from various sources. Features include an interactive search interface, a pipeline-based query language, custom dashboards, and real-time alerts. Enterprise features such as role-based access control, custom app development, and extensible search commands are also included. Installation is straightforward; simply download, unzip, and run a few commands to get started. While in its early stages, Delve's powerful features and ease of use make it a promising solution for enterprise data analysis.

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Rust FastCGI vs. Embedded Web Server: A Tale of Two Approaches

2025-04-11
Rust FastCGI vs. Embedded Web Server: A Tale of Two Approaches

This post details an experiment comparing a FastCGI server written in Rust with a simpler embedded web server using the Tide framework. While the author found FastCGI might offer advantages for scripted languages needing performance or security improvements in handling HTTP requests, the ease of use and efficiency of Tide for simple Rust HTTP servers proved compelling. The conclusion: for most use cases, embedded web servers win out over the complexity of FastCGI.

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Development

Dutch Ultramarathoner's Solo Run Guide

2025-06-04

A Dutch ultramarathon runner shares their tips for solo ultramarathons (42k+). The article details their resupply strategy, food choices, clothing, navigation, and fatigue management. Key takeaways include planning resupply stops every 30-40km, carrying sufficient hydration and food (sports drinks, salty nuts, chocolate, protein drinks), wearing comfortable loose clothing, using Google Maps' bike mode for navigation, stretching every 30-40km, and alternating between walking and running to avoid quitting. The focus is on perseverance and embracing the challenge.

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Unprecedented Solar Storm Creates Mystery Radiation Belts Around Earth

2025-02-07
Unprecedented Solar Storm Creates Mystery Radiation Belts Around Earth

A massive solar storm in May 2024 impacted Earth profoundly, its effects reaching even the ocean floor. Beyond stunning auroras, the storm created two temporary radiation belts within Earth's magnetic field. Remarkably, one belt contained high-energy protons—a never-before-seen phenomenon. These belts persisted for three months, far longer than typical storm-induced belts. While subsequent storms largely dispersed the particles, some remain, posing a potential hazard to satellites. Further research is crucial to understand the long-term effects and risks.

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Lidar Can Fry Your Phone's Camera

2025-05-23
Lidar Can Fry Your Phone's Camera

A Reddit user recently discovered that car-mounted lidar sensors can permanently damage a phone's camera under certain conditions. While filming a Volvo EX90 with an iPhone 16 Pro Max, the lidar's near-infrared light fried pixels in the camera lens. Volvo has warned against pointing cameras directly at lidar sensors, highlighting the potential risks of increasingly prevalent lidar technology in autonomous vehicles. The incident underscores the growing concerns about the interaction between lidar and consumer electronics.

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OpenAI's Ambitious Plan: An AI-Powered Jobs Platform and Certification Program

2025-09-05
OpenAI's Ambitious Plan: An AI-Powered Jobs Platform and Certification Program

OpenAI is launching an AI-powered jobs platform next year to connect employers with AI-skilled candidates, aiming to boost AI adoption across businesses and government. They'll also introduce a certification program in the coming months, teaching workers practical AI skills. Partnering with organizations like Walmart, OpenAI aims to certify 10 million Americans by 2030.

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Building Your Own Linux Debugger: Part 1 - Getting Started

2025-04-25

This is the first part of a ten-part series on building a Linux debugger from scratch. Learn the core mechanics of debuggers and implement features like launch, halt, continue, breakpoint setting (memory addresses, source lines, function entry), register and memory read/write, and single stepping. The tutorial uses C/C++, Linenoise, and libelfin, with each part's code available on GitHub. Future parts will cover advanced topics such as remote debugging, shared library support, expression evaluation, and multi-threaded debugging.

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Development

P vs. PSPACE: Is Space Computationally More Powerful Than Time?

2025-05-21
P vs. PSPACE: Is Space Computationally More Powerful Than Time?

A central question in complexity theory is the relationship between the complexity classes P and PSPACE. P encompasses problems solvable in reasonable time, while PSPACE deals with space complexity. The prevailing belief is that PSPACE is larger than P, due to space's reusability unlike time. Proving this requires demonstrating problems in PSPACE unsolvable in polynomial time. The article recounts the 1975 breakthrough by Hopcroft, Paul, and Valiant, showing space's slight advantage over time, but progress stalled. Ryan Williams' work finally broke the deadlock, offering fresh insights into resolving the P vs. PSPACE problem.

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Development

KeyTik: The All-in-One Automation Powerhouse

2025-01-10
KeyTik: The All-in-One Automation Powerhouse

KeyTik is a GUI-based keyboard remapper featuring profiles, an auto-clicker, screen clicker, multi-file opener, AutoHotkey script manager, and more. It lets you create custom automation tools and remap keys for specific devices or programs. KeyTik is free, safe, and certified spyware/adware/virus-free by Softpedia. Users can leverage pre-made AutoHotkey scripts, use AI to generate scripts, or code their own for seamless automation.

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Development keyboard remapping

The AI Bubble: A GPU-Fueled Mirage?

2025-07-22
The AI Bubble: A GPU-Fueled Mirage?

This article delivers a scathing critique of the current AI industry, arguing that it's a bubble fueled by massive capital expenditures on GPUs, primarily benefiting NVIDIA. The author contends that most AI companies are unprofitable, with hyped applications failing to deliver significant revenue growth or practical business value. He points to the deceptive marketing around 'AI agents' and the media's complicity in perpetuating the illusion of a thriving AI market. This fragile ecosystem, reliant on continued GPU purchases by a handful of tech giants, is poised for a significant collapse, potentially impacting the entire tech sector.

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Tech

Ex-Intel Architects Launch AheadComputing, Challenging x86 Dominance

2025-06-06
Ex-Intel Architects Launch AheadComputing, Challenging x86 Dominance

Four veteran chip architects from Intel have founded AheadComputing, aiming to develop a new generation of microprocessors based on the RISC-V architecture. Leaving Intel's massive workforce, they're challenging the x86 hegemony in a smaller startup, already securing $22 million in venture capital. They believe RISC-V's openness will unlock greater possibilities in chip design, potentially offering more efficient processors for PCs, laptops, and data centers. While facing significant challenges, their expertise and confidence in RISC-V position them to potentially revolutionize Oregon's semiconductor ecosystem.

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Tech

Salt Typhoon: Major US Telecoms Confirm Chinese Government-Backed Hacks

2024-12-31
Salt Typhoon: Major US Telecoms Confirm Chinese Government-Backed Hacks

AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen Technologies have confirmed that their systems were compromised earlier this year by the Chinese government-backed Salt Typhoon hacking group. A White House official called the intrusion the "worst telecom hack in our nation's history," enabling the hackers to geolocate millions of individuals and record phone calls at will. While the companies claim a limited number of customers were affected and that the attacks have been contained, the incident highlights significant security vulnerabilities in US telecom networks. This has prompted the government to strengthen cybersecurity oversight and push for stricter standards.

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The Photographer's Regret: Capturing the Moment, Losing the Memory

2025-05-05
The Photographer's Regret: Capturing the Moment, Losing the Memory

A photographer, questioned at a retrospective about the scarcity of Chapel Hill photos, reflects on the tension between photography and life. He recalls his son's birth, where his focus on capturing the perfect shot overshadowed his presence in the moment with his wife. This experience led him to realize that photography and life aren't always compatible; prioritizing image capture can cause one to miss more important experiences and emotions. While the ubiquity of smartphone photography allows for countless images, he suggests that the richness of memory may lie in the uncaptured moments between those photos.

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Misc

LLM-Assisted Coding: Productivity Gains at the Cost of Intelligence?

2025-03-16

The author shares their experience with using LLM-assisted coding tools like GitHub Copilot, revealing that while they boost productivity, they can also lead to forgetting fundamental knowledge and over-reliance on the tool, ultimately hindering problem-solving abilities. The author suggests treating LLMs as learning aids rather than code generators, critically evaluating their output and focusing on understanding underlying principles to truly benefit.

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(eli.cx)
Development programmer skills

Muscle-Mem: Giving AI Agents Muscle Memory

2025-05-14
Muscle-Mem: Giving AI Agents Muscle Memory

muscle-mem is a Python SDK that acts as a behavior cache for AI agents. It records an agent's tool-calling patterns as it solves tasks and deterministically replays those learned trajectories when encountering the same task again, falling back to agent mode if edge cases are detected. The goal is to get LLMs out of the hotpath for repetitive tasks, increasing speed, reducing variability, and eliminating token costs for tasks that could be handled by a simple script. Cache validation is crucial, implemented via custom 'Checks' ensuring safe tool reuse.

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Delusions: A Broader, Culturally Informed Perspective

2025-04-12
Delusions: A Broader, Culturally Informed Perspective

A new study in Schizophrenia Bulletin challenges conventional understandings of delusions, revealing a far more diverse range of delusional themes than previously acknowledged. Analyzing 155 studies (173,920 participants), researchers identified 37 distinct themes, highlighting significant cultural variations. For example, jealousy delusions were more prevalent in Southern Asia, while guilt/sin delusions were more common in Eastern Europe. The study also emphasizes the strong link between delusional content and interpersonal relationships, and challenges existing diagnostic assumptions. The findings underscore the need for a more nuanced, individualized, and culturally informed approach to psychosis treatment, moving beyond rigid diagnostic frameworks.

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A Funny Bug in Chrome's MV3 Extensions

2025-07-13

Google Chrome's transition from MV2 to MV3 removed the webRequestBlocking permission, breaking many ad blockers. However, the author discovered a quirky bug: due to the use of JavaScript bindings in Chrome extension APIs, manipulating parameters in the `chrome.webRequest` event constructor allowed bypassing permission checks and enabling ad blocking. While this bug didn't pose a security risk, it highlighted potential issues lurking in legacy code and the possibility of achieving unexpected results by cleverly exploiting technical details. The author reported the bug to Google, and it has since been patched.

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Development

Anthropic's Claude 3.7: Reasoning AI Powered by Reinforcement Learning

2025-02-24
Anthropic's Claude 3.7: Reasoning AI Powered by Reinforcement Learning

Anthropic has launched Claude 3.7, an upgraded AI model that distinguishes itself from traditional large language models (LLMs) by focusing on reasoning capabilities. Trained using reinforcement learning, Claude 3.7 excels at solving problems requiring step-by-step thinking, particularly coding challenges, outperforming OpenAI's models on certain benchmarks. This advancement stems from additional training data and optimizations for business applications like code writing and legal question answering. The release of Claude Code further enhances its practicality in AI-assisted coding, providing robust support for complex code planning.

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AI

The Architectural Fallacy of Level Design

2025-05-25
The Architectural Fallacy of Level Design

This post critiques the overemphasis on architectural aspects in level design. The author argues that many tutorials focus on layouts and models, misleading aspiring designers into believing good level design equates to good architecture. However, the author contends that excellent level design prioritizes game experience, possibility, and spatial concepts over walls and floors. By analyzing examples from various games, the author highlights the importance of narrative, pacing, economic systems, and combat design—non-architectural elements—and urges level designers to break free from architectural constraints and explore broader design possibilities. The author even admits to contributing to this fallacy in the past, highlighting the need for a more holistic and critical approach to the craft.

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Google Loses Privacy Lawsuit, Headed to Trial

2025-01-09
Google Loses Privacy Lawsuit, Headed to Trial

A federal judge refused Google's motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit alleging privacy violations. The suit claims Google collected data from users who opted out of its Web & App Activity (WAA) tracking, even sending data to third-party developers via Google Analytics for Firebase (GA4F). The judge ruled a jury could reasonably find Google profited from this misappropriation of data, setting a trial for August 2025. Google maintains its practices are lawful, but the ruling highlights ongoing challenges for tech companies balancing data collection and user privacy.

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