Landlords don't take Venmo, and taxes still require checks? Check Supply offers a modern solution to an old problem. Send unlimited checks for bills, gifts, or payroll with real-time tracking and detailed reporting. Future features include scheduled delivery, recurring payments, and low-balance alerts, streamlining your finances.
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A colleague encountered a tricky concurrency issue during a weekly debug session: a critical section failed to prevent two threads from entering the same code block, leading to a `TraceLoggingRegister` double-registration failure. Deep debugging revealed the root cause: the initialization function `InitializeCriticalSectionOnce` for `RtlRunOnceExecuteOnce` incorrectly returned `STATUS_SUCCESS` (0). This led `RtlRunOnceExecuteOnce` to believe initialization failed, causing it to re-initialize the critical section on every call, triggering the race condition. The solution was to change the return value to `TRUE`, or more elegantly, replace `CRITICAL_SECTION` with `SRWLOCK`. This case highlights how subtle return value errors can lead to severe consequences and underscores the importance of choosing the appropriate synchronization primitive.
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This post introduces a highly effective management technique called "Now, Together." When an engineer's task is delayed, managers can use one-on-one meeting time to complete the task together with the engineer. This not only solves problems promptly but also uncovers potential obstacles, such as lack of motivation, excessive workload, or undetected blockers. This allows managers to better support team members and improve team efficiency. Overuse of this technique may signal larger management issues requiring further attention.
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Mycelium is a typed format for storing and transferring data, supporting refs, expressions, functions, and types. Its virtual machine, MVM, is designed for efficiency with immutable values and inter-process communication via ports. MycZip encodes Mycelium values into single files, while the Mycelium Network Protocol (MNP), built on QUIC, facilitates peer-to-peer data transfer and caching for optimization. The Spore language provides a user-friendly interface for the MVM.
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In 1774, John Wesley published 'Thoughts Upon Slavery,' a scathing condemnation of the then-rampant transatlantic slave trade. The text vividly details the brutality: the kidnapping and forced capture in Africa, the inhumane conditions during the voyage, and the relentless oppression on plantations. Wesley, using extensive firsthand accounts, refutes justifications for slavery, highlighting its violation of natural justice and humanity, and calls for an end to the abhorrent trade. This powerful work remains a poignant 18th-century reflection on slavery and a stark warning for today.
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This paper details the fabrication process of a superconducting qubit chip, improving upon existing methods to enhance reproducibility. The process involves: using a 6-inch silicon wafer as substrate, sputtering a 200nm niobium film, photolithography and plasma etching to pattern the niobium, electron beam lithography to prepare Josephson junctions, aluminum deposition to form the junctions, and finally dicing and lift-off. The paper also describes the experimental setup for qubit characterization and measurement, including the cryogenic measurement system and signal processing chain. The fabricated Josephson junctions exhibited lower-than-expected critical currents, resulting in low EJ/EC ratios.
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An xAI employee leaked a private key on GitHub, granting access for two months to private xAI large language models (LLMs) seemingly tailored for internal data from SpaceX, Tesla, and X (Twitter). Security firm GitGuardian discovered the key allowed access to at least 60 fine-tuned, private LLMs, some trained on SpaceX and Tesla data. Despite GitGuardian alerting the employee two months prior, xAI only recently removed the repository containing the key. This highlights xAI's security vulnerabilities in key management and internal monitoring, raising concerns about data security.
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Apple's extensive App Store Review Guidelines offer a comprehensive guide for developers, covering safety, performance, business models, design, and legal compliance. The guidelines emphasize app security and user privacy, strictly prohibiting offensive content, malware, and intellectual property infringement. Specific requirements are outlined for app performance, functionality, business models, and design, including metadata, icons, screenshots, and previews. Special guidelines address apps using Apple services like push notifications, Game Center, and Apple Pay. The goal is to help developers understand the review process, increase app approval rates, and contribute to a safe, reliable, and high-quality app ecosystem.
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A Linux enthusiast's decades-long journey of customizing desktop environments led to frustration with maintenance. Enter bootc, a technology allowing OS definition via Containerfiles. This enables easy creation, testing, and rollback of custom desktops. The author built Blue95, a Fedora-based desktop, showcasing bootc's power to manage custom themes, fonts, and apps, avoiding configuration drift and system breakage. Its Hacker News posting sparked debate on the definition of a 'Linux distro', blurring lines between traditional distributions and bootable containers. The author concludes bootc offers a more flexible, safer, and convenient approach to desktop customization.
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The Linux errno(3) man page reveals a peculiar limitation: errno can be modified even on successful function calls, and it's never set to zero by any system call or library function. This stems from traditional Unix design where system calls typically return errno only on failure, leaving it unchanged on success. C library functions might make multiple system calls, some of which could fail without affecting the library function's overall success, leaving errno with the failure value. ANSI C and POSIX inherited this behavior, requiring errno to be meaningful only when a function fails and its documentation specifies setting errno.
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Telli, a Berlin-based AI voice agent company and a member of the Y Combinator Fall '24 batch, is hiring a senior full-stack software engineer. They're building AI-powered voice agents for B2C companies to improve the quality and scalability of customer communication. The ideal candidate will have a product-centric mindset, thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous environment, and enjoy collaborative work. Competitive salary, equity, and a great work environment are offered.
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Aleksa from the ThunderScope project shared a project update. He spent six weeks on the PCB layout for Revision 5, boasting about integrating the ADC, clock generator, and FPGA. He also made subtle adjustments to the attenuator circuit and wrote a script to improve KiCad's length matching accuracy. Due to the new interposer design, the switch to KiCad, and some personal issues, the project is delayed. Dev edition units are expected to ship in July, with the rest shipping in September. Aleksa will be using GitHub Issues to track progress and will provide another update after testing Rev. 5.
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A user with auditory processing disorder reports issues with the app's two-way conversation feature. On iPad, the feature only occupies one-third of the screen, resulting in tiny text. While the app transcribes speech, it lacks text-to-speech functionality, hindering replies. The user suggests adding keyboard input for easier text-based communication and doesn't require the app's home sounds/alarm features.
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Google announced that Chrome has achieved a record-breaking score on the Speedometer 3 benchmark, translating to a potential annual time savings of 58 million hours for users. This improvement stems from a series of low-level optimizations, including improvements to the Blink rendering engine's memory layout, expanded use of Oilpan garbage collection, and faster string hashing. Chrome also saw optimizations in CSS computation and font rendering, resulting in significant performance gains across various tasks. This achievement showcases Chrome's technological leadership and sets a new benchmark for the entire browser industry.
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SvarDOS, an open-source operating system based on DR-DOS, recently transitioned from being a FreeDOS distribution to having its own EDRDOS kernel. It can run on 8086 or 8088 PCs and boasts a network-capable package manager. While the default install is incredibly small, its robust repository contains over 400 packages, including network drivers, editors, and games. SvarDOS requires more manual configuration than FreeDOS, but its powerful features and online update mechanism make it a noteworthy retro OS.
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For much of the 20th century, the classic American mailbox reigned supreme: galvanized steel, rounded top for water runoff, and a carrier signal flag. But the rise of e-commerce and package deliveries led the USPS to introduce a Next Generation Package Mailbox, which saw muted market success. This spurred a wave of diverse mailbox designs, ranging from plastic alternatives to modern aesthetics, showcasing practical functionality and individual expression. Some designs even reveal a more aggressive, unconventional style, reflecting the multifaceted nature of American culture and design preferences.
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A fund established by Yahoo to support Chinese dissidents was mismanaged by its nonprofit partner, the Laogai Research Foundation, with most of the money diverted. In 2017, six formerly imprisoned Chinese dissidents sued Yahoo, Laogai, and its leadership. The settlement compensates the dissidents, and remaining funds will establish a new fund managed by Humanitarian China to continue supporting individuals imprisoned for their speech in China. This funding is crucial for dissidents facing economic and social hardship after release, symbolizing international support for their cause.
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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.
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This post provides a clear explanation of cross-entropy's role as a loss function in machine learning classification tasks. Starting with information theory concepts like information content and entropy, it builds up to cross-entropy, comparing it to KL divergence. The article concludes by demonstrating the relationship between cross-entropy and maximum likelihood estimation with numerical examples, clarifying its application in machine learning.
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New research reveals a startling rate of progress in large language models (LLMs). Their ability to complete complex tasks is doubling roughly every seven months, according to a metric called "task-completion time horizon." This metric compares the time an LLM takes to complete a task to the time a human would take. The study projects that by 2030, the most advanced LLMs could complete, with 50% reliability, a software task equivalent to a month's worth of human work (40 hours/week). This raises significant concerns and excitement about the potential benefits and risks of LLMs, while acknowledging that hardware and robotics could potentially limit the pace of progress.
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The author shared a fun experiment on Hacker News: a simple netcat script that beeps four times whenever someone connects to his server port. In 24 hours, he received over 4761 connections, resulting in 19044 beeps! This seemingly pointless experiment highlighted the Hacker News community's engagement and showed that the joy of programming isn't just about problem-solving, but also exploring quirky ideas.
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Directus is a real-time API and app dashboard for managing SQL database content. It instantly layers a blazing-fast Node.js API on top of any SQL database, supporting PostgreSQL, MySQL, and more, with no migration required. Deploy locally, on-premises, or use their cloud service. Its modern, no-code Vue.js app is intuitive and easy to use. Directus operates under a Business Source License (BSL) 1.1, offering free use for organizations under $5M in annual revenue/funding; larger organizations require a commercial license.
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This article provides a structured approach for introverts to network effectively. It emphasizes pre-event preparation, including eating beforehand, having a conversation starter, and knowing event details. During the event, it advises introverts to control their body language, project confidence, and use techniques like a 'delayed warmth' smile to initiate and maintain conversations. The article also suggests paying attention to details, remembering key information from conversations, and following up afterward to build deeper relationships. Ultimately, the core message is that introverts don't need to change themselves to network; showing up confidently, listening attentively, and leaving a genuine impression is sufficient.
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The US and China announced a temporary agreement to lower tariffs, offering a 90-day truce in their ongoing trade war. The US will reduce tariffs on Chinese imports from 145% to 30%, while China will lower tariffs on US goods from 125% to 10%. Both sides cited a desire to avoid economic decoupling and buy time for further negotiations. The agreement offers a lifeline to American businesses that had suspended orders, hoping for a tariff reduction amid rising prices.
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Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 11's system restore points automatically delete after 60 days. This shorter lifespan, compared to Windows 10's 90 days, raises questions, especially given Microsoft's aggressive push for users to upgrade. While Microsoft highlights the importance of system restore and provides instructions for creating manual restore points, the change fuels concerns. The article discusses Microsoft's recent campaigns promoting Windows 11 features like the AI-powered Recall, exclusive to Windows 11, further emphasizing the upgrade incentive. The impact on user experience and Microsoft's upgrade strategy are analyzed.
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QEMU is a generic and open-source machine emulator and virtualizer. It can emulate a complete machine in software without needing hardware virtualization, achieving good performance through dynamic translation. QEMU integrates with Xen and KVM hypervisors, providing emulated hardware while letting the hypervisor manage the CPU for near-native performance. It allows running operating systems built for one architecture on a different one, and offers userspace API virtualization for running binaries compiled against different ABIs. QEMU boasts a stable command-line interface and monitor API, integrates with tools like libvirt, oVirt, OpenStack, and virt-manager, and is licensed under the GPLv2. Comprehensive documentation and a vibrant community ensure ease of use and support.
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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.
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The Trump administration has halted construction of the nearly finished Revolution Wind offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island, citing concerns about national security. This action, the latest in a series of moves targeting renewable energy, has drawn sharp criticism from industry groups who warn of economic damage and investor uncertainty. The halt could significantly increase energy prices and underscores concerns about the reliability of the US as a destination for long-term energy investment.
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This article introduces `require-fennel.el`, an Emacs extension that enables running Fennel (a Lua dialect) within Emacs. It achieves this by communicating with a Fennel REPL, allowing data conversion and function calls between Emacs Lisp and Fennel. The author demonstrates loading Fennel modules, calling Fennel functions, and using Fennel data structures in Emacs Lisp. Furthermore, the extension supports calling Emacs Lisp functions from Fennel, enabling two-way interaction. This allows developers to leverage Fennel's conciseness and Emacs's power for a more robust Emacs environment.
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Austral is a new systems programming language designed for simplicity and strictness. Think of it as Rust's essential features or a modernized, stripped-down Ada. Key features include a strong static type system, linear types, capability-based security, and strong modularity. Linear types enforce correct resource lifecycle management, preventing memory leaks and other errors, while capability-based security mitigates supply chain attacks. Austral eschews features like NULLs, garbage collection, and exceptions to maximize safety and predictability.
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