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Keyboard Shortcuts for Efficient Search Result Navigation

2025-03-28

This text outlines a set of keyboard shortcuts for navigating search results. Users can use j/k keys to move the highlight up and down, h/l keys to move within horizontal content or toggle boost/ban status in site info modals, Enter to open the highlighted result, / to focus the search bar, ! to focus the search bar and add a "!" to start typing a bang command, q to open quick answer, Escape to reset highlight scroll state or close site info modals, Shift+~ to open the control center, s to open/close site info modals for the highlighted result, w/i/v/m/n to open web search, images, videos, maps, and news tabs respectively, and ]/[ to cycle through navigation tabs. These shortcuts significantly improve search efficiency.

(kagi.com)

Misc keyboard shortcuts

Hexi: A Lightweight C++23 Library for Safe Binary Data Handling

2025-03-28

Hexi: A Lightweight C++23 Library for Safe Binary Data Handling

Hexi is a lightweight, header-only C++23 library for safely handling binary data from arbitrary sources (primarily network data). It bridges the gap between manually memcpying bytes and full-blown serialization libraries. Designed for ease of use, safety with untrusted data, flexibility, and minimal overhead, Hexi supports custom containers (including non-contiguous ones), exception handling, and bounds checking. Additional features include buffer types for binary files, static/dynamic buffers, and a thread-local block allocator.

(github.com)

Development Binary Data

AI Intelligence Tests: Are Good Questions More Important Than Great Answers?

2025-03-27

AI Intelligence Tests: Are Good Questions More Important Than Great Answers?

The author took the "Humanity's Last Exam," a test designed to assess AI intelligence, and failed miserably. This led him to reflect on how we evaluate AI intelligence: current tests overemphasize providing correct answers to complex questions, neglecting the importance of formulating meaningful questions. True historical research begins with unique, unexpected questions that reveal new perspectives. The author argues that AI progress may not lie in perfectly answering difficult questions, but in its ability to gather and interpret evidence during research and its potential to ask novel questions. This raises the question of whether AI can ever produce valuable historical questions.

(newsletter.dancohen.org)

AI Intelligence Tests Historical Research

Two Transistors Mimic Neurons, Promising Breakthrough in Neural Networks

2025-03-28

Two Transistors Mimic Neurons, Promising Breakthrough in Neural Networks

Researchers have developed a novel device that mimics both neurons and synapses using just two standard CMOS transistors. By controlling the gate voltage, the device can switch between an off state and mimicking neuronal activity with adjustable spiking frequency, and can use spikes to adjust the weights of different inputs. It can function as an artificial synapse with six or more weight levels, and when combined with a second transistor, it can act as a neuron, integrating inputs to influence the frequency of output spikes (varying by a factor of 1000). This stable behavior (over 10 million clock cycles) offers a highly efficient and cost-effective design, potentially significantly reducing the energy consumption and cost of neural networks and accelerating AI advancements.

(arstechnica.com)

Hardware neuromorphic computing hardware acceleration

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

Improving a Go HTTP Server: Unit Tests, Middleware, and Subrouters

2025-03-28

Improving a Go HTTP Server: Unit Tests, Middleware, and Subrouters

This blog post details improvements made to a Go HTTP server built from scratch. The author added unit tests, addressed reader feedback regarding case-insensitive headers and multiple header values, and improved handling of response streams and larger payloads. Key additions include middleware support for cleaner code and subrouters for enhanced route organization. The post showcases iterative development and practical problem-solving in Go.

(www.krayorn.com)

Development

A Tiny Forth for the 6502: Under 600 Bytes

2025-03-28

A Tiny Forth for the 6502: Under 600 Bytes

This article details a highly minimized Forth implementation for the 8-bit 6502 CPU, achieving a size of under 600 bytes. The author compares two interpreter models: Direct Threaded Code (DTC) and Minimal Threaded Code (MTC), opting for DTC for its smaller size. The project focuses on size over performance, aiming to verify standard DTC against MTC variations. The resulting Forth includes core primitives and is tested with `my_hello_world.FORTH`, demonstrating functionality.

(github.com)

Development

AI's Unexpected Revolution: Brevity Trumps Verbosity

2025-03-26

AI's Unexpected Revolution: Brevity Trumps Verbosity

The proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) initially caused panic in schools and businesses, fearing their replacement of written assignments and professional communication. However, the author argues that the true impact of LLMs lies in their potential to revolutionize how we communicate and program. LLMs reveal the underlying simplicity of verbose business emails and complex code, pushing us towards concise communication. This could eventually lead to the obsolescence of LLMs themselves, giving rise to more efficient and streamlined business communication and programming languages. This shift towards brevity promises to change the world.

(thomashunter.name)

AI Communication Revolution

Don't Let Self-Serve UIs Fool You: They Aren't Always a Silver Bullet

2025-03-27

This article explores the pros and cons of building self-serve UIs for accessing internal systems. While simplifying configuration seems appealing, for complex tasks, self-serve UIs can be counterproductive. They don't solve underlying engineering problems and can mask risks, leading to errors and security vulnerabilities. The author suggests that before building a self-serve UI, one should first delve deeper into the root cause of the problem and improve the system itself, rather than just relying on superficial simplification.

(jeremymikkola.com)

Development Engineering Efficiency

Building Node.js with clang-cl on Windows: A Success Story

2025-03-28

The author recently successfully built Node.js using clang-cl on Windows, overcoming several compilation hurdles. The post details the process, including installing necessary Visual Studio components (C++ Clang compiler and MSBuild support for LLVM), configuring ccache for faster builds, and the final compilation steps. The author shares troubleshooting tips, such as reinstalling Visual Studio components and correctly setting the ccache path. This provides a valuable guide for Windows users looking to build Node.js with clang-cl, offering an alternative to the traditional MSVC build process.

(joyeecheung.github.io)

Development

2,200-Year-Old Pyramid Unearthed Near Dead Sea

2025-03-28

2,200-Year-Old Pyramid Unearthed Near Dead Sea

Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed a mysterious pyramid-shaped structure and way station dating back 2,200 years near the Dead Sea. The exceptionally well-preserved site contains a wealth of artifacts, including papyrus fragments with ancient Greek writing, bronze coins, vessels, and organic materials like wood and fabrics, all remarkably preserved by the desert's dry climate. The purpose of the pyramid remains unknown, with possibilities ranging from a monument to a guard tower. Excavations continue, promising further insights into this intriguing discovery from the Ptolemaic or Seleucid era.

(www.livescience.com)

Tech pyramid Dead Sea

Google Maps, Search, and Hotels Get AI-Powered Travel Planning Upgrades

2025-03-27

Google Maps, Search, and Hotels Get AI-Powered Travel Planning Upgrades

Google is enhancing Maps, Search, and Hotels with AI-powered features to improve travel planning. Maps gains the ability to identify locations in screenshots and save them to a list, simplifying trip preparation. This Gemini-powered feature, rolling out to US iOS users this week (Android coming soon), detects places in screenshot text, displays them on the map, and allows saving to a sharable list. AI Overviews in Search are updated with itinerary-building tools, letting users create trips for specific regions or countries. Google Lens's AI Overviews will soon support more languages, including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Finally, price drop alerts, already in Google Flights, are going global for Google Hotels, available on mobile and desktop.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech AI travel planning Hotel booking

Linux 6.14 Released: Gaming Boost, Enhanced Rust Support, AI Acceleration

2025-03-26

Linux 6.14 Released: Gaming Boost, Enhanced Rust Support, AI Acceleration

The Linux kernel 6.14 release, though slightly delayed, is packed with improvements. Highlights include: the NTSYNC driver significantly boosts performance of Windows programs in Wine and Steam Play, delighting Linux gamers; support for the latest AMD RDNA 4 graphics cards and an improved RADV driver for better gaming visuals; enhanced power management and compute performance for AMD and Intel processors; integration of the AMDXDNA driver, supporting AMD's XDNA architecture neural processing units for accelerated AI computation; further Rust language integration paving the way for more Rust drivers in the future; support for the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor; a fix for the GhostWrite vulnerability; and improvements to the Btrfs file system. In short, Linux 6.14 offers substantial upgrades for gamers, AI researchers, and developers.

(www.zdnet.com)

Development Gaming Performance AI Acceleration

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

Unexpected Exciton Mobility at Cryogenic Temperatures: Phasons in Moiré Superlattices

2025-03-28

Unexpected Exciton Mobility at Cryogenic Temperatures: Phasons in Moiré Superlattices

Researchers at Berkeley Lab have discovered that phasons, low-temperature quasiparticles in moiré superlattices, enable interlayer excitons to move even at extremely low temperatures where motion should cease. This challenges conventional understanding and opens new avenues for improving the stability of quantum technologies by leveraging excitons as qubits. The discovery, made possible by the Molecular Foundry's Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures facility, provides fundamental insights into materials science and offers a promising path forward for quantum information science.

(newscenter.lbl.gov)

Tech Materials Science Moiré Superlattice

The Philosophy of Coroutines: A Programmer's Musings

2025-03-27

This article delves into the philosophy of coroutines through the lens of the author's personal journey. From early days simulating coroutines in C with preprocessor tricks to the advent of native C++20 coroutines, the author shares insights into their use and advantages. A comparison of coroutines versus state machines and threads highlights their flexibility, debuggability, and ease of cleanup, particularly beneficial for sequential tasks like network protocols and data stream processing. The author explores various coroutine implementations, optimization techniques using queues and pre-filters, and offers a glimpse into the future of coroutines.

(www.chiark.greenend.org.uk)

Development

Conquering Japanese Writing: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji

2025-03-27

Learning Japanese begins with its intricate writing system: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. This article provides a clear explanation of how these three scripts are used, their historical evolution, the Joyo Kanji list, and the JLPT. It also offers learning tips, guiding learners to master this system step-by-step, ultimately enabling fluent reading and writing in Japanese.

(www.kanjimaster.ai)

Development Japanese learning Kanji Writing System

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-03-27

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 works with partners who adhere to them. Have an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Tropical Trees Thrive After Lightning Strikes: A New Discovery

2025-03-28

Tropical Trees Thrive After Lightning Strikes: A New Discovery

A new study reveals that the Dipteryx oleifera tree, native to Central America, not only survives lightning strikes but actually benefits from them. Lightning strikes eliminate competing vegetation and parasitic vines, giving the D. oleifera trees more sunlight and nutrients. This leads to a 14-fold increase in reproductive success. Researchers hypothesize that these trees may have evolved to attract lightning. This discovery sheds light on the underappreciated role of lightning in shaping forest ecosystems and has implications for tropical reforestation efforts.

(www.caryinstitute.org)

Tech lightning tropical trees

The Biology of B-Movie Monsters: Where Science Meets Silver Screen Silliness

2025-03-28

University of Chicago professor Michael C. LaBarbera dissects classic B-movie monster flicks, revealing the hilarious disconnect between Hollywood's portrayal of size and the realities of biology. He uses examples like *The Incredible Shrinking Man*, *Dr. Cyclops*, and *Fantastic Voyage* to illustrate how changes in size impact surface area, volume, strength, heat loss, and more, highlighting the movies' frequent disregard for physics. LaBarbera further analyzes the skeletal limitations and locomotion challenges of giant creatures in films such as *King Kong*, *The Amazing Colossal Man*, and *Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman*. He also examines the physiological constraints of giant marine creatures and insects in movies like *It Came from Beneath the Sea*, *Mothra*, and *Them!*. Finally, he praises the biological accuracy of Spielberg's *Jurassic Park* and *E.T.*, explaining the latter's endearing appeal.

(fathom.lib.uchicago.edu)

Tech biomechanics science in film monster movies

Vibe-Eyes: Giving LLMs Eyesight into Browser Games

2025-03-25

Vibe-Eyes: Giving LLMs Eyesight into Browser Games

Vibe-Eyes is an innovative MCP server enabling Large Language Models (LLMs) to 'see' what's happening in browser-based games and applications. It uses a client-server architecture: a lightweight browser client captures canvas content and debug info, sending it via WebSockets to a Node.js server. The server vectorizes images into compact SVGs, making them available to LLMs via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This allows LLMs to 'see' the application and provide context-rich debugging assistance, significantly enhancing 'vibe coding' efficiency.

(github.com)

Development

Restate: A Database-less Durable Execution Engine

2025-03-27

Restate: A Database-less Durable Execution Engine

Restate is a newly built durable execution engine requiring no database or log system. Built from first principles, it boasts a complete self-contained stack centered around a command log and event processor, competing with the best logs in durability and operations. This article details Restate's architecture, including its bidirectional service connections, partitioned scaling model, embedded RocksDB state storage, and virtual log abstraction. Restate cleverly balances low latency and high durability through log design and storage tiering, supporting SDKs in multiple programming languages.

(restate.dev)

Development

The High Cost of On-Call: How Tech Companies Exploit Their Engineers

2025-03-27

The High Cost of On-Call: How Tech Companies Exploit Their Engineers

This article examines the pervasive and detrimental effects of on-call engineer rotations in tech companies. Using the experience of an engineer named Alex as a case study, it highlights the immense stress and burnout associated with on-call duties, including constant availability, sleep deprivation, blurred work-life boundaries, and the lack of adequate compensation. The article critiques the prevailing culture that normalizes the exploitation inherent in such systems, urging companies to reconsider their on-call policies and provide fair compensation and protection for their engineers' well-being.

(www.scottsmitelli.com)

Development Work-Life Balance

Student Uses AI to Game Amazon's Interview Process, Sparks University Controversy

2025-03-27

Student Uses AI to Game Amazon's Interview Process, Sparks University Controversy

Columbia University student Roy Lee developed Interview Coder, an AI tool that solves LeetCode problems, a standard in software engineering interviews. After using it to secure an Amazon internship and posting a video online, he faced backlash from Amazon and the university. Amazon reported him, leading to an investigation, but the video's viral success and public questioning of LeetCode's relevance led to the university reopening the case. The incident sparked debate about AI's impact on education and employment, highlighting limitations of traditional interview methods. Lee advocates for assessing candidates based on real-world projects and code skills, rather than high-pressure timed tests.

(thepennpost.com)

Tech

Firefox Finally Adds (Experimental) Web App Support

2025-03-26

After years of user requests, Firefox is finally adding experimental support for Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in its Nightly builds. Unlike Chrome, Firefox's approach aims for an app-like experience while retaining core browser features like the address bar and extensions. Users can transition any tab to web app mode, and link association will allow clicking a link to directly open the corresponding web app. While currently in early stages, this marks a significant step towards improving web app experiences in Firefox.

(www.omgubuntu.co.uk)

Development Web Apps

Kilo Code: Building an AI Code Generator with a Blazing-Fast Community

2025-03-26

Kilo Code: Building an AI Code Generator with a Blazing-Fast Community

In just two weeks, the Kilo Code team assembled a team of ten and built an AI code generation tool based on open-source projects like Roo Code and Cline. They embrace rapid iteration and actively seek user feedback, offering a free tier and rewards. Kilo Code aims to create the most user-friendly AI coding agent, covering a range of functionalities from small projects to advanced use cases, including instant app generation, automated doc updates, and team collaboration.

(blog.kilocode.ai)

Development AI code generation rapid iteration

Apple Needs Another Snow Leopard Moment

2025-03-27

Apple Needs Another Snow Leopard Moment

Apple's 2009 Mac OS X Snow Leopard, known for its refinement and optimization, stands as one of its most stable releases. However, current MacOS and iOS systems are plagued by bugs and poor design choices, such as broken copy-paste in Messages and a confusing System Settings interface. The author urges Apple to emulate Snow Leopard, undertaking a major system cleanup and optimization to address these issues instead of solely focusing on adding new features. This would enhance user experience, solidify Apple's position, and maintain competitiveness even amidst the fierce AI race.

(reviews.ofb.biz)

Development Apple Systems Software Optimization

From 'Good Enough' to 'Emptying the Pond': How America is Facing Resource Scarcity

2025-03-27

From 'Good Enough' to 'Emptying the Pond': How America is Facing Resource Scarcity

This article explores the current resource scarcity facing America, particularly the housing shortage. The author argues that excessive regulations and approval processes lead to inefficiency and hinder the effective use of resources. This 'perfect is the enemy of good' mentality has led to widespread public discontent. The article calls for the government to improve efficiency, prioritize tangible results over cumbersome procedures, and address the increasingly severe resource scarcity.

(inpractice.yimbyaction.org)

Startup resource scarcity

Dissecting NSO's BLASTPASS: A Zero-Click iOS Exploit

2025-03-27

Dissecting NSO's BLASTPASS: A Zero-Click iOS Exploit

Ian Beer of Google Project Zero details the analysis of NSO Group's BLASTPASS iMessage exploit. This zero-click attack chain leveraged a maliciously crafted WebP image disguised as a PassKit attachment to bypass the iMessage sandbox. Exploiting a Huffman coding vulnerability in the lossless WebP format, the attackers triggered memory corruption. A sophisticated 5.5MB bplist heap groom within a MakerNote EXIF tag facilitated memory overwriting during TIFF image rendering. This triggered a forged CFReadStream's destructor, executing malicious code. The attack cleverly exploited vulnerabilities in ImageIO and Wallet, bypassing BlastDoor sandbox and Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC). HomeKit traffic may have been used for ASLR disclosure. The analysis reveals the complex techniques used, highlighting the need for robust sandbox mechanisms and a reduced remote attack surface.

(googleprojectzero.blogspot.com)

Tech iOS vulnerability zero-click exploit NSO Group

Analyzing Disk I/O Bottlenecks in GitHub CI Pipelines

2025-03-28

Analyzing Disk I/O Bottlenecks in GitHub CI Pipelines

This article investigates often-overlooked disk I/O bottlenecks in GitHub CI pipelines. Using tools like iostat and fio, the author monitors and tests disk performance across different runners, discovering bandwidth limitations on the default ubuntu-22.04 runner that hinder dependency installation. The analysis delves into the impact of cache download, extraction, and numerous small file writes on disk I/O. The article recommends using fio for benchmarking and comparing runner disk performance, ultimately highlighting Depot's upcoming Ultra Runner, promising significant improvements in disk I/O performance.

(depot.dev)

Development Disk I/O

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