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Backblaze: Accounting Fraud, Insider Trading, and the Downfall of a Cloud Storage Startup

2025-04-26

Backblaze, a $250 million cloud storage and backup solution provider, has been plagued by losses and a plummeting stock price (down 71% since its 2021 IPO). Two former senior employees have filed lawsuits alleging accounting fraud, inflated projections, and whistleblower retaliation. The suits claim founders breached fiduciary duty by aggressively selling shares after the IPO lock-up, driving the stock down. Further allegations include manipulating financial statements to inflate cash flow forecasts and hide an internal investigation. Executives allegedly continued selling shares despite knowing the financial information was inaccurate. Backblaze's new CFO also comes from a poorly performing company. Competitor Wasabi is rapidly gaining market share. This report concludes that Backblaze is a failed growth business with serious financial and product competitiveness issues.

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(www.morpheus-research.com)
Tech accounting fraud

Rust's Type Safety: A Deep Dive via Stock Order Example

2025-05-06
Rust's Type Safety: A Deep Dive via Stock Order Example

This article compares Rust and C++'s handling of function parameters to illustrate the importance of type safety. Using a simulated stock order function as an example, it shows C++'s struggles in preventing parameter type confusion, highlighting how even with multiple improvements, errors remain possible. Rust, however, leverages its powerful type system and compile-time checks to effortlessly solve these issues. Even when converting user-supplied strings to numerical types, Rust effectively prevents errors, avoiding crashes and incorrect results. The article emphasizes Rust's advantages in ensuring code safety and reliability, showcasing features beyond just memory safety.

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(www.collabora.com)
Development Type Safety

ASKAP Uncovers 15 Giant Radio Galaxies

2025-04-26
ASKAP Uncovers 15 Giant Radio Galaxies

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope has discovered 15 new giant radio galaxies, each spanning over 3 million light-years. These rare galaxies, typically found in low-density environments, feature jets and lobes of synchrotron-emitting plasma. ASKAP's high sensitivity and wide field of view were crucial in this discovery, providing valuable data for studying the formation and evolution of radio galaxies. The largest galaxy, ASKAP J0107–2347, is a double-double radio galaxy with two sets of double lobes; its newly formed inner lobes already stretch about 2 million light-years.

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(phys.org)
Tech radio galaxies

Kernel Build Breakage Caused by GCC 15's New Warning

2025-04-25

Linus Torvalds, just before releasing kernel 6.15-rc3, hastily patched the kernel to address warnings from GCC 15's new -Wunterminated-string-initialization option, which was included in Fedora 42. This last-minute fix broke builds on older GCC versions, sparking a debate with kernel developer Kees Cook. The incident highlights the risks of using unreleased compiler versions and the importance of better communication and coordination between developers. Torvalds ultimately reverted the patch, temporarily disabling the warning.

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(lwn.net)
Development GCC Compiler

Trump Admin. Kills $18M Food Waste Project, Sparking Outrage

2025-05-11
Trump Admin. Kills $18M Food Waste Project, Sparking Outrage

An ambitious community-based project in Rhode Island, designed to reduce food waste and greenhouse gas emissions through community composting and job creation, has been abruptly terminated by the Trump administration. The $18 million grant, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, was canceled because the project was deemed 'no longer consistent' with the EPA's priorities. Environmental advocates are furious, calling the move illegal and highlighting its disproportionate impact on vulnerable communities. The project aimed to divert over 11,000 tons of food waste annually, preventing over 15,000 metric tons of emissions.

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(grist.org)
Tech food waste environmental justice government funding grant termination

Bats Learn to Discriminate Between Tasty and Toxic Frogs Through Experience

2025-05-03
Bats Learn to Discriminate Between Tasty and Toxic Frogs Through Experience

Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) have discovered that fringe-lipped bats, known for eavesdropping on frog and toad mating calls to locate prey, learn to distinguish between palatable and unpalatable amphibians through experience. Adult bats effectively differentiate between edible and toxic frogs, a skill lacking in juveniles. Young bats need time and experience to hone this crucial ability. This study provides the first evidence that eavesdropping predators refine their hunting cues throughout development, highlighting the critical role of early life experiences in shaping predatory behaviors in the wild.

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(phys.org)
Tech bats prey identification

Microservices: Not a Silver Bullet for Startups

2025-05-08
Microservices: Not a Silver Bullet for Startups

This article explores the pitfalls of prematurely adopting microservices in startups. The author argues that premature microservices lead to increased developer cost, deployment complexity, fragile local development environments, duplicated CI/CD pipelines, and increased observability overhead, ultimately slowing down team velocity and hindering product iteration. The author recommends that startups prioritize monolithic architecture, only considering microservices when encountering real scaling bottlenecks. Microservices are only justified in specific scenarios such as workload isolation, divergent scalability needs, or different runtime requirements.

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(nexo.sh)
Development monolithic architecture

Moby-Dick in Sea Monsters Unmasked:

2025-04-24
Moby-Dick in Sea Monsters Unmasked:

In 'Sea Monsters Unmasked,' author Lee approaches sailors' accounts of sea monsters with skepticism, attributing them to imagination and superstition. However, the book quotes Herman Melville's 'The Whale' (the UK title of Moby-Dick) to illustrate a whale's spout, praising Melville's accuracy despite not being a naturalist, due to his experience as a whaler. This aligns with contemporary British critics' positive reception of the novel, contrasting with the (infamous) American response.

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(publicdomainreview.org)
Misc Herman Melville

Client-Side Bot Detection: A JavaScript Crash Course (That You Shouldn't Use)

2025-05-10
Client-Side Bot Detection: A JavaScript Crash Course (That You Shouldn't Use)

A recently discovered Chromium bug allows a short JavaScript snippet to crash headless browsers like Puppeteer and Playwright. While seemingly ideal for client-side bot detection, this article dissects the vulnerability, explores its weaponization potential, and ultimately argues against production use. Although effective in crashing bots, the method negatively impacts user experience, creates side effects, and is easily circumvented. The authors advocate for quiet, performant, and resilient bot detection strategies.

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(blog.castle.io)
Development browser vulnerability

Stunning Note-Taking App: UI Design and Functionality Perfected

2025-05-09
Stunning Note-Taking App: UI Design and Functionality Perfected

This note-taking app boasts not only strong encryption but also a stunning user interface: intuitive, responsive, and customizable. Features like a folder tree in the left pane, a rich text editor (truly rich and classic), and an automatically generated clickable table of contents (showable/hidable via a hamburger menu, perfect for mobile) showcase its elegant design. A simple calendar, colorful tags, and Monday-starting weeks further enhance the experience. Support for other file types looks even more promising!

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(cryptpad.org)
Design

Embrace the Patina: Why Imperfect Retro Games Are More Valuable Than You Think

2025-05-07
Embrace the Patina: Why Imperfect Retro Games Are More Valuable Than You Think

Inspired by the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, this article tackles the perfectionism often found in retro gaming collections. The author argues that the joy of gaming shouldn't be stifled by a pursuit of pristine condition. Minor imperfections, like worn labels or scribbled-on manuals, reflect a game's history of being loved and played, adding to their sentimental value. The article encourages gamers to relax, embrace the joy of collecting, and let go of anxieties about market value and flawless condition.

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(kimimithegameeatingshemonster.com)
Game collecting imperfection

RetrOS-32: A 32-bit Hobby Operating System

2025-04-26
RetrOS-32: A 32-bit Hobby Operating System

RetrOS-32 is a 32-bit operating system written in C and Assembly, featuring graphics, multitasking, and networking. It includes user creation, a filesystem, and basic applications like a terminal, calculator, and simple games. The project supports various hardware platforms and offers Docker images for cross-platform compilation. While still under development, it boasts impressive functionality and is a noteworthy open-source project.

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(github.com)
Development

AI Model Explosion: 2024-2025's Race to the Top

2025-04-30

The years 2024 and 2025 witnessed an unprecedented boom in AI model development. From Stable Diffusion 3 to GPT-4o, from Gemini to Claude 3, tech giants and startups alike unleashed a flurry of new models, sparking intense competition across image generation, video generation, text generation, and multimodality. The rise of open-source models further fueled the rapid advancement and accessibility of AI technology. This 'model melee' continues to evolve, with ever-increasing parameter counts and capabilities, ultimately shaping the future landscape of AI.

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(nhlocal.github.io)
AI

Human Gene Segment Boosts Mouse Brain Size by 6.5%

2025-05-18
Human Gene Segment Boosts Mouse Brain Size by 6.5%

A study published in Nature reveals that inserting a human-specific genetic segment into mice increases their brain size by 6.5%. This segment, by boosting the production of neural cells, expands the outer layer of the mouse brain. This finding could partially explain why human brains are significantly larger than those of our primate relatives. Researchers focused on a human accelerated region (HAR) called HARE5, finding it enhances the expression of the Fzd8 gene, promoting neural cell development and growth. This research provides new insights into human brain evolution.

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(www.nature.com)
Tech Genetic Engineering Brain Development Human Evolution

Seasoned Developer Seeking New Opportunities: Job Hunting & Consulting

2025-04-27
Seasoned Developer Seeking New Opportunities: Job Hunting & Consulting

After four years at Oracle, the author finds himself job hunting and exploring new avenues. He's a seasoned developer proficient in Ruby/JavaScript, product documentation, and developer relations, actively seeking employment while offering consulting services, particularly in Mac/Unix automation. He plans to relaunch blog sponsorships, leveraging his established readership and strong Google ranking to find a suitable role or consulting project.

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(brettterpstra.com)
Development consulting

40-Year-Old Conjecture on Hash Tables Shattered

2025-03-16
40-Year-Old Conjecture on Hash Tables Shattered

For four decades, computer scientists have accepted Andrew Yao's 1985 conjecture on the efficiency of hash table lookups. However, Krapivin and his team have developed a novel hash table that dramatically outperforms Yao's worst-case bound. Their new algorithm achieves a far faster query and insertion time, and surprisingly, the average query time is a constant, irrespective of the table's fullness. This groundbreaking result not only refutes a long-held belief but also opens new avenues for hash table optimization.

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(www.wired.com)
Development

Meta's AI Copyright Battle: Did Using Pirated Books to Train AI Cross the Line?

2025-05-05
Meta's AI Copyright Battle: Did Using Pirated Books to Train AI Cross the Line?

Meta faces a copyright lawsuit from authors including Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates over its AI tools. The judge is questioning whether Meta illegally used their books, obtained through 'shadow libraries,' to train its AI and whether this harms the authors' sales. Meta claims 'fair use,' but the judge suggests that significantly impacting or destroying the market for their work might invalidate this defense. This case will set a precedent for future AI copyright cases, hinging on proving actual harm to the authors' commercial prospects.

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(www.wired.com)
Tech

When College Might Not Be Worth It: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

2025-04-16
When College Might Not Be Worth It: A Cost-Benefit Analysis

A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reveals that while a college degree typically yields a healthy 12-13% return on investment, this isn't true for everyone. Factors such as high tuition costs, extended graduation timelines, and major choice significantly impact the return. The study analyzes various scenarios, including high living expenses, lack of financial aid, and extended schooling, all of which reduce the return. Furthermore, at least a quarter of graduates don't see sufficient economic benefits from college, and major choice heavily influences income, with STEM fields generally outperforming humanities.

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(libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org)
Misc college education major choice

Revolutionizing Bacterial Diagnosis: Identifying Pathogens in Minutes with Mass Spectrometry

2025-05-08
Revolutionizing Bacterial Diagnosis: Identifying Pathogens in Minutes with Mass Spectrometry

Traditional bacterial disease diagnosis involves days of tedious pathogen isolation and culturing. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich and Imperial College London have developed a groundbreaking method using mass spectrometry to identify bacteria in mere minutes. By detecting bacterial metabolic products instead of the bacteria themselves, the new technique significantly reduces diagnostic time. A database currently containing 232 medically important bacterial species and their metabolites will be expanded to include over 1400 known pathogens. This technology promises to revolutionize personalized medicine, enabling rapid and precise treatment.

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(phys.org)
Tech mass spectrometry bacterial infection rapid diagnosis

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaboration

2025-05-01
arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaboration

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners who adhere to them. Got an idea for a project that adds value to the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

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(arxiv.org)
Development

Stunning WebGL Water Simulation: Ray Tracing and Heightfield

2025-05-10

Evan Wallace's WebGL water simulation demo is breathtaking. It uses ray tracing for realistic reflections and refractions, combined with analytic ambient occlusion and heightfield water simulation, creating a lifelike, shimmering water surface. Users can interactively create ripples, rotate the camera, and even control lighting and gravity. This demo requires a powerful graphics card and up-to-date drivers, but the visual results are stunning, showcasing the capabilities of WebGL.

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(madebyevan.com)
Development Water Simulation

Framework-Free Web Development: A Guide to Vanilla JS

2025-05-11

This site provides a comprehensive guide to building websites and web applications using only an editor, a browser, and web standards—no build tools or frameworks required. It dives into using Web Components as fundamental building blocks, leveraging modern CSS capabilities, and creating web projects and single-page applications without build tools, frameworks, or server-side logic. Targeted at developers already familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, this tutorial champions a simpler, more maintainable approach to web development, addressing the complexity and maintenance overhead often associated with modern frameworks.

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(plainvanillaweb.com)
Development vanilla JS modern CSS

Delta Air Lines Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over CrowdStrike Software Outage

2025-05-08
Delta Air Lines Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over CrowdStrike Software Outage

A 2024 CrowdStrike software failure caused widespread flight cancellations and delays for Delta Air Lines, resulting in significant passenger losses. Despite Delta claiming reliance on Microsoft software and rejecting assistance from both CrowdStrike and Microsoft, a judge allowed a class-action lawsuit to proceed on claims of breach of contract (failure to refund) and violation of the Montreal Convention. Passengers allege Delta failed to adequately disclose its refund policy and attempted to waive legal liability through partial reimbursements. This ruling marks a significant step forward for passengers seeking airline accountability.

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(www.theregister.com)
Tech software failure

Rust Memory Management: Advanced Techniques

2025-05-06
Rust Memory Management: Advanced Techniques

This is the fifth post in a series on Rust memory management, delving into advanced techniques for handling complex memory operations. Starting with a simple iterator example, the post explains the intricacies of Rust's ownership and borrowing system, clarifying why `for y in x` moves ownership of `x` and how using a reference `&x` avoids this. The impact of method calls on memory management is then analyzed, detailing how multiple method calls can lead to borrow checker errors and presenting solutions: drop and re-borrow, store a handle, make a copy, and restructure the code. The post concludes with a brief introduction to Rust lifetimes and non-lexical lifetimes, showing how lifetime annotations prevent dangling references and how Rust uses similar mechanisms to ensure both memory and thread safety.

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(educatedguesswork.org)
Development Borrow Checker

The UK's National AI Institute: A Case Study in University-Led Failure

2025-03-27
The UK's National AI Institute: A Case Study in University-Led Failure

The Alan Turing Institute (ATI), intended to be the UK's leading AI institution, is in crisis due to mismanagement, strategic blunders, and conflicts of interest among its university partners. The article details the ATI's origins and how it became a university-dominated, profit-driven consultancy rather than a true innovation hub. The ATI neglected cutting-edge research like deep learning, focusing excessively on ethics and responsibility, ultimately missing the generative AI boom. This reflects common issues in UK tech policy: unclear goals, over-reliance on universities, and a reluctance to abandon failing projects. The defense and security arm, however, stands as a successful exception due to its industry and intelligence agency ties.

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(www.chalmermagne.com)
AI AI Institute UK Tech Policy University Domination

Don't Force Math: A Dad's Approach to Nurturing Mathematical Curiosity

2025-04-19

A father shares his method of fostering his son's love for math without forcing it. He believes math should be an enjoyable exploration, not a chore. Through games, storytelling, and everyday examples, he helped his son naturally fall in love with math, resulting in an above-average understanding. The article emphasizes the importance of nurturing a child's intrinsic motivation to learn rather than imposing subjects.

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(blog.avocados.ovh)
Misc cultivating interest

Amazon's Vulcan Robot: A New Breakthrough in Warehouse Automation

2025-05-09
Amazon's Vulcan Robot: A New Breakthrough in Warehouse Automation

Amazon unveiled its new robotic system, Vulcan, at an event in Dortmund, Germany. Billed as having a “genuine sense of touch,” Vulcan is designed to revolutionize how robots interact with the physical world, initially focusing on Amazon's warehouses. In stowing, Vulcan now outpaces the average human worker, though expert humans remain faster and more efficient at packing items densely. Vulcan's strength lies in its advanced planning capabilities; it considers multiple items and storage spaces simultaneously, optimizing storage with impressive speed. After over a year of operation in warehouses in Germany and Washington state, Vulcan has successfully stowed hundreds of thousands of items.

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(spectrum.ieee.org)
Tech

Pandoc: A Surprisingly Effective LaTeX to MathML Converter

2025-05-03
Pandoc: A Surprisingly Effective LaTeX to MathML Converter

The author explores various methods for converting LaTeX equations to MathML, ultimately finding Pandoc to be the most efficient. Pandoc effortlessly handles both single-line and multi-line equations, including complex matrices and piecewise functions. While a minor bug was discovered in Pandoc's handling of equations involving limits and summations, its overall performance is excellent. A Python script is provided to clean up Pandoc's output MathML for improved efficiency.

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(leancrew.com)
Development

UK Creative Industry Fights Back Against AI Copyright Loopholes

2025-05-12
UK Creative Industry Fights Back Against AI Copyright Loopholes

Over 400 leading UK media and arts professionals have penned a letter to the Prime Minister opposing an amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill. This amendment would allow AI models to use copyrighted works, causing concerns about widespread copyright infringement. While an opt-out is proposed, the group, including Paul McCartney, Elton John, Coldplay, and numerous media organizations, argues it's insufficient. They demand transparency, forcing AI companies to disclose copyrighted works used in training, protecting creators and fostering a vibrant UK creative industry. The letter highlights the economic impact and the need to prevent years of potential copyright theft.

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(www.theregister.com)
Tech Data Bill UK Creative Industries
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