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Open Source Power Plays: Rug Pulls, Forks, and the Shifting Sands of Control

2025-09-06

At the 2025 Open Source Summit Europe, Dawn Foster dissected the complex power dynamics in open-source software development. Large cloud providers often hold significant sway, potentially leveraging this power to the detriment of smaller companies. One tactic, 'rug pulls,' involves companies re-licensing software to restrict competitor profitability, often leading to 'forks' – community-driven project branches to regain control. The presentation analyzed case studies like Elasticsearch, Terraform, and Redis, comparing contributor composition changes before and after forks. The importance of neutral governance and a diverse contributor base emerged as key themes. Foster highlighted that while forking offers a means for maintainers and contributors to combat power imbalances, projects should prioritize neutral governance and broad contributor participation to mitigate the risk of rug pulls.

(lwn.net)

Development forking

Ruby Blocks, Procs, and Lambdas: Subtle Differences in Closures

2025-05-21

Ruby Blocks, Procs, and Lambdas: Subtle Differences in Closures

This article delves into the differences between blocks, procs, and lambdas in Ruby. While all group code for execution, they differ subtly: Procs are objects, assignable and callable with methods, unlike blocks which are solely part of method call syntax; a method call allows at most one block but multiple procs; lambdas check argument counts, procs don't; and lambdas and procs handle the `return` keyword differently. The article also explains closures, the origins of the names 'proc' and 'lambda', and touches upon lambda calculus and anonymous functions.

(blog.awaxman.com)

Development

Rust's `image` Crate Now Handles EXIF Orientation in Image Resizing

2025-09-13

Rust's `image` Crate Now Handles EXIF Orientation in Image Resizing

The Rust image processing crate, `image`, has released version v0.25.8, adding support for EXIF orientation data. This fixes a common issue where resizing images would ignore the orientation, resulting in rotated or flipped thumbnails. The new `apply_orientation` function corrects the image orientation before resizing, ensuring the thumbnail matches the original. This is particularly helpful when working with images from cameras and phones, eliminating the hassle of misaligned images.

(alexwlchan.net)

Development

Tesla's AI VP Milan Kovac Departs After a Decade of Leading FSD and Optimus

2025-06-07

Tesla's VP of AI and Optimus Engineering, Milan Kovac, announced his departure this week, marking another significant executive exit. Kovac, a key figure in the development of Tesla's FSD technology and Optimus robot, cited family reasons. His nearly decade-long tenure saw him navigate the transition from Autopilot 1.0 to the in-house FSD chip, HW 3.0, and lead engineering efforts across multiple vehicle platforms. While executive departures are common at Tesla, Kovac's departure is notable given his contributions and role as one of the Autopilot 'Three Musketeers'. Ashok Elluswamy will now oversee both FSD and Optimus. The article also details a past conflict with Elon Musk over an AI Day presentation, highlighting the intense pressure within Tesla's executive environment.

(gearmusk.com)

Tech

DIRKU: A Flow-Based Image Registration Library

2025-01-10

DIRKU: A Flow-Based Image Registration Library

DIRKU is a software library for flow-based image registration developed at the Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen. It supports various similarity measures (NMI, NCC, SSD), regularization methods, and collision detection, making it suitable for handling large deformations and diffeomorphisms. DIRKU supports 2D and 3D image registration and offers multiple optimization schemes, interpolation methods, and time integration methods. The library is easy to use, installable via Conda, and comes with comprehensive documentation and examples.

(github.com)

Development image registration medical imaging

Medusa Ransomware: Triple Extortion and Exploding Infections

2025-03-16

Medusa Ransomware: Triple Extortion and Exploding Infections

A joint advisory from the FBI, CISA, and MS-ISAC warns of the escalating threat of Medusa ransomware, a RaaS operation exploiting vulnerabilities like CVE-2024-1709 and CVE-2023-48788, and phishing campaigns. Medusa employs a double extortion tactic, now evolving into a 'triple extortion' scheme where attackers demand further payments after receiving the initial ransom. Victims span critical infrastructure sectors, including healthcare, education, and legal, with at least 300 infections in the first two months of 2025. The advisory recommends multi-factor authentication, prompt patching, and other security measures to mitigate the risk.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

Breaking Free from the Funk: A Simple Shoelace Trick

2025-01-09

Breaking Free from the Funk: A Simple Shoelace Trick

The author recounts their personal journey out of a period of low mood and proposes a surprisingly effective technique: try tying your shoelaces the opposite way. This seemingly insignificant act can disrupt ingrained thought patterns, offering a fresh perspective and helping to break free from negativity. The article uses a lighthearted and humorous tone to move from personal experience to practical advice, highlighting the importance of action, however small.

(lessheavy.substack.com)

Misc behavioral therapy

150,000-Year-Old Evidence of Humans in African Rainforests Rewrites History

2025-03-03

150,000-Year-Old Evidence of Humans in African Rainforests Rewrites History

A groundbreaking study published in Nature pushes back the timeline of human habitation in African rainforests to an astonishing 150,000 years ago. Researchers used luminescence and electron spin resonance dating techniques on sediments containing Middle Stone Age tools found in Côte d'Ivoire. This discovery predates previous evidence by 80,000 years, challenging the long-held belief that rainforests acted as barriers to human expansion. The findings support the theory of human evolution across diverse habitats and provide a new understanding of early human adaptation and migration.

(www.sheffield.ac.uk)

Tech Africa Rainforests

DEA's New Covert Surveillance Tech: Credit Card Cameras

2025-09-21

DEA's New Covert Surveillance Tech: Credit Card Cameras

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is employing increasingly sophisticated surveillance techniques. Newly revealed procurement data shows the agency purchased 57 audio-video recording devices disguised as credit cards from Swiss company Nagra. These devices, boasting 16GB of storage, are part of a larger trend of the DEA utilizing covert technology, having previously hidden cameras in everyday objects such as streetlights and toolboxes. This latest acquisition underscores the DEA's commitment to advanced surveillance capabilities in its law enforcement operations.

(www.independent.co.uk)

Tech Surveillance Technology Covert Cameras

Meta's Smart Glasses Demo Disaster: A Self-Inflicted DDoS and a Nasty Bug

2025-09-21

Meta's Smart Glasses Demo Disaster: A Self-Inflicted DDoS and a Nasty Bug

Meta's new smart glasses suffered multiple demo failures at Meta Connect. CTO Andrew Bosworth explained it wasn't Wi-Fi, but a resource management miscalculation that triggered all Ray-Ban Meta glasses to simultaneously start their AI, creating a self-inflicted DDoS attack on the dev server. A separate WhatsApp video call failure stemmed from a new 'race condition' bug causing the display to miss the incoming call notification. Despite the demo failures, Bosworth remains confident in the product.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech

Wasmer is Hiring: Rust Software Engineer to Build the Next Generation of Edge Computing

2025-01-10

Wasmer is Hiring: Rust Software Engineer to Build the Next Generation of Edge Computing

Wasmer, a Y Combinator startup building the next generation of cloud and edge computing platforms using WebAssembly, is seeking a skilled Rust engineer. You'll work on building infrastructure like WebAssembly containers, storage, networking, and orchestration, collaborating closely with the open-source community. Ideal candidates will be proficient in Rust or C/C++, have experience with WebAssembly, WASI, and Emscripten, and possess strong software engineering experience. This is a chance to work on groundbreaking technology and contribute to the open-source community.

(www.workatastartup.com)

Development Edge Computing

Dollar General's Expansion: Goliath's Rise and the Fight Back from Small Towns

2025-04-09

Dollar General's Expansion: Goliath's Rise and the Fight Back from Small Towns

Dollar General's rapid expansion, fueled by government subsidies and tax loopholes, has made it the largest retailer in the US. This growth, however, has severely impacted small, local businesses, creating an uneven playing field. Communities are pushing back; Prairieton, Indiana residents successfully blocked a new Dollar General, not opposing development itself, but rather the inefficient use of land. This highlights the complex balancing act between large retailer expansion, local community interests, and the role of local governments.

(www.strongtowns.org)

Startup Government Subsidies Local Communities

Labwc: A Lightweight Wayland Compositor Focused on Simplicity

2025-01-04

Labwc: A Lightweight Wayland Compositor Focused on Simplicity

Labwc is a lightweight wlroots-based Wayland window compositor inspired by openbox. It prioritizes simple, efficient window stacking and minimal window decorations. Unlike many compositors, it relies on clients to provide features like panels, screenshots, and wallpapers, maintaining its lightweight nature. Adhering to wlroots and sway's coding style, Labwc exclusively supports Wayland protocols, rejecting dbus, sway/i3-IPC, etc., to avoid protocol fragmentation and promote Wayland adoption.

(labwc.github.io)

Development Window Manager

Komoot's Fall: A Capitalist Trap for Community Platforms

2025-07-27

Komoot's Fall: A Capitalist Trap for Community Platforms

This article recounts the story of the popular route-planning platform Komoot after its sale to a private equity firm. Komoot's founders broke their promise, selling the company and leading to 80% of employees being laid off and millions of users suffering losses. The author argues that Komoot's experience is not an isolated incident but a manifestation of the capitalist value extraction mechanism, revealing the broken relationship between corporations and communities. The article calls for the creation of open-source, non-profit platforms to combat capitalist exploitation and protect digital common resources.

(bikepacking.com)

Startup community platforms

Code Is All You Need: The Limitations of Multi-Component Pipelines (MCPs)

2025-07-03

This article challenges the practicality of Multi-Component Pipelines (MCPs) for many tasks, arguing that their heavy reliance on inference makes them inefficient and difficult to scale. The author uses a personal example – converting reStructuredText to Markdown – to demonstrate a superior approach: using LLMs to generate code that performs the task, followed by LLM-based validation. This method reduces inference dependency, enhances reliability, and scales well, especially for repetitive tasks. While acknowledging MCP's strengths in niche scenarios, the author concludes that its inherent limitations hinder large-scale automation. The future, they suggest, lies in developing more effective code generation techniques coupled with LLM validation and explanation to improve usability and applicability.

(lucumr.pocoo.org)

Development

The Deno Empire Crumbles: A Postmortem

2025-05-01

The Deno Empire Crumbles: A Postmortem

Deno Deploy, touted as 'edge' hosting with 'massive global scale,' has seen its server count plummet from 35 regions in early 2024 to a mere 6 in February 2025. The author details their own negative experience with performance degradation, highlighting the stagnation of other Deno products like the Fresh framework and Deno KV. The article expresses serious concerns about Deno's future, blaming a lack of innovation and an over-reliance on chasing Node.js features.

(dbushell.com)

Development Server Count Decline

6502 Code Generator Outperforms GCC and LLVM

2025-02-16

A developer built a 6502 code generator that surprisingly outperforms GCC, LLVM, and other compilers. The speed advantage isn't from superior high-level optimizations, but rather innovative code generation techniques. The compiler leverages "illegal" instructions, computationally expensive instruction selection, and space-for-time optimizations. The core algorithm combines instruction selection with register allocation, cleverly using continuation-passing style. It works with a DAG and SSA-form intermediate representation, generating multiple assembly code combinations, pruning with dynamic programming and branch-and-bound, and finally solving a PBQP problem for optimal selection. While employing some "cheats," the compiler shows remarkable benchmark results, offering fresh perspectives on code generation.

(pubby.games)

Development

The Unexpected Beauty of Venn Diagrams: A Geometric Puzzle Beyond Math

2025-01-19

The Unexpected Beauty of Venn Diagrams: A Geometric Puzzle Beyond Math

Venn diagrams, simple graphical tools, have a history and application far beyond our imagination. They are not just visual aids in the classroom, but also raise a series of profound geometric problems. This article explores the history of Venn diagrams and their application in logic and set theory. Particularly striking is the challenge of drawing Venn diagrams with more than four sets, and the efforts mathematicians have made to find more elegant representations. This is not just about drawing diagrams, but also an exploration of the beauty of mathematics and human curiosity.

(www.scientificamerican.com)

Misc Venn diagrams

Running NetBSD on an Ancient i486SX: A Soft FPU Emulator is Born

2025-05-11

Running NetBSD on an Ancient i486SX: A Soft FPU Emulator is Born

A developer successfully emulated a missing floating-point unit (FPU) on an old i486SX laptop. After months of work, they successfully implemented a soft FPU emulator on NetBSD 10 and open-sourced the project. This project not only brings old 486SX machines back to life but also offers new possibilities for retrocomputing enthusiasts. It has now been successfully tested on the 86Box virtual machine.

(mezzantrop.wordpress.com)

Development

NOAA Shuts Down Billion-Dollar Weather Disaster Database

2025-05-09

NOAA Shuts Down Billion-Dollar Weather Disaster Database

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced it's retiring its well-known "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database, making it harder to track the cost of extreme weather events. This database, active since 1980, tracked the financial toll of disasters from hurricanes to hailstorms. Its discontinuation is seen as another blow to public access to information about how fossil fuel pollution is exacerbating extreme weather. While population growth and development contribute, climate change intensifies these events, increasing costs. The move follows staff reductions at NOAA leading to service cuts, and further budget cuts are proposed, jeopardizing future data collection and accessibility.

(www.cnn.com)

Tech

How Likely Is a Bitcoin Address Typo to Cause a Problem?

2025-08-29

Concerns exist about accidentally sending Bitcoin to the wrong address due to typos. This article uses checksum probabilities, the vast size of the address space, and edit distance calculations to demonstrate the extremely low likelihood of this happening. Even considering addresses that are a small edit distance apart, the probability of a typo leading to a collision with another valid address in the enormous address space is negligible. Therefore, address typos are not a major risk in using Bitcoin.

(www.johndcook.com)

Tech

Digital Propaganda: How Governments Weaponize Ads on Google and Facebook

2025-09-09

Digital Propaganda: How Governments Weaponize Ads on Google and Facebook

In late 2024, a disturbing discovery was made: a paid ad by the Israeli government, mimicking a UN website but linking to a page accusing UNRWA of supporting terrorists, topped Google search results for UNRWA. This highlights a troubling trend: digital advertising platforms have become battlegrounds for influence, with governments using paid ads to sway public opinion during wars and crises. The article examines how Google Ads and Facebook Ads are weaponized, focusing on Israel's extensive campaign during the 2023-2025 Gaza war, targeting UNRWA and other organizations. It explores the platforms' responses, policy gaps, and ethical dilemmas, including the lack of proactive fact-checking and inconsistent enforcement of rules against misinformation.

(medium.com)

Tech Digital Propaganda Advertising Platforms

The Secret to Faster, More Accurate Code: Mental Code Proofs

2025-07-16

This article unveils a technique for writing code faster and more accurately: performing "online" proofs. Instead of interrupting your coding flow, mentally prove your code's correctness as you write. The author details several strategies to aid in this process, including focusing on code monotonicity, utilizing pre- and post-conditions, maintaining invariants, and isolating the impact of changes. Inductive reasoning for recursive functions and data structures is also highlighted, along with advocating for "proof-affinity" as a code quality metric. Finally, the author suggests practicing mathematical proofs to sharpen your code-proving skills.

(the-nerve-blog.ghost.io)

Development code proof

Urban Dust Pollution: How Cities are Exacerbating Air Quality Issues in Utah

2025-04-13

Urban Dust Pollution: How Cities are Exacerbating Air Quality Issues in Utah

Airborne dust pollution is a growing concern in Utah and other Western states, worsened by the drying of the Great Salt Lake. New research reveals that urban dust mixes with naturally occurring dust from the Great Basin, contaminating watersheds and posing health and environmental risks. Analysis of 29 dust samples showed higher concentrations of zinc, calcium, molybdenum, cadmium, copper, lead, cobalt, and arsenic in urban dust, with arsenic and cobalt exceeding EPA regional screening levels. These contaminants are linked to mining, smelting, vehicle emissions, and heavy industry. The study highlights the impact of urbanization on natural dust and the urgent need to address air pollution.

(phys.org)

Tech Great Salt Lake urban dust

60th Birthday Reflections: 25 Principles for Adult Behavior from an Internet Pioneer

2025-04-26

On his 60th birthday, internet pioneer John Perry Barlow shared a list of 25 "Principles of Adult Behavior" he drafted 30 years ago. These principles, ranging from patience and responsibility to respect, tolerance, and self-reflection, aren't presented as a perfect standard but rather as goals he continually strives for. This post offers both a personal growth narrative and profound life lessons.

(www.mail-archive.com)

Misc internet pioneer

Bluefin LTS & GDX: The Reign of Achillobator Begins

2025-09-21

Bluefin LTS & GDX: The Reign of Achillobator Begins

After nine months, Bluefin LTS (Long Term Support) and Bluefin GDX (AI Workstation) are generally available. Bluefin LTS, built on CentOS Stream 10, offers a stable GNOME 48 desktop with long-term support and an optional Hardware Enablement branch (lts-hwe) for newer kernels. Bluefin GDX targets AI/ML professionals, integrating Nvidia drivers and CUDA, and collaborating with Red Hat on open-source AI/ML tools. Both boast improved installation and secure boot support, aiming for a stable, efficient desktop experience.

(docs.projectbluefin.io)

Development AI Workstation

Beyond Sorting: Deep Learning for Order-Independent Transparency

2025-05-22

Beyond Sorting: Deep Learning for Order-Independent Transparency

Traditional transparency rendering relies on depth sorting, which can lead to artifacts in complex scenes. This Eurographics 2025 paper explores Order-Independent Transparency (OIT), a technique that accurately renders transparent objects without depth sorting. It covers traditional OIT approaches (exact, approximate, and hybrid) and deep learning methods, analyzing their scope, performance, and accuracy for more realistic transparency in games, simulations, and film visual effects.

(www.tobias-franke.eu)

Development transparency rendering

Hawking's Black Hole Theorem Confirmed with Unprecedented Precision

2025-09-12

Hawking's Black Hole Theorem Confirmed with Unprecedented Precision

Scientists have used upgraded LIGO detectors to analyze the gravitational wave event GW250114, detected on January 14, 2025. This event, resulting from the merger of two black holes approximately 30 to 40 times the mass of our sun, produced the strongest gravitational wave signal ever observed. The observation confirms Hawking's 1971 black hole area theorem with 99.999% confidence, stating that the area of the event horizon after a merger is no smaller than the sum of the areas of the original black holes. The findings also confirm Kerr's equations, characterizing black holes solely by mass and spin. This breakthrough paves the way for further research into quantum gravity and provides deeper insights into the physics of black holes.

(www.newscientist.com)

Tech Hawking

Big Tech Funds Anti-AI Regulation Super-PAC

2025-08-26

Big Tech Funds Anti-AI Regulation Super-PAC

Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, are pouring over $100 million into a new super-PAC, "Leading the Future," to fight against stringent AI regulations in next year's midterm elections. The group will use campaign donations and digital ads to promote favorable AI policies and oppose candidates perceived as hindering the industry's growth. This initiative follows an earlier attempt to impose a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations, highlighting the industry's concern over a fragmented regulatory landscape that could stifle innovation and cede the AI race to China.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech Super-PAC

KickSmash32: Open-Source Amiga ROM Replacement Module

2025-04-12

KickSmash32: Open-Source Amiga ROM Replacement Module

KickSmash32 is an open-source Kickstart ROM replacement module for Amiga 3000 and 4000 systems. Supporting up to 8 independent flash banks, it allows ROM programming and switching via Amiga command-line utilities or a Linux host utility (USB-C). Optional host file services enable easy file transfers between the Amiga and host PC. Comprehensive documentation and build instructions are provided. Note that due to inconsistent ROM socket layouts across Amiga models, KickSmash32 is only compatible with Amiga 3000 and the original Amiga 4000.

(github.com)

Hardware ROM replacement

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