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GitHub Copilot's Agent Mode: AI-Powered Code Editing Revolution

2025-06-16

GitHub Copilot's Agent Mode: AI-Powered Code Editing Revolution

GitHub Copilot's new Agent mode in Visual Studio lets developers use natural language to describe high-level tasks. The AI autonomously reasons through the request, plans the work, and applies code changes. Unlike Copilot Chat, Agent mode can run commands and builds, iterate on errors, and invoke tools to complete tasks. Developers simply input their needs, and Copilot automatically determines the relevant context and files to edit, supporting multiple tool invocations. Copilot detects and resolves issues in code edits and terminal commands, allowing users to review and confirm changes incrementally. Administrators can control Agent mode usage via the GitHub Copilot dashboard.

(learn.microsoft.com)

Development AI code editing

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

DEF CON: My Failed Attempt to Hack the Wall of Sheep

2025-04-18

DEF CON: My Failed Attempt to Hack the Wall of Sheep

At DEF CON's Wall of Sheep exhibit, which displays captured login credentials from an insecure Wi-Fi network, I attempted to inject JavaScript via XSS into the login field to display fake credentials. However, my assumption that the wall was a simple web browser rendering was wrong. The process was manually moderated, and the underlying software wasn't what I expected. My attack failed, but I've learned valuable lessons for a future attempt, including better preparation and a more realistic approach.

(honeypot.net)

Tech

WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg on 20 Years of Automattic and the AI Revolution

2025-07-01

WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg on 20 Years of Automattic and the AI Revolution

In a wide-ranging interview on the Decoder podcast, Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg reflects on two decades of WordPress and the controversies surrounding its open-source ecosystem. He discusses the legal battle with WP Engine, Automattic's response to the AI boom's impact on websites, and his vision for new products like Beeper. Mullenweg expresses optimism about AI's future, believing it won't destroy the web but rather create new opportunities. The conversation also touches upon Automattic's organizational restructuring and its commitment to the open web.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Open-Source LLMs: Outperforming Closed-Source Rivals on Cost and Performance

2025-06-06

Open-Source LLMs: Outperforming Closed-Source Rivals on Cost and Performance

While closed-source LLMs like GPT, Claude, and Gemini dominate at the forefront of AI, many common tasks don't require cutting-edge capabilities. This article reveals that open-source alternatives like Qwen and Llama often match or exceed the performance of closed-source workhorses (e.g., GPT-4o-mini, Gemini 2.5 Flash) for tasks such as classification, summarization, and data extraction, while significantly reducing costs. Benchmark comparisons demonstrate cost savings of up to 90%+, particularly with batch inference. A handy conversion chart helps businesses transition to open-source, maximizing performance and minimizing expenses.

(sutro.sh)

AI open-source LLMs

Fossil Fuel-Funded Groups Harass Scientists Blocking Offshore Wind

2025-08-27

Fossil Fuel-Funded Groups Harass Scientists Blocking Offshore Wind

A Brown University report exposes how fossil fuel-funded groups and their lawyers use legal battles and disinformation to impede the development of clean, affordable offshore wind energy on the US East Coast. These groups employ deceptive environmental claims, such as protecting North Atlantic right whales, to delay or cancel wind projects, thus protecting the fossil fuel industry's interests. One law firm even threatened Brown University to suppress research findings. The report highlights the connections between fossil fuel companies, the political right wing, and disinformation networks, and their obstruction of climate action. This incident underscores the challenges of energy transition and the pressures faced by academic research.

(electrek.co)

Tech Fossil Fuel Lobbying

Gamers Accidentally Become Cybersecurity Experts

2025-03-02

Gamers Accidentally Become Cybersecurity Experts

Thousands of video game enthusiasts are unknowingly developing cybersecurity skills through their hobby. Speedrunners, in pursuit of the fastest game completion times, exploit glitches requiring reverse engineering skills. They utilize tools like IDA Pro and Ghidra, even developing custom tools, to understand game mechanics. The glitches they find—buffer overflows, use-after-frees, etc.—are strikingly similar to real-world cybersecurity vulnerabilities. These gamers possess valuable vulnerability research skills without realizing the professional potential. This article encourages them to transition into the cybersecurity industry, transforming their passion into a career.

(zetier.com)

Tech Game Glitches

Reverse Engineered: Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Schematic Released

2025-08-27

Reverse Engineered: Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Schematic Released

A hacker has reverse-engineered the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, releasing its schematic and layout. The process involved meticulously sanding down the board layer by layer, scanning each with a high-resolution scanner to create the design. While not intended for fabrication, this detailed schematic offers educational value and opens doors for advanced hacking, such as exploring the I2C register map of the PMIC. The project reveals insights into the CM5's power management, WiFi/Bluetooth control, and SD card compatibility.

(github.com)

Hardware

Malicious Mod Found in BeamNG.drive Exploits 6-Year-Old Chromium Vulnerability

2025-05-01

Malicious Mod Found in BeamNG.drive Exploits 6-Year-Old Chromium Vulnerability

While playing BeamNG.drive, the author discovered a malicious mod, "American Road," that triggered an antivirus alert. Analysis revealed obfuscated JavaScript and shellcode leveraging a six-year-old Chromium Embedded Framework vulnerability (CVE-2019-5825). This vulnerability allowed the mod to inject shellcode into memory, downloading and executing a DLL that steals passwords and personal information. The malicious code was disguised as a Patreon banner. The infected mod has been removed from the official repository, and the author's account suspended. Users are urged to remove the mod and scan their systems.

(lemonyte.com)

Game Game Security Chromium Exploit

Convoy Ditches UUIDv4 for ULIDs: Efficiency and Scalability in the Big Data Era

2024-12-28

During a database migration from MongoDB to Postgres, Convoy decided to replace UUIDv4 with ULIDs as unique identifiers. The article compares UUIDv4 and ULIDs, highlighting ULID's advantages: lexicographical sortability, URL friendliness, and improved database indexing efficiency, albeit with slightly slower generation and insertion speeds. Convoy chose ULIDs primarily to solve pagination performance issues with large datasets. While ULIDs are marginally slower to generate, the performance gains, especially for large-scale data processing, are deemed worthwhile. The article also discusses potential time information leakage risks and user data implications of ULIDs, and briefly mentions the potential future adoption of UUIDv7.

(jirevwe.github.io)

Development

How Red Mesh Bags Make Oranges Look More Orange

2025-04-13

The author noticed that red mesh bags used for oranges in grocery stores seem to make the oranges appear more vibrant. To investigate, 11 photos of oranges were taken, both with and without the mesh bag, and average pixel values were calculated. Results showed the average pixel color was browner than perceived by eye, but the red mesh clearly added warmth, notably in the green channel. This suggests human color perception is more nuanced than simple pixel averaging, prompting a call for a human-perception-based experiment to confirm the red mesh's effect.

(alexanderell.is)

Tech color perception visual illusion

Rediscovering Roget's Thesaurus: A Categorical Treasure Beyond Synonym Dictionaries

2025-05-17

Rediscovering Roget's Thesaurus: A Categorical Treasure Beyond Synonym Dictionaries

The author stumbled upon a 1919 edition of Roget's Thesaurus and realized it's not just a simple synonym dictionary, but a treasure trove of words organized by concept rather than alphabetically. Its unique categorical structure, similar to a library's organization, helps users discover related concepts and expressions while searching for specific words. The author argues this surpasses modern alphabetically-ordered synonym dictionaries, sparking new ideas and expressions, encouraging readers to experience this more creative tool.

(austinkleon.substack.com)

Misc Roget's Thesaurus Synonym Dictionary Word Categorization

Ubuntu 25.10 Drops Xorg Support for GNOME, Embraces Wayland Exclusively

2025-06-10

Ubuntu 25.10 Drops Xorg Support for GNOME, Embraces Wayland Exclusively

Ubuntu 25.10, codenamed "Questing Quokka," is making a significant change: the default GNOME desktop will exclusively use Wayland, dropping support for Xorg. This isn't a sudden decision; GNOME is phasing out Xorg support, and Canonical is proactively adapting. This allows users and developers a full release cycle to adjust before the next LTS, Ubuntu 26.04, arrives next year. The move is driven by Wayland's maturity, improved Nvidia driver support, better touchscreen and high-DPI display handling, and a simplification of development by avoiding maintaining two display servers. While some users rely on Xorg, it won't disappear entirely; it can still be installed and used with other desktop environments. Most X11 applications will continue to function via XWayland.

(nerds.xyz)

Development

Wall Street's Dark Pools Get Even Darker: The Rise of Private Trading Rooms

2025-03-17

Wall Street's Dark Pools Get Even Darker: The Rise of Private Trading Rooms

Wall Street's dark pools, already shrouded in secrecy, are becoming even more opaque with the introduction of private trading rooms. These exclusive venues offer the core benefit of dark pools – hiding large trades to avoid price impact – but with added exclusivity, specifying who can participate. While currently a minority of dark pool volume, their adoption is rapidly growing among broker-dealers, market makers, hedge funds, and asset managers. This raises concerns about market transparency and fragmentation, but also offers improved execution quality and allows firms to handpick counterparties. However, this lack of transparency presents challenges, including difficulty gauging market depth and potential regulatory risks.

(finance.yahoo.com)

Tech dark pools market transparency high-frequency trading

BART Station Closure Sparks Commuter Chaos Amidst Financial Crisis

2025-05-09

BART Station Closure Sparks Commuter Chaos Amidst Financial Crisis

A BART station closure in San Francisco's Mission District caused significant disruption to morning commuters. Riders expressed frustration over rising fares and declining service quality. BART is facing a financial crisis due to decreased ridership post-pandemic and a ballooning deficit, potentially leading to service cuts. State senators have proposed a sales tax measure for the 2026 ballot to address BART's funding issues.

(www.kqed.org)

Tech Public Transportation

Rediscovering the Power of Poetry in a Fast-Paced World

2025-02-02

Rediscovering the Power of Poetry in a Fast-Paced World

In our fast-paced digital age, poetry might seem outdated. However, it offers a unique space for deep reflection, emotional exploration, and creative expression. This article explores the numerous benefits of writing poetry, including fostering self-expression, emotional healing, sharpening the mind, deepening human connection, boosting creativity, and improving communication skills. Accessible to all, poetry serves as a powerful tool for self-discovery and therapeutic release, regardless of writing experience.

(domofutu.substack.com)

Misc self-expression mental well-being

SPVs and the Shadowy World of Pre-IPO Trading

2025-04-09

SPVs and the Shadowy World of Pre-IPO Trading

Private company share trading is booming, with accredited investors increasingly accessing pre-IPO shares through platforms like EquityZen and Forge Global. However, these trades often involve Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs), which own shares of the operating company, bypassing securities laws designed to limit the number of investors. This allows companies to stay private longer and raise capital, but it also exposes investors to opaque funding vehicles with hefty fees and limited transparency. The underwhelming IPO of CoreWeave highlights the risks, suggesting that reliance on private markets isn't sustainable without a robust public market for accurate valuation. The system exposes moderately wealthy retail investors to significant dangers.

(www.businesslawprofessors.com)

Startup Pre-IPO SPVs Securities Law

VMware's Decline? Gartner Predicts a Third of Workloads Will Migrate by 2028

2025-09-12

VMware's Decline? Gartner Predicts a Third of Workloads Will Migrate by 2028

Gartner analyst Julia Palmer predicts that over one-third of workloads currently running on VMware will migrate to other platforms by 2028. Broadcom's revised VMware licensing program prevents hyperscalers from selling VMware subscriptions, pushing customers towards alternatives. Palmer advises cautious assessment and strategic migration choices, including Nutanix, public clouds, or Microsoft Azure Local, emphasizing application modernization. She cautions against cost-cutting as the sole migration driver and highlights the potential of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

Cloudflare Launches First MoQ CDN: The Beginning of the End for WebRTC?

2025-08-23

Cloudflare has officially launched its Media over QUIC (MoQ) CDN, a technical preview of a new standard aiming to replace WebRTC, HLS/DASH, and RTMP/SRT for real-time media streaming. Developers can test it using Cloudflare's public endpoint and various client libraries, even building live broadcasts quickly with provided Web Component APIs. While currently limited in features (e.g., lacking authentication and Safari support), this marks a significant step forward for MoQ, hinting at a revolution in real-time media delivery.

(moq.dev)

Tech Real-time Media

WattWise: Command-Line Power Monitoring and Optimization

2025-04-03

WattWise: Command-Line Power Monitoring and Optimization

A robotics and machine learning engineer has created WattWise, a command-line tool that monitors power usage from a smart plug and adjusts system performance based on electricity pricing. Initially built to manage the power consumption of a high-power EPYC workstation, the monitoring component is now open-source. WattWise uses Home Assistant to display real-time power usage, historical charts, and automatically throttles CPU and GPU performance to reduce costs during peak pricing periods. The power optimization features will be released later.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Tech power monitoring system optimization

Dev's Wild Ride: Debugging Snarfus

2025-09-22

Dev's Wild Ride: Debugging Snarfus

A developer encountered a problem while using Snarfus software: the fisterfunk wouldn't communicate with the shamrock portal. After a lot of tinkering, they found a solution: connecting the backside Snarfus stagnator to the backside shamrock Klingon troglodyte emulater. The tutorial details this bizarre fix, involving a series of seemingly nonsensical terminal commands and file paths, ultimately getting Snarfus working.

(anniemueller.com)

Development quirky solutions

Stop Killing Games Movement Gains Momentum: Petitions Surge

2025-07-04

Stop Killing Games Movement Gains Momentum: Petitions Surge

The Stop Killing Games movement, spearheaded by YouTuber Accursed Farms to prevent game developers and publishers from removing sold games, is experiencing a massive surge. A UK petition surpassed 100,000 signatures, triggering consideration for parliamentary debate. Meanwhile, the EU petition is nearing 1 million signatures, though some potential fraudulent signatures have been reported. The movement advocates for open-sourcing older games to preserve gaming history and prevent their disappearance due to business decisions.

(www.gamingonlinux.com)

Game player rights

The Art of Clowning: More Than Just Laughs

2025-04-17

The Art of Clowning: More Than Just Laughs

Comedian Grayson Morris shares his insights into the art of clowning. He emphasizes that clowning is about pleasing the audience, utilizing one's body, genuine interaction with the audience, and bravely taking risks, even if they lead to failure. He differentiates between "cute and silly" clowns and "subversive and thought-provoking" clowns, with the former focusing on entertainment and the latter incorporating critical and philosophical elements. The article also quotes Avner the Eccentric and John Gilkey, two masters of clowning, further exploring the essence of clowning, including: storytelling through the body, audience interaction, transforming challenges into opportunities, and the core of clowning being in action rather than just costume.

(funnyhow.substack.com)

Misc clowning performing arts comedy

AI Coding Assistants: Hype vs. Reality

2025-03-08

AI Coding Assistants: Hype vs. Reality

Many developers claim AI coding assistants boost productivity 5-10x, but a study of nearly 800 engineers reveals a different story. The research found no significant improvement in efficiency metrics; in fact, AI assistant use led to a 41% increase in bugs. While helpful for documentation, function lookup, and API understanding, these tools struggle with medium-sized or complex codebases. The author suggests they're more like enhanced search engines, providing a roughly 10% productivity increase, far less than often touted. Modal editors may even offer greater coding speed improvements than inline AI completion.

(www.lesswrong.com)

Development

ThunderScope Update: PCB Design Challenges and Shipping Delays

2025-05-04

ThunderScope Update: PCB Design Challenges and Shipping Delays

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.

(www.crowdsupply.com)

Hardware

rapidhash: Blazing Fast, High-Quality, Platform-Independent Hash Function

2025-05-17

rapidhash: Blazing Fast, High-Quality, Platform-Independent Hash Function

rapidhash, the official successor to wyhash, is an extremely fast, high-quality, and platform-independent hash function. It surpasses 70GB/s on Apple's M4 CPUs and passes all tests in both SMHasher and SMHasher3. Optimized for AMD64 and AArch64, it's compatible with gcc, clang, icx, and MSVC, without relying on machine-specific instruction sets. Collision probability is exceptionally low, approaching the theoretical ideal. This makes rapidhash a superior choice for performance-critical applications.

(github.com)

Development

Kafka's Genesis: A Data Integration Saga

2025-08-24

Kafka's Genesis: A Data Integration Saga

In 2012, LinkedIn faced a massive data integration challenge. Their existing data pipelines were inefficient, unscalable, and suffered from data silos. To solve this, they created Apache Kafka. This article delves into Kafka's origins, revealing its design was driven by the need for robustness, scalability, real-time capabilities, and seamless data integration. It explores how LinkedIn cleverly utilized Avro schemas and a schema registry to ensure data consistency and compatibility, ultimately achieving efficient data management. The article also reflects on Kafka's lack of first-class schema support and contrasts it with newer approaches like Buf's schema-first philosophy.

(bigdata.2minutestreaming.com)

Development Data Integration

The Amiga 600: Commodore's Epic Fail, Now a Retro Gem

2025-03-16

The Amiga 600: Commodore's Epic Fail, Now a Retro Gem

The Amiga 600, one of Commodore's last Amigas, epitomized the company's downfall. Launched in 1992, it featured outdated 1985 technology, lacked competitiveness in price and expandability, and suffered from inferior graphics compared to PCs. This article delves into the reasons for its failure, contrasting it with the more successful Amiga 500. Despite its initial flop, the Amiga 600's compact size has made it a popular choice among retro enthusiasts today. The author analyzes Commodore's strategic missteps and the Amiga 600's technical shortcomings, highlighting how a once-failed product has become a nostalgic icon.

(dfarq.homeip.net)

Hardware

Kahuna: Your IndexedDB Swiss Army Knife

2025-04-07

Kahuna: Your IndexedDB Swiss Army Knife

Kahuna is a browser extension for Firefox and Chromium-based browsers that simplifies IndexedDB database management. It lets you create, modify, view, query, edit, import, and export IndexedDB data. Features include data filtering, pagination, JavaScript code execution, and import/export in various formats (Dexie, JSON, CSV). While documentation is a work in progress, Kahuna is a powerful tool for developers working with IndexedDB.

(github.com)

Development

Nvidia CEO Slams Anthropic's AI Job Apocalypse Prediction

2025-06-15

Nvidia CEO Slams Anthropic's AI Job Apocalypse Prediction

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang publicly disagreed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's prediction that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, leading to 20% unemployment. Huang criticized Amodei's pessimistic outlook and Anthropic's approach, suggesting their development should be more transparent and open. Amodei countered that he never claimed Anthropic should be the sole developer of safe AI, reiterating his call for greater AI regulation to mitigate the economic disruption. This disagreement highlights differing views on AI's impact and development.

(www.tomshardware.com)

AI

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