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Power Efficiency Showdown: Simulating Voltage Boosting Circuits

2025-04-28

Power Efficiency Showdown: Simulating Voltage Boosting Circuits

This post compares the power efficiency of several voltage boosting circuits using the Lush Projects circuit simulator. Circuits tested include a buck converter, parallel buck converter, serial buck converter, pulsed transformer, and Joule thief. All circuits boosted a 5V DC input to a stable 10V output, measured across a 1kΩ resistor load. The parallel buck converter proved most efficient (92.73%), followed by the serial (91.32%) and standard buck converter (88.43%). The pulsed transformer was least efficient (73.85%), while the Joule thief lagged far behind at only 22%. The author discusses component choices (capacitors, resistors, MOSFETs) and their impact on efficiency.

(blog.georgovassilis.com)

Hardware voltage boosting circuit simulation

Viking Navigation: No Maps, No Compass, No Problem?

2025-06-27

Viking Navigation: No Maps, No Compass, No Problem?

A modern-day explorer recreated a Viking-age sea voyage, suggesting Vikings may not have relied on navigational tools like maps, compasses, or sextants. Months at sea revealed their reliance on 'mental maps' – a maritime cultural mindscape passed down through generations of sailors – supplemented by myths associated with coastal landmarks. Thousands of years of coastal navigation rendered advanced instruments unnecessary.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech Seafaring

Oracle Java's High Costs Drive Businesses to Open Source

2025-07-16

Oracle Java's High Costs Drive Businesses to Open Source

A survey of 500 IT asset managers using Oracle Java reveals that 73% have been audited in the past three years, and nearly 80% have migrated or plan to migrate to open-source Java to avoid high costs and risks. Oracle's repeated pricing model changes since 2018 have led to significant price hikes, with many users facing yearly costs exceeding $500,000. The survey shows only 14% intend to stick with Oracle's subscription model, highlighting the challenges and high costs of software licensing compliance for businesses.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

Mojo Now Lets You Call Mojo Code From Python!

2025-05-25

Mojo Now Lets You Call Mojo Code From Python!

The Modular team is excited to announce a new feature in the latest Mojo nightly builds: the ability to call Mojo code from Python! This is enabled by expanding the Python interoperability section of the Mojo manual and adding examples demonstrating round-trip data transfer between Python and Mojo, including GPU-accelerated Mojo code called from Python. This breakthrough aims to integrate Mojo into existing Python codebases, boosting performance and unlocking new applications by offloading performance bottlenecks to fast Mojo, especially when using accelerators.

(forum.modular.com)

Development

Memorable Primes: A Hunt for Special Numbers

2025-01-21

Memorable Primes: A Hunt for Special Numbers

Mathematicians are fascinated by the pursuit of special prime numbers, such as palindromic primes and Smarandache primes. The article recounts anecdotes about prime numbers and the quest for 'memorable primes,' like 12345678910987654321. Indian engineer Shyam Sunder Gupta discovered a massive palindromic prime with 17,350 digits, sparking a wider hunt. While these primes don't offer immediate mathematical applications, their unique properties and the search itself are captivating, attracting numerous math enthusiasts.

(www.scientificamerican.com)

Misc

Linaro Connect 2025: Snapdragon X Elite ARM64 Linux Laptop Prototype Unveiled

2025-07-27

Linaro Connect 2025: Snapdragon X Elite ARM64 Linux Laptop Prototype Unveiled

At Linaro Connect 2025, Linaro and TUXEDO Computers showcased a prototype ARM64 Linux laptop powered by the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. This demonstrates significant progress in enabling Linux on Snapdragon devices, meeting the growing demand for ARM computing. While pre-installed Linux Snapdragon laptops aren't yet available, collaborative efforts from Qualcomm, Linaro, and the community have resulted in stable Linux operation on many Snapdragon processors, including the Snapdragon X Elite. Linux Kernel 6.15 currently supports several Snapdragon laptops such as the Lenovo Yoga 7x and ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. TUXEDO Computers' commitment to releasing a Qualcomm laptop with pre-installed Linux further enhances the ARM64 laptop ecosystem.

(www.linaro.org)

Tech Snapdragon

AI Coding Assistants Need More Context: Experiments and Insights

2025-02-10

AI Coding Assistants Need More Context: Experiments and Insights

Traditional AI coding assistants, while proficient in code generation, often lack crucial context about the broader system environment. This leads developers to spend extra time bridging the gap between code and various information sources. This article details experiments integrating operational context (call graphs, metrics, exception reports) into AI assistants to improve debugging accuracy. Results show structured performance data and error reports enhance AI analysis, but efficiently representing vast amounts of context remains a challenge. The future lies in a knowledge graph encompassing production behavior, system metrics, and more, enabling AI assistants to understand system behavior holistically.

(www.nuanced.dev)

Development AI coding assistants context understanding

Blue Pig Meat: A Warning of Rodenticide Contamination in California

2025-08-10

Blue Pig Meat: A Warning of Rodenticide Contamination in California

A trapper in Salinas, California, discovered blue-tinged meat in wild pigs he'd caught, raising concerns about rodenticide contamination. Investigation revealed the pigs had ingested diphacinone, an anticoagulant rodenticide often dyed blue. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife warns against consuming meat from animals exhibiting blue discoloration, as the poison can cause secondary poisoning, even after cooking. This incident highlights the dangers of rodenticide to wildlife and underscores the need for stricter regulations.

(www.yahoo.com)

Tech Rodenticide Contamination Wildlife Poisoning

Anker Recalls PowerCore 10000 Power Bank Due to Fire Risk

2025-06-12

Anker Recalls PowerCore 10000 Power Bank Due to Fire Risk

Anker has issued a recall for its PowerCore 10000 power bank (model A1263) due to a potential fire hazard stemming from its lithium-ion battery. The USCPSC received 19 reports of fires and explosions causing minor injuries and over $60,700 in property damage. Approximately 1,158,000 units sold between June 2016 and December 2022 are affected. Anker offers a $30 gift card or a replacement power bank. Consumers need to submit photos and serial numbers for verification and safely dispose of the recalled units. This recall highlights the potential dangers of aging lithium-ion batteries and the benefits of upgrading to safer solid-state alternatives.

(www.theverge.com)

Hardware Power Bank Recall Fire Safety

Manhattan's Secret Eruv: Maintaining a Nearly Invisible Boundary

2025-06-08

Manhattan's Secret Eruv: Maintaining a Nearly Invisible Boundary

Every Thursday and Friday, Rabbi Moshe Tauber drives 20 miles around Manhattan, inspecting a nearly invisible wire—the eruv—that encircles much of the borough. This wire serves as a symbolic boundary for observant Jews, allowing them to carry objects on Shabbat, a day when carrying between public and private spaces is forbidden. Any break in the line renders the eruv ineffective, making Tauber's early morning patrols crucial. His timely repairs ensure the community can observe religious traditions while maintaining daily life, highlighting community unity and mutual aid. The eruv, a centuries-old tradition, is a modern blend of faith and practicality in the heart of Manhattan.

(www.atlasobscura.com)

Misc

The Wild West of AI Coding: Bugs, Booms, and the Future of Software

2025-08-22

The Wild West of AI Coding: Bugs, Booms, and the Future of Software

The rise of AI coding tools has dramatically increased development speed, but it's also unleashed a flood of bugs and security vulnerabilities. The author recounts a personal experience of 'vibe coding,' highlighting the chaos and challenges. While AI generates code quickly, its unreliability necessitates stricter code reviews, testing, and monitoring. Enterprises must invest heavily in CI/CD infrastructure and adopt advanced log analytics platforms to manage the risks and reap the rewards of the AI revolution in software development. The future belongs to those who build robust safeguards against the unpredictable nature of AI-generated code.

(marketsaintefficient.substack.com)

Development

Revisited Forth: Two Implementations and Reflections on a Quirky Language

2025-08-28

The author revisited Forth, a language first encountered 20 years ago. Over two months, they implemented two Forth interpreters: goforth (in Go) and ctil (in C). goforth, a pure interpreter, is simple but lacks advanced features. ctil, closer to a traditional Forth implementation, allows extending the language using Forth itself, showcasing its power. The author argues that Forth's unique strengths lay in its early hardware context. However, its stack-based model makes it less readable and less practical in modern contexts, best suited as a learning project to understand compiler principles and virtual machines.

(eli.thegreenplace.net)

Development Language Implementation Compiler Principles

The Unexpected Legacy of Parking Reform Pioneer Donald Shoup

2025-02-12

The Unexpected Legacy of Parking Reform Pioneer Donald Shoup

Professor Donald Shoup, a pioneer in parking reform, passed away on February 6th. This article details how his work fundamentally reshaped the political economy of parking and cities themselves. His seminal work, *The High Cost of Free Parking*, argued that underpriced parking leads to wasted resources and urban congestion. Shoup advocated for demand-based parking pricing and the abolition of minimum parking requirements, using parking revenue to improve local infrastructure to gain public support. His ideas have been implemented in thousands of cities worldwide, leaving a lasting impact on urban planning.

(www.worksinprogress.news)

Misc parking reform

Thirty Years Ago: A Glimpse into Rural Indian Poverty

2025-03-11

Thirty Years Ago: A Glimpse into Rural Indian Poverty

Thirty years ago, writer Siddharth Dube visited a small village in northern India, near the site of a historic peasant revolt. He encountered stark poverty: mud huts, primitive plows, barefoot elders, and emaciated children. Villager Ram Dass recounted his youth, working long days for a meager 1.5kg of grain, using rice stalks for warmth on cold nights, and owning only one pair of shoes his entire life. The account paints a poignant picture of enduring poverty and inequality in rural India.

(www.economist.com)

Misc rural Indian poverty peasant revolt

GitLab Director Matthew Jacobson Reports Stock Changes

2025-01-01

On December 30th, GitLab (GTLB) disclosed a change in beneficial ownership by director Matthew Jacobson. A Form 4 filing revealed significant transactions involving millions of Class A common shares, indirectly held and sold through entities like ICONIQ Capital. The transactions, at prices ranging from $59.18 to $59.99 per share, reflect a strategic adjustment of Jacobson and related entities' holdings in GitLab.

(capedge.com)

Startup Insider Trading

Leningrad's Forbidden Garden: Botanists' Sacrifice During the Siege

2025-02-04

Leningrad's Forbidden Garden: Botanists' Sacrifice During the Siege

During the brutal 900-day siege of Leningrad in WWII, a group of botanists at the All-Union Institute of Plant Breeding made a harrowing choice: starve rather than consume their invaluable seed bank. Facing unimaginable hunger and death, they prioritized preserving the world's most comprehensive collection of plant specimens, a potential lifeline for future generations. Their story raises profound questions about the ethics of scientific progress versus immediate human needs, the value of preservation, and the complex legacy of sacrifice during wartime. Their actions ultimately contributed to the development of high-yield crops, but their decision to prioritize the future over present survival remains ethically complex and deeply moving.

(www.lrb.co.uk)

Tech Leningrad Siege Seed Bank Botany

Cycle-Exact Commodore 64 Emulation on Cheap Microcontrollers

2025-05-03

Cycle-Exact Commodore 64 Emulation on Cheap Microcontrollers

Connomore64 is a project that achieves cycle-exact emulation of the Commodore 64 using multiple parallel, inexpensive RP2040/RP2350 microcontrollers. Initially a holiday project exploring the capabilities of the RP2040's PIOs, it's evolved into an accurate emulator running most games and a portion of demos, even interfacing with original C64 hardware like floppy drives. While still under development, it demonstrates potential for running compute-intensive software on low-cost hardware and provides a framework for parallel emulation using multiple RP2040/RP2350s.

(github.com)

Hardware

Website Anti-Scraping: Introducing Anubis

2025-09-15

This website uses Anubis, an anti-scraping system, to combat server downtime caused by aggressive web scraping from AI companies. Anubis employs a Proof-of-Work (PoW) mechanism similar to Hashcash, imposing minimal overhead on individual requests but significantly increasing the cost for large-scale scraping. This is a temporary solution; the ultimate goal is to identify and block headless browsers, thereby eliminating the need for the PoW challenge for legitimate users. Note: Anubis requires modern JavaScript features; disable plugins like JShelter to access the site.

(celestiaproject.space)

Tech

Cook: AI Won't Kill the iPhone (Yet)

2025-08-02

Cook: AI Won't Kill the iPhone (Yet)

Apple CEO Tim Cook downplayed concerns that AI advancements will dethrone the iPhone. During an earnings call, he highlighted the iPhone's versatility—from communication and entertainment to photography and financial management—arguing its multifaceted utility makes it difficult to replace. While acknowledging Apple is exploring other technologies, Cook suggested future devices would be complementary, not replacements. However, Apple's slower AI rollout has analysts divided on its competitive edge. Some believe Apple's focus on quality over speed, coupled with increased R&D investment in AI, could maintain its premium market dominance.

(www.businessinsider.com)

Tech

Soaring Electricity Bills Leave Florida Residents Struggling

2025-08-17

Soaring Electricity Bills Leave Florida Residents Struggling

Florida residents Ken Thomas and Al Salvi are grappling with soaring electricity bills, reaching $400 and $500 a month respectively, due to the intense summer heat and rising prices. Florida Power & Light's application for a rate increase sparked public outrage. Nationally, electricity prices have doubled the rate of inflation, fueled by the surge in energy demand from AI data centers and increased natural gas exports. Experts point to clean energy as a solution, but insufficient subsidies leave low-income households vulnerable to power shutoffs.

(www.npr.org)

Misc rising electricity prices low-income families

Formalizing Russell's Principia Mathematica in Lean4

2025-04-25

Formalizing Russell's Principia Mathematica in Lean4

This project formalizes the first volume of Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica using the Lean theorem prover. The goal is to ensure the formalization aligns with the book's theorems, avoiding confusion. The project rigorously follows Russell's proofs, minimizing added statements. A new tactic, `Syll`, handling a more general form of syllogism, was created. While Principia Mathematica is considered a 'monumental failure', the author found the formalization process enriching.

(github.com)

Development Principia Mathematica

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

Pretix Rolls its Own Linux Driver for Ticket Printing

2025-05-25

Pretix version 1.8 introduced shipping management, but the recommended printer, uITL+2003CF, only offers a Windows driver. To support Linux users, the Pretix team developed a custom CUPS filter, `rastertofgl`, written in Python. This filter converts CUPS raster data into FGL code, enabling ticket printing on Linux systems with a corresponding PPD file. While some issues remain, this driver provides a convenient solution for Pretix users on Linux.

(behind.pretix.eu)

Development printer driver ticketing system

Chrysalis: A Multigenerational Starship Bound for Alpha Centauri

2025-08-10

Chrysalis: A Multigenerational Starship Bound for Alpha Centauri

Engineers have designed a spacecraft, named Chrysalis, capable of carrying up to 2,400 people on a one-way journey to Alpha Centauri. This ambitious project, winner of the Project Hyperion Design Competition, envisions a 400-year voyage, necessitating a multigenerational crew living and working within the vessel's self-contained ecosystem. Chrysalis features a layered design, incorporating farms, living quarters, and industrial facilities, powered by nuclear fusion. AI will play a crucial role in governance, ensuring societal stability. While some technologies remain hypothetical, this concept offers valuable insights into the challenges and possibilities of interstellar travel.

(www.livescience.com)

Tech spaceship design

Battlefield 6's Secure Boot Requirement Sparks Controversy

2025-08-30

Battlefield 6's Secure Boot Requirement Sparks Controversy

EA's decision to require Secure Boot for the Battlefield 6 PC open beta ignited a debate among players. Many were unable to enable it or unwilling to grant kernel-level access to EA's anti-cheat, preventing them from playing. Technical director Christian Buhl defended the decision as a necessary evil to combat cheating, though admitting it wouldn't eliminate it entirely. While Secure Boot enhances anti-cheat capabilities, it also excludes some players.

(arstechnica.com)

Game Battlefield 6

Gaming Cancer: Can Citizen Science Games Help Cure Disease?

2025-07-13

Gaming Cancer: Can Citizen Science Games Help Cure Disease?

By engaging players in tackling real scientific problems, games offer a potential path to solving medicine's toughest challenges. 'Gaming Cancer' explores the concept of transforming cancer research into citizen science games, allowing players to contribute to the search for cures. Games like Foldit and EteRNA have already yielded scientific breakthroughs, such as designing COVID vaccines that don't require ultra-cold storage. While not guaranteed to solve problems beyond the reach of professional scientists, these games offer new perspectives, educate players about biology, and inspire broader participation in cancer research.

(thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)

AI cancer research

AI Avatars: The Next Frontier in AI-Generated Content

2025-04-11

AI Avatars: The Next Frontier in AI-Generated Content

AI has mastered generating realistic photos, videos, and voices. The next leap? AI avatars – combining faces and voices to create talking characters. This isn't just image generation and voiceovers; it requires AI to learn the intricate coordination of lip syncing, facial expressions, and body language. This article explores the evolution of AI avatar technology, from early models based on single photos to sophisticated models generating full-body movement and dynamic backgrounds. It also analyzes the applications of AI avatars in content creation, advertising, and corporate communication, and discusses future directions, such as more natural expressions, body movements, and interactions with the real world.

(a16z.com)

AI AI avatars AI technology

A Minimalist Linux Kernel Module: 7-Byte Executables

2025-04-10

The author crafts a custom, metadata-less binary file format for Linux using a kernel module. Initially aiming for tiny ELF executables (achieving a 45-byte minimum), the exploration delves into smaller aout formats, culminating in a 7-byte, and later a 2-byte, executable. The article details creating the kernel module, a custom loader supporting the new format, handling heap and command-line arguments, and improvements automating program exit. This journey showcases the power of kernel modules and the art of minimizing executables.

(www.muppetlabs.com)

Development Linux kernel module binary file format

Nevada Under Siege: Major Cyberattack Cripples State Services

2025-08-28

Nevada Under Siege: Major Cyberattack Cripples State Services

Nevada is grappling with a significant cyberattack that has knocked out numerous government digital services. The attack, announced on August 24th, has left state websites and phone lines offline, forcing the closure of state offices until further notice. While emergency services remain operational, officials are working to restore services and warn citizens about potential phishing scams. This incident presents a major test for Nevada's newly established cybersecurity office.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

Infrared Contact Lenses Give Humans Night Vision

2025-05-23

Infrared Contact Lenses Give Humans Night Vision

Scientists have created contact lenses that grant infrared vision to both humans and mice. These power-free lenses convert infrared light into visible light, allowing wearers to see both infrared and visible light simultaneously. The lenses use nanoparticles to convert near-infrared light (800-1600 nm) into the visible spectrum (400-700 nm), and can even differentiate between various infrared wavelengths. While currently limited to detecting infrared from LED sources, future iterations aim for improved sensitivity and resolution, potentially aiding those with color blindness. Tests showed enhanced infrared perception with eyes closed due to better eyelid penetration of near-infrared light.

(phys.org)

Tech infrared vision contact lenses

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