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Long-Term Review: Samsung 870 QVO 4TB SATA SSDs

2025-09-17

Long-Term Review: Samsung 870 QVO 4TB SATA SSDs

This review shares the long-term experience of using four Samsung 870 QVO 4TB SATA SSDs in a home server and backup setup. Manufactured in 2021, these drives have shown excellent performance, maintaining write speeds of 140-170 MB/s even under heavy load. One drive reported 4 bad blocks, but overall, they've written over 170TB of data, far from their 1440TBW endurance limit. While prices have dropped, they remain slightly more expensive than competing drives, but offer consistently reliable performance.

(ounapuu.ee)

Hardware Samsung 870 QVO SSD Review

US Army Soldier Arrested for AT&T, Verizon Extortion

2024-12-31

A 20-year-old US Army soldier, Cameron John Wagenius, has been arrested and indicted for his alleged role as Kiberphant0m, a cybercriminal who sold and leaked sensitive customer call records stolen from AT&T and Verizon earlier this year. Wagenius, a communications specialist stationed in South Korea, was linked to another cybercriminal, Connor Riley Moucka, who was also arrested for data theft and extortion. The indictment charges Wagenius with illegally transferring confidential phone records, including threats to leak call logs of the President and Vice President, and selling Verizon PTT customer call records and offering SIM-swapping services. The case highlights the need for strong internal security and demonstrates law enforcement's increasing effectiveness in apprehending cybercriminals.

(krebsonsecurity.com)

Tech cybercrime US Army soldier

Gen Z Demands Stricter Social Media Regulation

2025-03-07

Gen Z Demands Stricter Social Media Regulation

A new study reveals that over 60% of 16-to-24-year-olds in the UK believe social media does more harm than good, advocating for stricter regulations to safeguard young people's mental health. The research identifies social media as the most significant negative influence on teens' mental wellbeing, with many expressing regret over excessive phone use during their upbringing. This study fuels the upcoming parliamentary debate on a bill aiming to enhance children's smartphone safety, urging government intervention to protect children from the detrimental effects of social media.

(www.lbc.co.uk)

Tech

Mutmut: A Powerful Mutation Testing Tool for Python

2025-05-26

Mutmut: A Powerful Mutation Testing Tool for Python

Mutmut is a user-friendly mutation testing system for Python. It helps developers identify gaps in their test suites, leading to higher code quality. Key features include incremental testing, parallel execution, and an interactive terminal UI. Users can easily run tests, browse mutants, apply mutants, and configure various settings such as paths to mutate, test directories, and files to exclude. Mutmut also offers optimizations for large codebases and extensive configuration options for diverse needs.

(github.com)

Development Mutation Testing

Blazing Fast Unicode Character Width Calculation: O(1) wcwidth in JS

2025-09-13

Blazing Fast Unicode Character Width Calculation: O(1) wcwidth in JS

Introducing `wcwidth-o1`, a TypeScript/JavaScript library providing O(1) performance for calculating Unicode character widths. Fully supporting Unicode 15.1, this optimized port of Markus Kuhn's implementation is perfect for ensuring correct text alignment in terminals and other applications. Functions like `wcwidth`, `wcswidth`, and `wcswidthCjk` handle single characters, strings, and CJK characters respectively, adhering to Unicode width class rules (e.g., fullwidth characters occupy two columns).

(github.com)

Development character width

The Fallacy of 'Gold' in Fantasy Games: A Historical Perspective on Currency Systems

2025-01-07

The Fallacy of 'Gold' in Fantasy Games: A Historical Perspective on Currency Systems

This article challenges the common fantasy game trope of using 'gold' as a universal currency. The author argues that in the ancient Mediterranean world, gold coins were impractical for everyday transactions due to their high value. Analyzing ancient Greek, Roman, and medieval currency systems, the article demonstrates that silver and copper coins were the primary mediums of exchange. The author suggests that fantasy games should adopt more historically accurate currency systems, reflecting the economic realities of ancient societies. This includes considering non-monetary transactions like bartering and debt accounting to better represent wealth disparities and economic functions.

(acoup.blog)

Game currency history game design

Immigrant Founders: The Secret Sauce Behind America's Tech Giants

2025-05-29

Immigrant Founders: The Secret Sauce Behind America's Tech Giants

Some of America's most valuable companies were founded by individuals who immigrated to the US as students. Elon Musk, for example, lived in South Africa and Canada before studying physics at the University of Pennsylvania. The Collison brothers, founders of Stripe, moved from Ireland to attend MIT and Harvard respectively. Over half of America's billion-dollar startups have at least one immigrant founder; a quarter had a founder who arrived as a student.

(www.economist.com)

Startup immigrant founders US tech companies startup stories

The End of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum: 4000 Banned Books and Their Stories

2025-08-13

In 1948, the Catholic Church published the final 32nd edition of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a 508-page catalog that, since its first edition in 1559, listed nearly 4000 books banned for heresy, moral deficiency, sexual explicitness, political incorrectness, and more. Notable figures like Erasmus, Voltaire, and Sartre were included, alongside philosophers who believed in God, such as Descartes and Kant. Primarily intended for priests, this index reflects the Church's long history of controlling ideas and restricting intellectual freedom.

(historyofinformation.com)

Misc Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Google's 10-Year Chromebook Update Promise: Older Devices Still Facing the Scrap Heap

2025-01-06

Google's 10-Year Chromebook Update Promise: Older Devices Still Facing the Scrap Heap

Despite Google's 2023 promise of a decade of updates for Chromebooks to prevent premature obsolescence, many older models are still set to reach their end-of-life in 2025 and beyond. This promise only applies to Chromebooks released from 2021 onwards. While administrators can opt-in to extended updates for some older devices, this doesn't solve the problem entirely. The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) points out that many Chromebook models are still reaching their end-of-life this year and in the coming years, raising concerns about e-waste and consumer rights.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech software updates

Major Internet Outage Hits Pakistan

2025-08-20

Major Internet Outage Hits Pakistan

A significant internet disruption hit Pakistan on Tuesday evening, reducing connectivity to a mere 20% of normal levels, according to NetBlocks, a global internet observatory. The outage, starting late in the evening, affected multiple regions, cutting off millions from online services. NetBlocks reported a major disruption impacting the backbone operator PTCL, significantly reducing national connectivity. As of late Tuesday night, neither PTCL nor the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) had offered an official explanation or restoration timeline. The outage disrupted businesses, banking, and communication, causing widespread frustration and concern on social media.

(profit.pakistantoday.com.pk)

Tech internet outage network failure

Indie Dev Boosts Efficiency with Retro Engine Techniques

2025-04-07

An indie game developer working on Nightshift Galaxy created a specialized level editing tool called "Scaffold" to improve efficiency and game performance. Inspired by 90s engine techniques like those in DOOM and Descent, Scaffold uses a convex decomposition approach to pre-compute spatial partitioning, unlike the dynamic methods used by modern engines. This results in faster raytracing and pathfinding, dramatically improving performance and reducing the need for later optimization. The developer can focus on gameplay design rather than tedious performance tuning.

(blog.littlepolygon.com)

Game engine technology

Unparalleled Misalignments: A Collection of Unexpectedly Opposite Synonym Pairs

2025-05-05

A website called "Unparalleled Misalignments" (formerly quadruple entendres) compiles pairs of phrases that are non-synonymous despite each word in one phrase being a synonym of a word in the other. Examples include "Butt dial" and "Booty call." The list, maintained since 2018, is crowdsourced and showcases the surprising complexities and humor of language, offering a fascinating glimpse into wordplay and semantic nuances.

(rickiheicklen.com)

Misc wordplay synonyms

Trunk-Based Development: Saying Goodbye to Long-Lived Branches

2025-02-13

Trunk-Based Development: Saying Goodbye to Long-Lived Branches

Large project development often suffers from lengthy branch merges and conflicts, slowing down releases. This article introduces trunk-based development, where teams work directly on the main branch, managing incomplete features through feature flags. Static feature flags use simple if statements, while dynamic feature flags offer real-time control via external systems, enabling production testing and rollbacks. This approach, combined with continuous delivery, allows for faster iterations and reliable software delivery, minimizing risks and accelerating the feedback loop.

(bucket.co)

Development trunk-based development continuous delivery

Brian Eno's Airport Music: A Meditative Journey on Death and Acceptance

2025-04-02

Brian Eno's Airport Music: A Meditative Journey on Death and Acceptance

Brian Eno's *Music for Airports* is more than just background music; it's a meditation on death and acceptance. Created in 1978, this ambient masterpiece features slow, contemplative melodies, ambiguous tonality, and sounds designed to exist in the background. Initially conceived for airport playback, it aimed to create a calming atmosphere, preparing listeners for the possibility of death with serenity. Today, *Music for Airports* not only graces actual airport terminals but also exists in various reinterpreted forms, a flowing work of art across time and space.

(www.openculture.com)

Misc Ambient Music Airports

Local-First Web Dev: Reclaim Your Data

2025-04-04

Local-First Web Dev: Reclaim Your Data

Tired of backend-dependent web apps? Local-first web development is a revolutionary approach that puts users in control. Access your apps offline with automatic syncing when online. This guide explores the core principles, advantages over traditional cloud apps, and a step-by-step approach to building local-first apps using Vue.js, including transforming your SPA into a PWA, implementing robust storage solutions like SQLite, and developing secure syncing and authentication systems. Future posts will delve into advanced topics like conflict resolution.

(alexop.dev)

Development

AI Reshapes Hiring: Database Architects in High Demand

2025-05-04

AI Reshapes Hiring: Database Architects in High Demand

AI's impact on hiring is dramatic, with companies scrambling to clean, organize, and share data for AI applications. Demand for database architects surged 2312%, while statistician jobs also rose sharply (382%), according to Mitchell. IT leaders must prioritize AI investments that deliver measurable outcomes, not just technology for technology's sake. Mitchell emphasizes precise resource allocation, stating that results must justify investment, even during economic uncertainty. Employment trends show growth in healthcare, transportation/warehousing, finance, and social assistance, but federal government employment declined due to Trump administration cuts.

(www.computerworld.com)

Tech Database Architects

Former National Security Advisor Waltz Caught Using Secret Signal Archiving App

2025-05-04

Former National Security Advisor Waltz Caught Using Secret Signal Archiving App

A Reuters photographer captured a photo of former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz checking his Signal messages during a Trump cabinet meeting. He wasn't using the official Signal app, but a modified version called TM SGNL, which automatically archives plaintext messages. Developed by TeleMessage, a company with executives linked to the Israeli Defense Forces' intelligence unit, TM SGNL likely violates Signal's open-source license. The app is primarily distributed through enterprise mobile device management (MDM) services, suggesting the Trump administration may have used it for classified discussions and centralized device management. The article also uncovered detailed documentation and a video revealing potential storage locations for chat logs, including Microsoft 365, SMTP, and SFTP. This raises significant security concerns.

(micahflee.com)

Tech

Cross-Entropy: A Deep Dive into the Loss Function for Classification

2025-04-13

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.

(eli.thegreenplace.net)

AI cross-entropy loss function

Is AGI Here? No, It's 'Jagged AGI'

2025-04-20

Is AGI Here? No, It's 'Jagged AGI'

Recent AI models like OpenAI's o3 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro show stunning advancements, even completing complex tasks like marketing campaigns and website building. Economist Tyler Cowen suggests this signifies the arrival of AGI. However, the article argues these AIs exhibit uneven capabilities, excelling in some areas while failing at simple ones – a concept termed 'Jagged AGI'. This uncertainty makes the definition and impact of AGI unclear, suggesting its application and societal integration could be a lengthy process, or potentially see rapid adoption. The future remains uncertain.

(www.oneusefulthing.org)

AI

FSF Calls for Continued Pressure on Microsoft

2025-01-05

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) published a blog post urging continued pressure on Microsoft to combat its anti-free software practices. The post uses this year's International Day Against DRM (IDAD) as an example, highlighting Microsoft's forced Windows 11 upgrade requiring a TPM module, harming user freedom and digital rights. The FSF encourages switching to GNU/Linux, avoiding new Microsoft software releases, and moving projects off Microsoft GitHub to support the free software movement. Simultaneously, the FSF is conducting its annual fundraiser, seeking support to fight digital restrictions and promote software freedom.

(www.fsf.org)

Development Digital Restrictions

Marco Email App's Offline-First Architecture Evolution

2025-08-29

Marco Email App's Offline-First Architecture Evolution

The Marco email app team embarked on a long journey to build an IMAP-based, cross-platform, and offline-first application. They experimented with various solutions, including WatermelonDB, Triplit, and InstantDB, but abandoned them due to performance bottlenecks or functional limitations. Ultimately, they chose Replicache for its superior performance and flexibility, combining it with Orama for robust indexing and search. This story highlights the challenges and opportunities of building high-performance offline-first applications and foreshadows the future of data synchronization: from shared endpoints to shared databases.

(marcoapp.io)

Development offline-first database synchronization

Denmark Ditches Microsoft, Embraces Open Source

2025-06-12

Denmark Ditches Microsoft, Embraces Open Source

Denmark's Ministry of Digitization is abandoning Microsoft products in favor of Linux and LibreOffice. This move prioritizes 'digital sovereignty' and reduces reliance on a few tech providers, fueled partly by concerns over US influence following President Trump's Greenland ambitions. Half the ministry will transition to Linux and LibreOffice this summer, with a complete switch expected by fall. Major cities like Copenhagen and Aarhus are following suit, highlighting a growing trend towards open-source solutions.

(www.heise.de)

Tech

Groundbreaking Study: Beta-Blockers May Harm Women After Heart Attacks

2025-09-01

Groundbreaking Study: Beta-Blockers May Harm Women After Heart Attacks

Groundbreaking research reveals that beta-blockers, a first-line treatment for heart attacks for decades, don't benefit most patients and may increase hospitalization and death risk in some women, but not men. A large-scale trial showed women with minimal heart damage after a heart attack who received beta-blockers were significantly more likely to experience another heart attack, heart failure hospitalization, and nearly triple the death risk compared to those not receiving the drug. However, for patients with a left ventricular ejection fraction below 40%, beta-blockers remain standard care. This study highlights crucial gender differences in heart disease treatment and is likely to reshape international clinical guidelines.

(www.cnn.com)

Tech beta-blockers gender differences

US Revokes Visas of Seven Brazilian Supreme Court Justices

2025-07-19

US Revokes Visas of Seven Brazilian Supreme Court Justices

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the revocation of visas for seven Brazilian Supreme Court justices, in addition to Judge Alexandre de Moraes. This action follows the Brazilian Supreme Court's issuance of search warrants and restraining orders against former President Jair Bolsonaro, stemming from allegations that Bolsonaro sought interference from US President Donald Trump in Brazilian courts. Bolsonaro denies the accusations, calling the court's actions cowardly. The move escalates tensions between the US and Brazil and highlights Trump's continued support for Bolsonaro.

(nypost.com)

Tech Brazilian Politics US Foreign Policy Bolsonaro

CCL: A Minimalist Configuration Language Based on Category Theory

2025-01-11

The author presents CCL, a minimalist configuration language inspired by Category Theory. CCL's core is key-value pairs, eschewing complex features in favor of composability and extensibility. Clever use of whitespace and simple rules handle nested structures and comments, enabling powerful features like lists, comments, sections, and multiline strings while maintaining extreme simplicity. A unique fixed-point design elegantly solves key override conflicts. Leveraging monoids and monoid homomorphisms from Category Theory ensures correct and efficient configuration composition. CCL's code is concise, easily understood, and readily implemented, making it a valuable example of elegant software design.

(chshersh.com)

Development configuration language category theory

Spark: AI-Powered Streamlining of Renewable Energy Development

2025-03-13

Spark: AI-Powered Streamlining of Renewable Energy Development

Spark is building an advanced AI research tool to help energy developers build solar farms and battery plants. The tool tackles a major challenge in renewables – navigating complex local regulations. Industry leaders like Colliers, Standard Solar, and Cypress Creek Renewables already use Spark to inform investment decisions. Their projects will generate the equivalent of 60GW – enough to power tens of millions of homes annually! Spark is seeking experienced engineers to build core APIs, AI infrastructure, and data pipelines, owning features from concept to production and customer feedback.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Tech Energy Tech

io_uring Gains New Process Creation Functionality

2024-12-20

LWN.net reports on the development of a new process creation feature for the io_uring subsystem. This functionality is implemented via two new io_uring operations: IORING_OP_CLONE, which creates a new process, and IORING_OP_EXEC, which performs an execveat() system call to load a new program. This promises increased efficiency and allows for more complex logic, such as path searching, to be executed asynchronously within the kernel. However, the feature is still in its early stages and has limitations, such as requiring synchronous execution of io_uring operations within the new process. Future development aims to increase flexibility and eventually merge the feature into the mainline Linux kernel.

(lwn.net)

Development process creation Linux kernel

Chevy Silverado EV Shatters Single-Charge Range Record

2025-08-10

Chevy Silverado EV Shatters Single-Charge Range Record

A Chevy Silverado EV has achieved a new world record for EV driving on a single charge, traveling 1,059.2 miles without recharging. GM engineers employed various techniques, including speed limitations, drag reduction, weight reduction, and tire pressure/alignment optimization. While GM isn't seeking Guinness World Record recognition, the feat showcases significant advancements in electric vehicle technology. This surpasses the previous record held by Lucid Motors.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Chevy Silverado

uWrap: A Blazing-Fast Text Wrapping Utility (<2KB)

2025-04-04

uWrap: A Blazing-Fast Text Wrapping Utility (<2KB)

uWrap is a 10x faster and more accurate text wrapping utility under 2KB (minified), MIT licensed. Designed for efficient row height prediction in list and grid virtualization, optimizing UI performance for large scrollable datasets. It cleverly overcomes Canvas2D's lack of text wrapping APIs and the performance limitations of measureText(). Benchmarks show it significantly outperforms canvas-hypertxt in both speed and accuracy. Currently supports Latin character sets, with more features planned.

(github.com)

Development text wrapping

Luxury Overnight Trains Return? Dreamstar Aims to Reshape West Coast Rail Travel

2025-06-06

Luxury Overnight Trains Return? Dreamstar Aims to Reshape West Coast Rail Travel

Dreamstar is aiming to revive the glamour of luxury overnight trains connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, a service unseen since the 1940s. Leveraging existing Union Pacific freight rail lines, they plan to offer all-sleeper accommodations with gourmet dining and five-star hospitality. This aims to provide a comfortable, reliable, and elegant alternative for medium-distance travel, claiming a 75% reduction in carbon emissions compared to flying. Having secured some investment, Dreamstar plans to launch service before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

(www.freightwaves.com)

Startup

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