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DOTS: A 100+ Year Digital Archive Solution

2025-01-02

Group 47's DOTS (Digital Optical Technology System) offers a revolutionary approach to long-term digital data archiving. Promising a lifespan exceeding 100 years, DOTS utilizes non-magnetic, chemically inert media impervious to electromagnetic fields, including EMP. Its low-cost, environmentally friendly design requires no demanding climate control, functioning reliably in standard office environments (15º to 150º F). Uniquely, DOTS employs a visually readable format; with magnification, the digital information itself is visible, ensuring recoverability even decades later. Unlike magnetic tapes and hard drives demanding costly, frequent data migrations to prevent data loss, DOTS provides a stable, reliable solution for preserving legal, cultural, and historical data for generations to come.

(group47.com)

Tech archival technology

Supercharge Your MIDI Controllers with Perl

2025-04-10

Supercharge Your MIDI Controllers with Perl

This article demonstrates enhancing MIDI controllers using Perl modules to create real-time filters for MIDI events, achieving diverse sound effects. The author developed modules like MIDI::RtController, allowing for concise code to control MIDI devices. Several code examples showcase adding filters, delaying MIDI messages, and building custom filters (e.g., a stair-step filter), with audio examples illustrating the results. The article also explains how to list available MIDI devices and utilize existing tonal and drum filters. A fun project for any musician or programmer!

(www.perl.com)

Development

SignalGate Continues: 410GB of TeleMessage Data Dumped

2025-05-20

SignalGate Continues: 410GB of TeleMessage Data Dumped

Security researcher Micah Lee revealed a massive 410GB data breach from TeleMessage, an Israeli firm providing archiving services for encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp. TeleMessage's software was used by US government officials, leading to the 'SignalGate' scandal. The leaked data includes sensitive information, such as plaintext messages and metadata, highlighting vulnerabilities in TeleMessage's products and the risks associated with government reliance on encrypted message archiving services. The release comes from Distributed Denial of Secrets.

(micahflee.com)

Tech

Solving a Layton Puzzle Elegantly with Prolog

2025-04-08

Solving a Layton Puzzle Elegantly with Prolog

The author rewrote the chapter on logic programming languages in their book "Logic for Programmers", showcasing Prolog's power with a 'Layton-style' puzzle. The puzzle involves deducing the fourth student's score based on the scores of the first three. Using concise Prolog code (just 15 lines!), the author elegantly solves the problem, leveraging Prolog's pattern matching and bidirectionality to find all possible answer keys, ultimately determining the fourth student's score as 6. A comparison is made to a longer, less efficient solution. While the author argues against using puzzles for teaching, this example demonstrates Prolog's practical application potential.

(buttondown.com)

Development Puzzle Solving

Koreo: Building Complex Kubernetes Platforms with Functional Programming

2025-04-10

Koreo: Building Complex Kubernetes Platforms with Functional Programming

Koreo empowers you to build complex Kubernetes platforms using composable workflows and functions, inspired by functional programming. Workflows act as blueprints for platform operations, defining steps for tasks like application deployments or infrastructure provisioning. Functions are individual building blocks, encapsulating logic for data transformation, API interaction, or resource creation. Built-in testing validates configuration and catches errors early. Koreo's power lies in programming these workflows: incorporate conditional logic, loops, and error handling for dynamic platform operations, automating complex processes, enforcing policies, and building self-service platforms for development teams.

(koreo.dev)

Development Platform Automation

WhoFi: Wi-Fi-Based Biometric Identification Achieves 95.5% Accuracy

2025-07-23

WhoFi: Wi-Fi-Based Biometric Identification Achieves 95.5% Accuracy

Researchers from La Sapienza University of Rome have developed WhoFi, a novel biometric identification system using Wi-Fi signals. By analyzing patterns in Wi-Fi Channel State Information (CSI), WhoFi can accurately re-identify individuals across different locations, unaffected by lighting conditions and able to penetrate obstacles. Achieving up to 95.5% accuracy on the NTU-Fi dataset, WhoFi demonstrates the potential of Wi-Fi signals as a robust and privacy-preserving biometric modality, though privacy concerns remain.

(www.theregister.com)

AI Biometrics

Depot Seeks First Solutions Engineer: Accelerating Software Builds, Reshaping the Development Process

2025-09-04

Depot Seeks First Solutions Engineer: Accelerating Software Builds, Reshaping the Development Process

Rapidly growing software build platform Depot is seeking its first dedicated Solutions Engineer. This role requires an experienced developer who can help other developers dramatically improve their day-to-day efficiency. The ideal candidate will be a Depot user and comfortable working independently in a fast-paced startup environment, solving customers' most challenging build performance issues. The position involves close collaboration with customer engineering teams, providing technical guidance, analyzing build logs, and conducting technical demos. Candidates need experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines and the ability to clearly explain complex technical concepts.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development software builds solutions engineer

LLMs: Lossy Encyclopedias

2025-09-02

Large language models (LLMs) are like lossy encyclopedias; they contain a vast amount of information, but this information is compressed, leading to data loss. The key is discerning which questions LLMs can answer effectively versus those where the lossiness significantly impacts accuracy. For example, asking an LLM to create a Zephyr project skeleton with specific configurations is a 'lossless' question requiring precise details, which LLMs struggle with. The solution is to provide a correct example, allowing the LLM to operate on existing facts rather than relying on potentially missing details within its knowledge base.

(simonwillison.net)

AI Information Loss Knowledge Base

Windows XP: The Epic Saga of Microsoft's OS Unification

2025-08-12

Windows XP: The Epic Saga of Microsoft's OS Unification

This article details the epic journey of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system, from its inception to its eventual triumph and gradual decline. From initial struggles to escape the clutches of MS-DOS, to the cancellation of the ambitious 'Neptune' project, Microsoft underwent significant technical and strategic shifts, culminating in 'Whistler' (later XP). XP not only unified consumer and professional versions but also introduced a groundbreaking user interface and numerous innovative features, such as System Restore and the Firewall, drastically improving user experience. While initial market reception was mixed, XP ultimately reigned supreme as one of history's most successful operating systems, dominating the global PC market for over a decade due to its stability and compatibility.

(www.abortretry.fail)

Tech

Obsidian Plugin: Note Codes – Unique Codes for Your Notes

2025-09-22

Obsidian Plugin: Note Codes – Unique Codes for Your Notes

A new Obsidian plugin, Note Codes, assigns a unique 4-character code to each note, enabling quick referencing from handwritten notes or other locations. Codes are generated using SHA-256 hashing of the note's path and Base32 encoding. For improved readability, similar-looking characters are omitted. The open-source plugin includes a protocol handler, allowing notes to be opened via obsidian://note-codes/open?code=XX-XX.

(ezhik.jp)

Development Note Management

arXivLabs: Community Collaboration on arXiv Feature Development

2025-08-30

arXivLabs is an experimental framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Participants, individuals and organizations alike, embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who share them. Got an idea for a valuable community project? Learn more about arXivLabs!

(arxiv.org)

Development

Moving Nightmare: A $14,000 Lesson and the FMCSA Insurer Database

2025-05-03

In 2023, the author hired Flat Rate Movers for an interstate move, only to experience a nightmarish ordeal. The company failed to deliver promised services, causing damage to the author's belongings and home, and subsequently refused all communication. After numerous attempts to resolve the issue, the author finally received partial compensation by directly contacting Hanover Insurance Company, identified through the FMCSA insurer database. This cautionary tale highlights the importance of thorough due diligence when choosing movers and introduces the FMCSA database as a crucial resource for protecting consumer rights.

(aphyr.com)

Misc moving

New Benchmark Exposes the Automation Bottleneck in OCR: Achieving 98% Precision

2025-03-14

The influx of new OCR players like Mistral and Andrew Ng's offerings makes it hard for enterprises to distinguish genuine advancements from hype. Existing benchmarks focus on OCR accuracy and information extraction, neglecting automation levels. Nanonets introduces a new benchmark emphasizing automation at 98% precision. Using a dataset of 1000 images and 16,639 annotated data points, they measure model performance based on confidence scores – the proportion of data accurately processed without human intervention. While LLMs excel in overall accuracy, reliable confidence scores remain elusive. Gemini 2.0 Flash achieved 98% precision but automated only 8% of the data. This benchmark aims to help enterprises find solutions that truly reduce manual effort in document processing.

(nanonets.com)

Development

The Rise and Fall of Self-Illuminating Technology: From Radium Girls to Tritium

2025-03-08

The Rise and Fall of Self-Illuminating Technology: From Radium Girls to Tritium

This article chronicles the century-long history of self-illuminating technology, from the early 20th-century discovery of radium's luminescence to the tragic story of the 'Radium Girls' and the subsequent rise and fall of tritium-based light sources (GTLS). Wartime demand fueled radium's use, but led to devastating health consequences. Tritium eventually replaced radium, with GTLS becoming a dominant application, but stricter regulations and technological advancements ultimately caused the industry's decline as safer alternatives emerged. The article also explores differences in radioactive material regulation across countries and the handling of radioactive waste.

(computer.rip)

Tech radioactive materials environmental regulation

GitHub Code Suggestion Application Restrictions

2025-04-23

GitHub Code Suggestion Application Restrictions

Several limitations prevent applying code suggestions in GitHub code reviews. These include: no code changes made, the pull request being closed, viewing a subset of changes, only one suggestion per line allowed, applying to deleted lines, suggestions already applied or marked resolved, suggestions from pending reviews, multi-line comments, the pull request being queued to merge, or system limitations.

(github.com)

Development limitations

Unreal Engine's Multiplayer Overhead: A Memory Optimization Surprise

2025-04-08

Unreal Engine's Multiplayer Overhead: A Memory Optimization Surprise

An Unreal Engine developer, while using a memory layout visualizer, unexpectedly discovered that certain data structures added for multiplayer support in Unreal Engine are redundant in single-player games. These structures consume a significant amount of memory; for example, custom structs used for replicating component attachments and actor movement occupy 120 and 216 bytes respectively. By commenting out these unused variables and related code in single-player mode, a memory saving of approximately 392 bytes per actor was achieved. While not significant for most projects, this optimization could yield considerable savings (potentially up to 100MB) for projects with a high number of actors (e.g., over 100,000).

(larstofus.com)

Development

Rediscovering the Power of Poetry in a Fast-Paced World

2025-02-02

Rediscovering the Power of Poetry in a Fast-Paced World

In our fast-paced digital age, poetry might seem outdated. However, it offers a unique space for deep reflection, emotional exploration, and creative expression. This article explores the numerous benefits of writing poetry, including fostering self-expression, emotional healing, sharpening the mind, deepening human connection, boosting creativity, and improving communication skills. Accessible to all, poetry serves as a powerful tool for self-discovery and therapeutic release, regardless of writing experience.

(domofutu.substack.com)

Misc self-expression mental well-being

Why You Should Leave 100nF Decoupling Capacitors Behind

2025-01-30

Why You Should Leave 100nF Decoupling Capacitors Behind

This article debunks the long-standing practice of using 100nF decoupling capacitors as a default. The author argues that this practice is outdated due to advancements in IC technology (faster switching speeds) and the availability of low-cost, high-capacitance MLCCs. The article dives deep into the physics of decoupling, explaining impedance, parasitic inductance and capacitance, and their impact on power delivery network (PDN) integrity. It advocates for using larger capacitors (1uF or 2.2uF) for better decoupling, reduced EMI, and improved PDN stability. The importance of capacitor package size and its influence on parasitic inductance are highlighted. The author suggests that the persistence of outdated practices stems from cognitive load reduction and historical cost considerations.

(codeinsecurity.wordpress.com)

Hardware Decoupling Capacitors PCB Design

Brian Eno's Art Theory and a Dynamic Model of Democracy

2025-05-04

Brian Eno's Art Theory and a Dynamic Model of Democracy

This article explores how Brian Eno's art theory illuminates a new understanding of democracy's workings. Drawing on Adam Przeworski's theory of democracy, the author argues that its game-theoretic stability model struggles to explain the current decline of democracy. Eno's concept of 'generating variety' in artistic creation provides inspiration for a more dynamic model of democracy. This model emphasizes adaptability and responsiveness to endogenous change, rather than a rigid equilibrium. The article uses Eno's analysis of music composition as an example to illustrate this dynamic model and calls for a greater emphasis on diversity and adaptability within democratic systems to meet the challenges of complex environments.

(www.programmablemutter.com)

Misc democratic theory dynamic systems

Slate Truck: A Minimalist EV Pickup Challenging the Status Quo

2025-04-25

Slate Truck: A Minimalist EV Pickup Challenging the Status Quo

Slate Auto is launching the Slate Truck, a two-seater electric pickup priced under $20,000 (after federal incentives). Its minimalist design features a plastic body, a single color, and encourages extensive user customization. This approach lowers manufacturing costs and simplifies the process, attracting investors including reportedly Jeff Bezos. While lacking many features, its affordability, customizability, focus on reliability, and DIY-friendly maintenance could offer a unique driving experience for American consumers.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Minimalist Design Automotive Manufacturing

Magnitude: AI-Native Testing Framework for Web Apps

2025-04-25

Magnitude: AI-Native Testing Framework for Web Apps

Magnitude is a revolutionary open-source end-to-end testing framework for web applications, powered by visual AI agents that 'see' your interface and adapt to any changes. Build test cases easily with natural language, leverage a powerful reasoning agent for planning and adjustment, and rely on a fast visual agent for reliable execution. Run tests locally or within CI/CD pipelines; the framework automatically handles problems encountered during testing. Magnitude supports various LLMs, including Gemini 2.5 pro, Anthropic, and OpenAI, and offers a free visual model, Moondream. It simplifies test creation and execution significantly.

(github.com)

Development Web testing Open-source framework

OpenStreetMap Download Server Upgrade and Plea for Responsible Downloads

2025-09-22

The OpenStreetMap download server infrastructure has been upgraded, resulting in faster downloads and improved availability. To prevent abuse slowing down the service for everyone, users are urged to download responsibly. Specific recommendations include: downloading the full planet file from planet.openstreetmap.org for global data; using the pyosmium-up-to-date tool for large regions to only download updates; and monitoring automated scripts and implementing error handling to prevent repeated downloads.

(blog.geofabrik.de)

Tech download server

Processed Meats, Sugary Drinks, and Trans Fats Linked to Increased Disease Risk

2025-07-05

Processed Meats, Sugary Drinks, and Trans Fats Linked to Increased Disease Risk

A new study reveals a significant link between the consumption of even small amounts of processed meat, sugary drinks, and trans fatty acids and an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, ischemic heart disease, and colorectal cancer. Analyzing data from over 60 previous studies, researchers found that as little as one hot dog a day increased the risk of certain diseases. Experts recommend minimizing or avoiding these foods and adopting a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

(edition.cnn.com)

Health chronic diseases

Programming with LLMs in 2024: My Experiences

2025-01-07

This post summarizes the author's experiences using generative models for programming over the past year. He found LLMs to be a net positive on his productivity, particularly for autocomplete, search, and chat-driven programming. While chat-driven programming requires adjusting workflows, it provides a first draft and facilitates quicker error correction. The author emphasizes that LLMs excel with well-defined problems and advocates for smaller, more independent code packages for better LLM interaction. He introduces sketch.dev, a Go IDE designed for LLMs to streamline the feedback loop and boost efficiency.

(crawshaw.io)

Development

SpaceX Engineer's Hacking Past Exposed

2025-04-04

SpaceX Engineer's Hacking Past Exposed

Christopher Stanley, a former SpaceX and X engineer currently serving as a senior advisor at the Department of Justice (DOJ), has reportedly been caught boasting about hacking and distributing pirated ebooks, bootleg software, and game cheats. These boasts appeared on archived websites, several of which were quickly deleted after being flagged. Stanley was assigned to the DOJ by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). While Musk claims DOGE operates transparently, little is known about its staffers or their roles. Stanley's DOJ duties remain unclear, but the Deputy Attorney General's office investigates various crimes, including hacking and malicious cyber activity. The DOJ confirmed Stanley, a 'special government employee,' doesn't receive a government salary. Stanley's questionable past reportedly dates back to 2006, when he was in high school. Reuters connected him to various online forums and sites using pseudonyms, including Reneg4d3, still used on YouTube, verifying the connection through registration data, old email addresses, and biographical information.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

The Micral: France's Unsung Microcomputer Pioneer

2025-06-04

The Micral: France's Unsung Microcomputer Pioneer

In a Parisian basement in 1973, R2E launched the Micral N, the second commercially available microcomputer. Powered by the Intel 8008, its affordability propelled it into French research labs and businesses. The Micral series demonstrated the potential of small, inexpensive computers, paving the way for the personal computer revolution. Despite R2E's eventual acquisition, the Micral's story remains a compelling tale of technological innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.

(www.abortretry.fail)

Tech microcomputer

2024's Biggest AI Fails: From 'AI Slop' to Out-of-Control Chatbots

2025-01-02

2024's Biggest AI Fails: From 'AI Slop' to Out-of-Control Chatbots

2024 saw significant advancements in AI, but also exposed numerous shortcomings. The proliferation of generative AI led to a flood of low-quality content ('AI slop') across the internet, impacting model training effectiveness. AI-generated fake images distorted perceptions of real-world events, such as false event promotions. Elon Musk's xAI company's Grok image generator, lacking necessary safety restrictions, generated violent and illegal content, raising concerns. Out-of-control chatbots and inaccurate information output also caused negative impacts, such as an airline chatbot providing incorrect refund policies. Erroneous AI search result summaries and the spread of deepfake pornography further highlighted the inadequacy of AI ethics and safety regulations.

(www.technologyreview.com)

AI AI failures

Browser MCP: Local Browser Automation

2025-04-07

Browser MCP is a local browser automation tool prioritizing speed, security, and convenience. Automation happens locally, resulting in faster performance without network latency and keeping your browser activity private – no data is sent to remote servers. It uses your existing browser profile, maintaining your logged-in status across services, and avoids bot detection and CAPTCHAs by leveraging your real browser fingerprint.

(browsermcp.io)

Development

Sweden's Saturday Candy Tradition: From Health Recommendation to National Craze

2025-08-13

Sweden's Saturday Candy Tradition: From Health Recommendation to National Craze

Sweden's "Lördagsgodis" (Saturday candy) tradition originated from a 1959 experiment studying the relationship between sugar and tooth decay. Initially, the experiment's conclusion led to a health recommendation of eating candy only on Saturdays. However, over time, it evolved into a national craze. Today, buying loose candy on Saturdays has become a Swedish custom, resulting in Sweden becoming one of the highest per capita candy consumers globally. In recent years, the government has expressed concern over high candy consumption's impact on public health and is considering regulating this tradition.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Misc Swedish culture candy consumption

Vanguard: King of Low-Cost Investing?

2025-05-01

Vanguard: King of Low-Cost Investing?

Vanguard stands out in the investment world with its unique client-owned structure and exceptionally low expense ratios. Data reveals that a significant number of Vanguard funds outperformed their peers over the past decade, particularly its actively managed bond funds. Furthermore, Vanguard's cash account interest rates are considerably higher than average bank savings rates. Top rankings from J.D. Power and Morningstar reinforce Vanguard's leadership in investor satisfaction and robo-advisory services. However, the text emphasizes that past performance is not indicative of future results, and all investments carry risk.

(corporate.vanguard.com)

Startup low-cost

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