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Don't Look for Your Keys Under the Lamppost: The Tech Consultant's Dilemma

2025-05-28

The article uses the analogy of a drunk looking for his keys under a lamppost to illustrate a common mistake among technically skilled individuals seeking consulting work. They focus on improving already strong technical skills (e.g., learning a sixth programming language when the first five are already in demand), neglecting crucial soft skills like sales and networking. The author argues that while strengthening existing strengths is beneficial, addressing weaknesses that hinder progress (like sales ability) should be prioritized. Attending conferences and actively seeking opportunities is more effective than solely focusing on enhancing technical expertise.

(www.johndcook.com)

Startup

Robots Learn to Identify Objects by 'Blindly' Feeling Them

2025-05-13

Robots Learn to Identify Objects by 'Blindly' Feeling Them

Researchers from MIT, Amazon Robotics, and the University of British Columbia have developed a new technique enabling robots to learn an object's weight, softness, or contents using only internal sensors—no cameras or external tools needed. By picking up and gently shaking an object, the robot infers properties like mass and softness. The technique uses simulations of the robot and object, analyzing data from the robot's joint encoders to work backward and identify object properties. This low-cost method is particularly useful in environments where cameras are ineffective (like dark basements or post-earthquake rubble) and is robust in handling unseen scenarios. Published at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, this research promises to improve robot learning, enabling faster development of manipulation skills and adaptation to changing environments.

(news.mit.edu)

AI robot perception object recognition

Homebrew Channel Source Code Repository Reveals Massive Copyright Infringement

2025-04-29

Homebrew Channel Source Code Repository Reveals Massive Copyright Infringement

The source code repository for the Wii homebrew software, The Homebrew Channel, has been released, but its core library, libogc, has been exposed for massive copyright infringement. The libogc developers not only stole proprietary Nintendo code but also an open-source RTOS, RTEMS, removing all attribution and copyright information. The developers ignored inquiries, even resorting to abuse and deleting comments to avoid accountability. Due to the severity of the copyright issues, the project is archived and further development is discouraged. The incident underscores the importance of respecting copyright and adhering to legal regulations.

(github.com)

Development

Building a Compact C Standard Library with Newlib on Bare Metal RISC-V

2025-04-26

Building a Compact C Standard Library with Newlib on Bare Metal RISC-V

This article demonstrates building a compact C standard library using Newlib on a bare-metal RISC-V system. The author implements basic UART functions, passing them to Newlib to enable printf functionality. The process covers Newlib's concept, cross-compilation toolchain setup, UART driver, system calls, and linker script creation. The article concludes with running the application in QEMU and analyzing the debug log. This is a practical tutorial on embedded systems development, showing how to utilize the C standard library in resource-constrained environments.

(popovicu.com)

Development

US Climate Assessment Websites Vanish

2025-07-03

US Climate Assessment Websites Vanish

Websites displaying legally mandated US national climate assessments have mysteriously disappeared, raising concerns about access to crucial climate information. These reports, vital for state and local governments and the public to understand the impacts of climate change in their areas, have vanished, leaving a void in critical risk information. Scientists highlight the cost-saving and life-saving importance of these peer-reviewed reports. While the White House claims the information will be transferred to NASA, details remain scarce, and NASA and NOAA have not responded to inquiries. This action is criticized as tampering with facts and restricting public access to information, potentially increasing climate-related risks.

(apnews.com)

Tech scientific review

EXWM: A Powerful Tiling Window Manager for Emacs

2025-04-13

EXWM: A Powerful Tiling Window Manager for Emacs

EXWM is a full-featured tiling X window manager for Emacs built on top of XELB. It's fully keyboard-driven, offers hybrid layout modes (tiling & stacking), dynamic workspace support, and ICCCM/EWMH compliance. Optional features include RandR (multi-monitor) support, a system tray, input method support, background setting, and an XSETTINGS server. Check out the screenshots and user guide for a complete overview and installation instructions!

(github.com)

Development

Supercapacitors Smooth Out the Power Grid's AI Woes

2025-05-06

Supercapacitors Smooth Out the Power Grid's AI Woes

Massive AI model training strains power grids with massive, instantaneous energy demands—like millions of kettles switching on simultaneously. To address this, companies like Siemens Energy, Eaton, and Delta Electronics are deploying supercapacitors. These devices rapidly charge and discharge, smoothing out the energy fluctuations from AI training, reducing strain on the grid and supporting stable renewable energy supplies. While not a universal solution, supercapacitors are ideal for short-duration, high-energy applications like AI training.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech Supercapacitors

Shocking: 23% Failure Rate for 2020 Tesla Model 3 Inspections

2025-01-27

Shocking: 23% Failure Rate for 2020 Tesla Model 3 Inspections

A new report from the Danish automotive association FDM reveals a shocking 23% failure rate for 2020 Tesla Model 3 vehicles during their periodic inspections, significantly higher than the 9% average for other electric cars. The main issues were found in brakes, lights, wheels, and steering. FDM suggests this indicates quality and durability concerns with early Model 3s, recommending thorough pre-inspection checks. Tesla responded that significant improvements were made to the 2021 and later models.

(fdm.dk)

Tech Inspection

The Three Temples of LLM Training: Pretraining, Fine-tuning, and RLHF

2025-06-10

The Three Temples of LLM Training: Pretraining, Fine-tuning, and RLHF

In the hidden mountain sanctuary of Lexiconia, ancient Scribes undergo training in a three-part temple: The Hall of Origins, The Chamber of Instructions, and The Arena of Reinforcement. The Hall of Origins involves pretraining, where Scribes read vast amounts of text to learn language patterns. The Chamber of Instructions is where fine-tuning occurs, using curated texts to guide Scribes towards better outputs. The Arena of Reinforcement utilizes Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF), with human judges ranking Scribe answers, rewarding good ones and punishing bad. Elite Scribes may also be subtly modified via LoRA scrolls and Adapters, tweaking responses without retraining the entire model. This three-winged temple represents the complete process of training large language models.

(medium.com)

AI Pretraining

ISC: 800+ Players Online, Free Scrabble!

2025-05-15

The Internet Scrabble Club (ISC) is the best place to play live online Scrabble! Right now, 843 players are logged in, with 320 games in progress. Play free Scrabble with no ads or downloads, against friends, people worldwide, or computer opponents. Review your games or watch others. ISC uses only official dictionaries and is available on iOS, Android, and desktop.

(isc.ro)

Game online game scrabble

Oxford English Dictionary's AI Search Assistant (Beta)

2025-07-09

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has launched a beta version of an AI search assistant designed to help users leverage the OED's advanced search capabilities. The assistant itself cannot answer questions or engage in conversation, but it can construct complex search queries based on user requests and provide links to the results. It can also help users find information about the OED. Example queries include: "Which words in English are borrowed from French?", "Which words were first used by Charles Dickens?", or "How are words added to the dictionary?". Synonym searches are not yet supported.

(www.oed.com)

Tech AI search assistant Oxford English Dictionary advanced search

Anthropic's Claude Gets a Blog (with a Human Editor)

2025-06-07

Anthropic's Claude Gets a Blog (with a Human Editor)

Anthropic has launched a blog, Claude Explains, primarily authored by its AI model, Claude. While presented as Claude's work, the posts are actually refined by Anthropic's expert team, adding context and examples. This highlights a collaborative approach, showcasing AI's potential for content creation but also its limitations. Other media organizations' experiments with AI writing have faced similar challenges, including factual inaccuracies and fabrications. Anthropic's continued hiring in writing-related roles suggests a blended human-AI approach.

(techcrunch.com)

AI

Business Insider's AI-Powered Reading List Goes Wrong

2025-06-02

Business Insider's AI-Powered Reading List Goes Wrong

Business Insider, while encouraging AI use, apologized last year for accidentally recommending non-existent books generated by AI. A reading list intended to help staff understand good business journalism included several fabricated titles, such as a nonexistent Target CEO's memoir, a Jensen Huang biography, and a Mark Zuckerberg autobiography. This incident highlights the potential risks and need for rigorous vetting of AI tools in content creation, serving as a cautionary tale for news organizations using AI.

(www.semafor.com)

Tech Business Insider

Toyota and Waymo Partner to Accelerate Autonomous Driving

2025-04-29

Toyota and Waymo Partner to Accelerate Autonomous Driving

Toyota and Waymo have reached a preliminary agreement to collaborate on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies. The partnership aims to combine Waymo's autonomous driving expertise with Toyota's vehicle manufacturing prowess to create a new autonomous vehicle platform and enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs). This collaboration underscores both companies' commitment to improving road safety and increasing mobility for all.

(waymo.com)

Tech

DuckDuckGo Doesn't Fully Escape Google Tracking: Study

2025-07-14

DuckDuckGo Doesn't Fully Escape Google Tracking: Study

A new study reveals that even using privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo doesn't fully protect users from Google's extensive web tracking. Google Analytics, AdSense, and YouTube embeds allow Google to collect data even when DuckDuckGo is used. The study, comparing the US, UK, Sweden, and Switzerland, found that over 40% of US websites still sent data to Google, despite using DuckDuckGo. Stricter privacy laws in Sweden and Switzerland resulted in lower tracking rates. The findings highlight the need to reduce reliance on Google services and choose independent, privacy-first alternatives across all layers of the internet, not just browsing.

(www.simpleanalytics.com)

Tech Google tracking

AI-Driven 3-Day Workweeks? CEOs Weigh In

2025-09-16

AI-Driven 3-Day Workweeks? CEOs Weigh In

Tech CEOs like Zoom's Eric Yuan, Microsoft's Bill Gates, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang foresee a future of significantly shorter workweeks, potentially as short as three or four days, driven by AI automation. While acknowledging job displacement in certain sectors, they emphasize AI's potential to boost productivity and create new roles managing AI systems and digital agents. This shift, comparable to the industrial revolution and the internet's rise, is expected to reshape the job market but ultimately improve overall well-being and efficiency.

(fortune.com)

Tech

Mailspring: A Faster, Leaner, Open-Source Email Client

2025-02-03

Mailspring: A Faster, Leaner, Open-Source Email Client

Mailspring, a new iteration of Nylas Mail maintained by one of the original authors, is faster, leaner, and available now! It replaces Nylas Mail's JavaScript sync code with a new C++ sync engine based on Mailcore2, using roughly half the RAM and CPU. Its near-zero CPU idle wake-ups translate to significant battery life improvements. It also boasts a revamped composer and other new features. The UI is open source (GPLv3), built with TypeScript, Electron, and React, and features a plugin architecture for easy extension. The sync engine, also open source (GPLv3) and written in C++ and C, runs locally. Powerful features include a unified inbox, snooze, send later, mail rules, templates, and more. Mailspring Pro, a paid subscription, adds features like link tracking and read receipts.

(github.com)

Development open-source email client

Colossal's 'Dire Wolves': Gene Editing Sparks Controversy

2025-04-08

Colossal's 'Dire Wolves': Gene Editing Sparks Controversy

Colossal Biosciences claims to have resurrected the extinct dire wolf, using gene editing to create grey wolf pups—Remus, Romulus, and Khaleesi—with some dire wolf traits. However, studies show grey wolves and dire wolves diverged 6 million years ago, with significant genetic differences. Colossal's claim of achieving this with only 20 gene edits is controversial. The three gene-edited pups are under observation in a reserve, and breeding is prohibited. This raises questions about species definition and the ethical challenges of gene editing.

(www.newscientist.com)

Tech dire wolf

Libredesk: Open-Source, Self-Hosted Customer Support Desk with AI

2025-02-27

Libredesk: Open-Source, Self-Hosted Customer Support Desk with AI

Libredesk is an open-source, self-hosted customer support desk offered as a single binary application. Key features include multi-inbox support, granular permissions, smart automation (auto-tag, assign, and route conversations), CSAT surveys, macros, smart organization (tags, custom statuses, and snoozing), auto-assignment, SLA management, and business intelligence integrations. It also boasts AI-assisted response rewriting and a command bar for quick actions. Built with Go (backend) and Vue.js 3 with Shadcn UI (frontend), Libredesk is currently in alpha. Easy installation is provided, with Docker support.

(github.com)

Development customer support

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

Linux Kernel Performance Boost: Restartable Sequences Improved

2025-09-20

The Linux kernel's restartable sequences feature, aimed at boosting performance in threaded applications, has seen increased use alongside new kernel capabilities. However, this has revealed some issues. Developer Thomas Gleixner recently improved the code, addressing performance bottlenecks and historical oversights. These changes significantly enhance efficiency but might require ABI changes in user space, demanding thorough testing for compatibility.

(lwn.net)

Development restartable sequences

Wildfire Smoke: A Grim Toll of 41,000+ Annual Deaths, Projected to Soar

2025-09-22

Wildfire Smoke: A Grim Toll of 41,000+ Annual Deaths, Projected to Soar

New research reveals a staggering toll: wildfire smoke caused over 41,000 excess deaths annually from 2011 to 2020. By 2050, this number could reach 68,000-71,000 due to climate change-induced hotter, drier conditions in North America, unless stronger preventative measures are implemented. The study highlights the urgent need for carbon emission reduction and adaptation strategies, while acknowledging the potential benefits of air purifiers and controlled burns in mitigating the smoke's impact. California is projected to experience the most significant increase in smoke-related mortality, with over 5,000 excess deaths annually.

(www.yahoo.com)

Tech

Zhaoxin's Century Avenue: A Deep Dive into China's x86 CPU Ambitions

2025-04-30

Zhaoxin's Century Avenue: A Deep Dive into China's x86 CPU Ambitions

Zhaoxin's latest CPU, the KX-7000, featuring the new "Century Avenue" architecture, aims to bridge the performance gap with early 2010s Intel CPUs. While showing progress with a wider 4-wide core and higher clock speeds, the KX-7000 lags in cache bandwidth, branch prediction, and memory subsystem performance. Single-threaded performance roughly matches AMD's Bulldozer, outperforming it in floating-point benchmarks but falling short in multi-threaded tasks against both Bulldozer and Intel Skylake. The article suggests the KX-7000 isn't designed to directly compete with AMD and Intel, but rather to meet China's demand for domestic CPUs, highlighting the technical and resource challenges in the pursuit of performance.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware Zhaoxin x86 CPU

DeepCoder-14B: Open-Source Code Reasoning Model Matches OpenAI's o3-mini

2025-04-09

DeepCoder-14B: Open-Source Code Reasoning Model Matches OpenAI's o3-mini

Agentica and Together AI have released DeepCoder-14B-Preview, a code reasoning model fine-tuned via distributed RL from Deepseek-R1-Distilled-Qwen-14B. Achieving an impressive 60.6% Pass@1 accuracy on LiveCodeBench, it rivals OpenAI's o3-mini, using only 14B parameters. The project open-sources its dataset, code, training logs, and system optimizations, showcasing a robust training recipe built on high-quality data and algorithmic improvements to GRPO. This advancement democratizes access to high-performing code-generation models.

(www.together.ai)

AI Code Reasoning

The Cross-Platform Rendering Conundrum: Why SDL's GPU API Takes This Shader Approach

2025-05-19

Game developers face the challenge of efficient cross-platform rendering. Different platforms (Windows, macOS, Linux, consoles) utilize diverse graphics APIs (Vulkan, Metal, Direct3D), with shader handling being particularly complex. The author, a co-maintainer of the FNA project (a modern XNA framework port), created Refresh, a cross-platform graphics abstraction library, and proposed an SDL GPU API solution supporting various shader formats like SPIR-V, HLSL, DXBC, and MSL. This multi-format approach stems from the lack of a standardized shader ISA due to differing GPU architectures and vendor interests. Treating shaders as content, not code, allows flexibility in compilation workflows. The approach handles existing shaders (like XNA's FX bytecode) while avoiding the immense effort of creating a custom shader language, prioritizing practical cross-platform rendering.

(moonside.games)

Development cross-platform rendering graphics APIs

Blue Light Bleaches Yellow Stains: A Sustainable Solution

2025-09-11

Blue Light Bleaches Yellow Stains: A Sustainable Solution

Researchers have developed an environmentally friendly method for removing yellow stains from clothing using high-intensity blue LED light. This method utilizes blue light and ambient oxygen, eliminating the need for harsh chemical oxidants. It effectively removes stains from sweat, orange juice, tomato juice, and more, even on delicate fabrics like silk. Tests showed blue light significantly outperformed hydrogen peroxide and UV light in stain removal without fabric damage. While promising, further testing is needed before commercialization to ensure safety and colorfastness.

(phys.org)

Tech stain removal

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-08-31

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved 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 project that will benefit the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs!

(arxiv.org)

Development

Mitochondria: Cellular Powerhouses on the Move, Revolutionizing Disease Treatment

2025-04-10

Mitochondria: Cellular Powerhouses on the Move, Revolutionizing Disease Treatment

Groundbreaking research reveals that mitochondria, the cell's powerhouses, aren't static organelles; they travel between cells! This 'mitochondrial transfer' has been observed across various cell types and organisms, potentially playing a crucial role in tissue repair, immune system activation, and cellular rescue. Researchers are exploring its therapeutic potential for diseases like cancer and stroke, though its exact mechanisms and role in humans remain unclear. Mitochondrial transfer may revolutionize our understanding of cell-to-cell communication and disease treatment.

(www.nature.com)

Tech cell-to-cell communication disease treatment

Population Decline and Climate Change: A Multi-Funded Research Report

2025-07-09

Population Decline and Climate Change: A Multi-Funded Research Report

Four authors affiliated with the Population Wellbeing Initiative at UT Austin have released a research paper examining the impact of population decline on climate change. The report builds upon a previous working paper and acknowledges funding and support from numerous institutions and individuals, including the Musk Foundation and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The report emphasizes that no funder influenced the research process or findings, and all authors state that the paper does not necessarily represent the views of any funder.

(www.nber.org)

Misc population decline research report

Apple's App Store Payment Monopoly?

2025-07-05

This article examines Apple's App Store payment policies, highlighting the requirement that app developers can only choose between Apple Pay and alternative payment services, not both. This limits consumer choice and stifles competition. The author draws an analogy to airport store payment options, arguing that this practice is absurd and calling for intervention from the EU's Digital Markets Act to ensure fair competition, allowing developers to offer multiple payment methods simultaneously.

(www.taler.net)

Tech Payment Monopoly

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