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Texas Mega-Data Center to Run on Nuclear Power?

2025-08-05

Texas Mega-Data Center to Run on Nuclear Power?

Facing AI's insatiable energy demands, Fermi America is planning a massive advanced energy campus in Texas, featuring up to six gigawatts of nuclear power deployed by Hyundai. The project aims to power data centers by 2032, with the first reactor slated to begin construction next year. While ambitious, the project faces significant cost and risk, as similar ventures have experienced massive overruns and supplier bankruptcies (Westinghouse). Besides nuclear, the campus will include gas, solar, and battery storage. Fermi America is already building initial gas generation capacity, targeting one gigawatt by late 2026. This isn't the first nuclear-powered data center proposal; other companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle are also exploring similar initiatives.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

UK's Online Safety Act Forces Lobsters Forum to Consider Geoblocking UK Users

2025-02-23

The upcoming UK Online Safety Act (OSA), set to take effect on March 16, 2025, poses a significant threat to the non-commercial forum Lobsters. The Act's broad scope and substantial penalties leave Lobsters facing impossible compliance costs and risks. To mitigate these, the forum is considering geoblocking UK users. The post calls on UK users to seek legal remedies or government intervention to prevent the OSA from disproportionately affecting small, non-commercial forums.

(lobste.rs)

Tech Online Safety

LLMs: Opportunities and Challenges Await

2025-08-29

Before a short break, the author shares some thoughts on the current state of LLMs and AI. He points out flaws in current surveys on LLMs' impact on software development, arguing they neglect the varied workflows of LLM usage. The author believes the future of LLMs is unpredictable, encouraging experimentation and shared experiences. He also discusses the inevitability of an AI bubble and the 'hallucination' characteristic of LLMs, stressing the importance of asking questions multiple times for validation. Finally, the author warns of the security risks posed by LLMs, particularly the vulnerabilities of agents operating within browsers.

(martinfowler.com)

AI

Beyond Zig and Rust: A More Human-Friendly Approach to Metaprogramming

2025-05-26

This article explores a novel programming language design that combines the strengths of Rust's Hindley-Milner type system and Zig's compile-time capabilities, while avoiding the complexities of Zig's 'types as values' approach. By introducing the `@` operator for compile-time execution, the `Abstract` type for compile-time abstractions, `TypeInfo` and `Field` types for type introspection, and `Code` and `parse` functions for code manipulation, this design achieves powerful metaprogramming capabilities such as automatic code generation and the implementation of TypeScript-like utility types like `Partial`, all while maintaining code readability and ease of reasoning. This represents a new approach to achieving powerful metaprogramming while preserving type system friendliness, offering fresh perspectives for future language design.

(0x44.xyz)

Development

OpenBenches' Address Conundrum: Geolocating 40,000 Benches Elegantly

2025-04-27

OpenBenches' Address Conundrum: Geolocating 40,000 Benches Elegantly

OpenBenches, a crowdsourced database of nearly 40,000 memorial benches, faces a challenge: converting latitude/longitude coordinates into human-readable addresses. Many benches lack formal addresses, residing in parks, etc. Existing geocoding APIs provide overly detailed or irrelevant information. The author explores using multiple APIs and Points of Interest (POIs) for automated address generation, but encounters issues with language localization, address formatting inconsistencies, and POI accuracy. Balancing address precision with user-friendliness and internationalization remains a key challenge.

(shkspr.mobi)

Development geolocation address resolution

Record-Breaking Black Hole Merger Detected via Gravitational Waves

2025-07-15

Record-Breaking Black Hole Merger Detected via Gravitational Waves

The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration has detected the merger of the most massive black holes ever observed, resulting in a final black hole approximately 225 times the mass of our Sun. The signal, GW231123, detected on November 23, 2023, challenges existing models of black hole formation, as such massive black holes are not predicted by standard stellar evolution. The extreme mass suggests a possible formation through prior mergers of smaller black holes, pushing the boundaries of gravitational-wave astronomy and our understanding of the universe.

(www.caltech.edu)

Tech

HDR and Tonemapping in GameMaker Shaders

2025-09-19

HDR and Tonemapping in GameMaker Shaders

This article delves into handling High-Dynamic Range (HDR) colors in GameMaker shaders. GameMaker's default 8-bit unorm color format can lead to color clipping and inaccuracies when dealing with high-brightness scenarios, such as sun shaders. The author demonstrates the issues by comparing 6-bit and floating-point colors and showcases several common tonemapping functions (ACES, Uncharted2, Unreal, and tanh) to mitigate color clamping artifacts. Using the MandelBots project as an example, the article highlights the necessity of using HDR surfaces (surface_rgba16float) in complex lighting systems for improved color precision and blending.

(mini.gmshaders.com)

Development

Jack Welch: The Man Who Broke Capitalism?

2025-07-02

Jack Welch: The Man Who Broke Capitalism?

David Gelles' new book, *The Man Who Broke Capitalism*, examines Jack Welch's profound impact on American business during his tenure at General Electric. Welch's relentless pursuit of shareholder value maximization, employing layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, acquisitions, and buybacks, became a new playbook for American corporations. Gelles argues this shareholder-centric capitalism has led to unprecedented socioeconomic inequality and harmed many companies that adopted it. The book connects Welch's management style to the Boeing 737 Max crisis and rising income inequality. It concludes with a call to rebalance corporate profit distribution, prioritize worker well-being, and create a more equitable economic system.

(www.forbes.com)

Startup Jack Welch Shareholder Value Maximization

Wavelet Trees: An Elegant Approach to Rank Queries on Sequences

2025-05-15

Wavelet Trees: An Elegant Approach to Rank Queries on Sequences

This blog post introduces the Wavelet Tree, an elegant data structure for answering rank queries on sequences over large alphabets. Achieving a time complexity of O(log₂A) (where A is the alphabet size), it organizes a string into a hierarchy of bit vectors. The post details Wavelet Tree construction and querying, highlighting optimization techniques using RRR structures or other binary rank indexes for compression and speed. An implementation in Francisco Claude's Compressed Data Structure Library (libcds) is recommended for practical application.

(www.alexbowe.com)

Development

OpenAI's o3-mini: A Budget-Friendly LLM Powerhouse

2025-02-01

OpenAI has released o3-mini, a new language model that excels in the Codeforces competitive programming benchmark, significantly outperforming GPT-4o and o1. While not universally superior across all metrics, its low price ($1.10/million input tokens, $4.40/million output tokens) and exceptionally high token output limit (100,000 tokens) make it highly competitive. OpenAI plans to integrate it into ChatGPT for web search and summarization, and support is already available in LLM 0.21, but currently limited to Tier 3 users (at least $100 spent on the API). o3-mini offers developers a powerful and cost-effective LLM option.

(simonwillison.net)

AI

‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Footage Saves Innocent Man from Death Row

2024-12-25

‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Footage Saves Innocent Man from Death Row

Juan Catalan, a California man, faced the death penalty for a murder he didn't commit. The sole eyewitness's description matched Catalan, despite his pleas of innocence. His girlfriend remembered he was at a Dodgers game the night of the murder. His lawyer secured footage from an HBO filming of 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' at the stadium, showing Catalan and his daughter, proving his alibi. This unexpected evidence led to the dismissal of charges, highlighting the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and the risk of wrongful convictions.

(innocenceproject.org)

Misc wrongful conviction evidence exoneration

Duolingo's AI Shift Sparks Massive User Backlash

2025-05-26

Duolingo's AI Shift Sparks Massive User Backlash

Popular language-learning app Duolingo faced a massive user backlash after announcing its AI-first policy. Following negative feedback on social media, the company went silent, deleting numerous posts. A subsequent bizarre video attempt at damage control failed to address the core issue: widespread layoffs of human contractors and increased reliance on AI-generated lessons. The incident highlights the challenges companies face in balancing user experience and business interests when embracing AI.

(www.fastcompany.com)

Tech User Backlash

The Double-Edged Sword of AI-Assisted Programming

2025-05-06

The Double-Edged Sword of AI-Assisted Programming

A software developer with over two decades of experience discusses the double-edged sword of AI-assisted programming tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT. Initially, these tools offer speed and efficiency, making development feel effortless. However, over-reliance on AI can lead to a decline in understanding fundamental principles, mirroring E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops." If AI tools fail, developers lose the ability to solve problems independently. The author advocates for maintaining a deep understanding of code alongside AI usage, avoiding over-dependence to preserve core skills.

(idiallo.com)

Development technological risks

Teardown Reveals Apple's 40W Dynamic Power Adapter: 60W Power in a Compact Package

2025-09-20

Teardown Reveals Apple's 40W Dynamic Power Adapter: 60W Power in a Compact Package

Apple's new 40W Dynamic Power Adapter, unveiled at their Fall Event, packs a punch. A ChargerLAB teardown reveals its impressive internals: a PI ZN1612F master control chip, RECTRON synchronous rectifier, Infineon protocol chip for output control, and NCC and Nichicon capacitors for filtering. Supporting PD3.0 and DCP charging protocols, it delivers fast charging for iPhone 17 and up to 55.94W for MacBook Air. The internal design prioritizes heat dissipation and protection, showcasing Apple's characteristic meticulous craftsmanship.

(www.chargerlab.com)

Hardware Teardown

Retro Web Design Element Frequency: A Nostalgic Palette Returns

2025-07-23

This data summarizes the frequency of over 100 retro web design elements, encompassing colors (blue is most prevalent, followed by green and multicolor), patterns (animal prints, geometric shapes, florals, etc.), and themes (tech, nature, etc.). The data reveals trends in popular retro web design elements, offering a reference for designers and illustrating a nostalgic web aesthetic.

(pixelmoondust.neocities.org)

Design

Volvo Trucks Surpasses 5,000 Electric Semi Deliveries, Leaving Tesla in the Dust

2025-07-06

Volvo Trucks Surpasses 5,000 Electric Semi Deliveries, Leaving Tesla in the Dust

While Tesla's Semi truck has been making headlines (mostly for delays), Volvo Trucks quietly delivered its 5,000th electric semi-truck. Since delivering its first electric semi in 2019, Volvo's electric trucks have logged over 100 million miles, significantly reducing CO2 and NOx emissions. Volvo boasts a 47% market share in the European heavy electric truck segment, holding the top spot for five consecutive years. Although its US/Canada share is slightly lower at 40%, Volvo's significantly higher sales numbers compared to Tesla highlight its dominance in the electric commercial vehicle market.

(electrek.co)

Tech Electric Trucks

American Airlines CEO: No AI-powered Price Gouging

2025-07-25

American Airlines CEO: No AI-powered Price Gouging

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom stated that the company will not use AI to manipulate ticket prices in a way that would deceive customers. This contrasts sharply with Delta Air Lines' approach of using AI to optimize pricing. Isom emphasized the importance of consumer trust and stated that American Airlines will not employ bait-and-switch tactics. While AI will be used to improve operational efficiency, it will not be used for price manipulation. Currently, American Airlines shares are down 8%, and have lost about one-third of their value this year.

(finance.yahoo.com)

Tech

Llama 3.3 License: Are You Really Complying?

2025-04-16

Llama 3.3 License: Are You Really Complying?

While marketed as open-source, Meta's Llama 3.3 license contains restrictions many developers may overlook. The article highlights the requirement to prominently display "Built with Llama" when distributing the model or derivatives, and to prefix derivative model names with "Llama-". Further, the Acceptable Use Policy demands disclosure of known AI system risks, such as biases or inaccuracies, to end-users. The author urges developers to carefully review the license and decide whether to comply, avoiding potential legal issues.

(notes.victor.earth)

Development

Archimedes, Vitruvius, and Leonardo: The Odometer Connection

2024-12-27

Archimedes, Vitruvius, and Leonardo: The Odometer Connection

A 2019 multimedia exhibition in Fano, Italy, celebrated the strong links between Vitruvius and Leonardo on the 500th anniversary of Leonardo's death. The authors created an interactive animation of several machines, providing visitors with an immersive experience of the studies of these great scholars. This also spurred a review of the odometer's history and an examination of Leonardo's redesign of Vitruvius' concept. While some questions remain, the research led them back to another great scientist of the past: Archimedes of Syracuse.

(www.scirp.org)

Tech odometer Vitruvius Leonardo da Vinci

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

Samuel Pepys' Diary: A Timeless Bestseller

2025-06-11

Samuel Pepys' diary was first published in June 1825 and became an instant success. Newspapers featured reviews quoting memorable passages, such as his descriptions of the Great Fire of London, his new wig, and his first cup of tea. Subsequent editions followed, and by the end of the 19th century, it was celebrated as a classic of British history and literature. Today, Pepys is a star of museum exhibits and historical novels, and excerpts from his diary are used to introduce students to the Restoration period and even to history itself; six-year-olds in England, following the National Curriculum, can recount how Pepys buried his expensive cheese to save it from the fire.

(www.historytoday.com)

Misc Samuel Pepys

Gracefully Hiding JavaScript-Dependent Elements

2025-04-06

Gracefully Hiding JavaScript-Dependent Elements

This article explores three elegant ways to hide web elements that rely on JavaScript. The first method dynamically adds a class name using JavaScript, but it's not concise enough. The second method uses the `` and `` tags to directly hide elements in CSS, but it has higher maintenance costs. The third method, and the recommended approach, uses a generic class name `d-js-required` along with the `<noscript>` and `<style>` tags. This only requires modifying a single CSS rule to hide all JavaScript-dependent elements, offering a clean and efficient solution.

(0xda.de)

Development progressive enhancement

Terminal Image Viewer: A Programmer's Odyssey

2025-01-19

A programmer embarks on a challenging journey to create the perfect terminal image viewer. Starting with simple pixel display, he delves into the intricacies of loading and rendering various image formats (JPEG, PNG, GIF, AVIF, JPEG XL, HEIC, ETC, BC, OpenEXR, etc.), encountering unexpected hurdles along the way: inconsistent format standards, poorly documented libraries, the complexities of HDR image processing, the subtleties of color management, and the limitations of terminal output protocols. He ultimately overcomes these challenges to build a powerful image viewer, gaining a deep appreciation for the complexities and fascinations of computer graphics.

(wolf.nereid.pl)

Development terminal display

Are PC Hardware Companies Creating Closed Ecosystems?

2024-12-29

Are PC Hardware Companies Creating Closed Ecosystems?

A veteran computer hardware engineer observes a concerning trend: PC hardware manufacturers are increasingly restricting user access and control. Dell, for example, has removed the ability to change storage configurations in the BIOS of some laptops and doesn't provide necessary RST drivers on its website, preventing clean OS installations from media. Users are forced to use pre-installed systems or manufacturer recovery tools containing bloatware and data collection. This mirrors Apple's MacOS approach of limiting non-approved software, potentially leading to extremely limited consumer choices in the future.

(www.scottrlarson.com)

Hardware PC hardware closed ecosystem user control

Massive AI Coding Assistant Outage Highlights Growing Dependency Risks

2025-09-11

Massive AI Coding Assistant Outage Highlights Growing Dependency Risks

A recent outage affecting Anthropic's Claude Code and other AI coding assistants exposed the significant reliance modern software development has on these tools. Developers scrambled to alternatives, including even Stack Overflow, underscoring the dangers of over-reliance. The emerging trend of 'vibe coding,' using natural language to generate code without understanding the underlying logic, led to disastrous results, including file corruption by Google's Gemini CLI and database deletion by Replit's AI service. The outage serves as a stark reminder of the potential consequences of AI dependency and sparked reflection on work-life balance.

(arstechnica.com)

Development

Nvidia's Blackwell: A Colossus of Compute, but at What Cost?

2025-06-29

Nvidia's Blackwell: A Colossus of Compute, but at What Cost?

Nvidia's latest Blackwell architecture, exemplified by the RTX PRO 6000, boasts a gargantuan GB202 die (750mm², 92.2 billion transistors) and a staggering 188 SM units, delivering unmatched compute performance. A deep dive into its microarchitecture reveals details on instruction caching, execution units, and memory subsystems, comparing it to AMD's RDNA4. While Blackwell exhibits some imperfections, like L2 cache performance and per-unit efficiency, its sheer scale dwarfs the competition, making it the largest consumer GPU available. This ambition, however, comes at a cost, including power consumption (600W) and L2 latency. The article concludes with a perspective on the future GPU landscape.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware

Germany Pushes for Digital Sovereignty: Building a 'German Stack' to Counter US Tech Giants

2025-06-06

Germany Pushes for Digital Sovereignty: Building a 'German Stack' to Counter US Tech Giants

Germany's Federal Minister for Digital Affairs, Karsten Wildberger, recently called for greater digital sovereignty for Germany and Europe at the re:publica internet conference. He advocates for open standards and open source as guiding principles, highlighting the need to reduce Europe's dependence on US tech giants. To achieve this, Germany plans to build a "German Stack," a unified IT infrastructure and cloud services to avoid redundant development. He also stressed the importance of digital identity, secure payment systems, and fostering a domestic digital economy. The German government is committed to establishing European-led structures in cloud computing to promote fair, open, and innovation-driven competition.

(www.heise.de)

Tech German Stack

TSMC Bets on MicroLED Optical Interconnects for AI Data Centers

2025-05-26

TSMC Bets on MicroLED Optical Interconnects for AI Data Centers

In the race to build all-optical AI data centers, TSMC is partnering with Avicena to leverage microLED-based interconnects. This innovative approach replaces traditional copper wires with a cost-effective, energy-efficient optical solution to address the exploding bandwidth demands of AI clusters. Avicena's LightBundle platform uses hundreds of blue microLEDs and imaging fibers, bypassing the complexity and high power consumption of laser-based solutions. By utilizing mature LED, camera, and display technologies, this approach promises higher reliability and scalability, potentially overcoming the bottlenecks in AI data center optical interconnects and enabling faster, lower-latency data transfer for demanding applications like large language models.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech optical interconnect AI data center

Human Ingenuity vs. LLMs: Debugging Redis Vector Sets

2025-05-29

Redis developer antirez recounts a fascinating debugging experience where he pitted his wits against Gemini 2.5 PRO, a large language model. A complex bug in Redis's vector set (HNSW) implementation, stemming from data corruption leading to inconsistent node links, required a solution beyond a naive O(N²) approach. While Gemini suggested binary search, antirez ultimately devised a creative solution involving an XOR accumulator, further refined by incorporating MurmurHash128 and a random seed. This anecdote highlights the power of human creative thinking in tackling complex problems, showcasing how LLMs can assist but ultimately fall short of human ingenuity in generating truly novel solutions.

(antirez.com)

Development

Erik Satie: A Paradoxical Genius

2025-06-14

Erik Satie: A Paradoxical Genius

Most people only know Erik Satie's Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes, frequently used in commercials and film soundtracks. But Satie's musical world is far richer. He composed the avant-garde ballet Parade, the comical Christian allegory Uspud, and film scores. Satie's life was full of contradictions: founder of a church and a habitué of low dives; master of classical forms and lover of popular songs; impoverished yet impeccably dressed. His music, like his life, appears simple yet harbors profound contradictions and charm, continuing to influence contemporary music.

(thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)

Misc Satie

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