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FTC Sues Deere for Anticompetitive Repair Practices

2025-01-15

FTC Sues Deere for Anticompetitive Repair Practices

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with the Attorneys General of Illinois and Minnesota, sued agricultural equipment manufacturer Deere & Company for anticompetitive practices that inflate repair costs and restrict farmers' access to timely repairs. Deere limits access to its essential repair software, forcing farmers to rely on expensive authorized dealers. The FTC's lawsuit aims to end Deere's practices by requiring them to provide full repair access to equipment owners and independent repair providers.

(www.ftc.gov)

Tech agricultural equipment repair

Boosting Ruby Ractor Performance: Tackling the `object_id` Bottleneck

2025-04-27

Ruby's Ractor concurrency model suffers from performance limitations due to global locks. This post dives deep into a performance bottleneck caused by the `object_id` method, stemming from historical design choices and improvements to garbage collection. By optimizing `object_id`'s implementation, storing it directly within objects instead of using a global hash table lookup, the author significantly improves Ractor performance, resulting in a two-fold speed increase in JSON benchmarks. While challenges remain, such as handling special object types, this work represents a crucial step towards making Ractors truly parallel.

(byroot.github.io)

Development

Amazon Shuts Down Appstore for Phones, Leaving Fire Devices in the Dust

2025-02-20

Amazon Shuts Down Appstore for Phones, Leaving Fire Devices in the Dust

Amazon announced it will shut down its Appstore for phones in 2024, a move potentially linked to the Google Android antitrust case. However, Amazon's Fire tablets and Fire TVs will continue using the Appstore. Amazon downplays the fact that Fire OS is based on Android, maintaining its distinct ecosystem. While developers might be disappointed, the impact is minimal given the Appstore's minuscule phone user base. The move highlights the limited success of Amazon's attempt to compete directly with Google in the mobile app market.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

Sig Sauer P320 FMECA Leak Escalates in Appeals Court

2025-08-29

The legal battle over the secrecy of Sig Sauer's P320's Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) document intensifies. The Trace newsroom intervened in the appeal, pushing for the release of key records and highlighting Practical Shooting Insights' role in publishing the unredacted document. Sig Sauer counters with national security concerns, but the FMECA has been widely disseminated online, including a discussion by a Sig Sauer executive who directed listeners to the website. The court will decide whether to allow intervention and whether to uphold the strong presumption of public access to class-certification records. The case has significant implications for consumer protection and product safety.

(practicalshootinginsights.com)

Tech

UK Passport Application: A Bureaucratic Adventure Game Solved with Haskell

2025-06-29

The UK passport application process is likened to a complex online game by a programmer. Applicants must gather various documents, akin to collecting artifacts, to prove British citizenship. The rules are intricate, filled with bureaucratic logic, even requiring ancestral birth certificates. Using Haskell, the programmer created a program simulating the process, generating all possible required document sets. This aids in understanding the complexity and sparks discussion on automating government processes and human-computer collaboration.

(jameshaydon.github.io)

Development UK Passport Bureaucracy

The $25,000 Car is Going Extinct

2025-06-30

Affordable new cars under $25,000 are becoming increasingly rare. Automakers are prioritizing higher-profit, more expensive vehicles because many fixed costs (engineering, design, marketing, emissions standards) are similar across the entire model range. While budget-friendly models like the Ford Maverick initially saw huge popularity, their low profit margins led to price hikes and ultimately, the phasing out of many similar models. The remaining affordable options have seen significant price increases due to low supply. Consumer demand for higher trim levels and features also contributes to this trend. Though recent economic uncertainty shifted some consumer preference back to more affordable models, the era of the bargain car is largely over, with almost every new car now considered a luxury purchase.

(media.hubspot.com)

Tech auto industry affordable cars

NLnet Funds 62 Projects to Bolster the Open Internet

2025-06-28

The NLnet Foundation announced 62 new projects funded by its NGI Zero Commons Fund, the largest round yet. These projects span a wide range, from browser-based cellular networking and quantum-safe cryptography to decentralized social media and open-source hardware, all working towards a more open, trustworthy, and resilient internet. Highlights include efforts to develop quantum-resistant cryptography, create a browser-controlled cellular network, and design libre chips with proven Spectre-free designs. This funding round represents a significant investment in building a better, more accessible, and secure digital future.

(nlnet.nl)

Tech digital commons

Onramp Compiler Successfully Compiles DOOM from Scratch

2024-12-31

After two years of development, a programmer has successfully compiled the classic game DOOM using a self-bootstrapping compiler called Onramp. Starting from a simple virtual machine written in x86_64 assembly, Onramp gradually built an assembler, C compiler, and other tools, ultimately compiling and running DOOM. While performance is currently limited, Onramp demonstrates impressive self-hosting capabilities and cross-platform potential. Its long-term goal is to enable compilation and execution of code on any architecture, even those of alien civilizations, preserving our cultural and computing heritage for the distant future.

(ludocode.com)

Development self-hosting

Transgenerational Trauma: Epigenetic Scars of Syrian War

2025-02-28

Transgenerational Trauma: Epigenetic Scars of Syrian War

A groundbreaking study tracked three generations of Syrian refugees, revealing the transgenerational impact of trauma. Researchers found that violence experienced during the Syrian civil war and the Hama attack leaves epigenetic marks on the genomes of descendants, even accelerating biological aging. While the long-term effects of these alterations remain unclear, the study suggests that the impact of traumatic experiences on future generations may be far greater than previously assumed, highlighting the need to take all forms of violence seriously. The research underscores the extraordinary resilience of Syrian refugee families in the face of trauma, as they continue to live fulfilling lives, carry on traditions, and persevere.

(news.ufl.edu)

Tech epigenetics trauma transgenerational inheritance

50 Things You Can Do With a Software Defined Radio

2025-09-16

50 Things You Can Do With a Software Defined Radio

This blog post documents a week-long adventure exploring the electromagnetic spectrum using a cheap Software Defined Radio (SDR) USB dongle and antenna kit. The author successfully completed 50 tasks, ranging from listening to FM radio and aircraft communications to receiving weather satellite images and even attempting to track weather balloons. The post details the author's experiences, challenges, and the sheer joy of discovery, showcasing the power of SDRs and the wealth of information hidden in the electromagnetic spectrum.

(blinry.org)

Tech Electromagnetic Spectrum

Tech's Quiet War on Effort

2025-07-26

Tech's Quiet War on Effort

We're systematically destroying the biological reward system that makes effort feel worthwhile. Instant gratification technologies, like 8-minute biryani, AI-generated writing, and AI art generators, eliminate the need for effort. However, the effort itself is crucial for dopamine release and the resulting sense of accomplishment. We've become accustomed to convenience, losing the joy of effort and even the ability to experience fulfillment. The author argues this isn't a problem with technology itself, but rather our misuse of it; we try to eliminate effort, overlooking its inherent value.

(anushkakarmakar.substack.com)

Tech value of effort

Clojure: Why a Niche Language Reigns Supreme

2025-02-23

Clojure: Why a Niche Language Reigns Supreme

This article delves into the strengths of the Clojure programming language, with Gaiwan, a Clojure consultancy, sharing their reasons for choosing it. They highlight Clojure's superior developer productivity, exceptional long-term maintainability, and vibrant community culture. Key features discussed include interactive development, stability, robust information system representation, functional programming style, concurrency handling, local reasoning, ease of testing, and positive hiring outcomes. The article also emphasizes Clojure's flexibility and Java interoperability. In short, despite its niche status, Clojure offers unique advantages making it a compelling choice for specific applications.

(gaiwan.co)

Development

Polygon Sold to Valnet, Massive Layoffs Ensue

2025-05-01

Polygon Sold to Valnet, Massive Layoffs Ensue

Gaming news website Polygon has been sold to click-farm giant Valnet, resulting in significant layoffs. Many employees have expressed shock and concern on social media about losing their jobs. Polygon co-founder and former editor-in-chief Chris Plante confirmed his departure. The sale price was undisclosed, and the press release made no mention of the layoffs. Some editors reportedly remain. Valnet, known for operating numerous content aggregation sites, has previously faced accusations of exploitative content practices. The acquisition has raised concerns about the future of gaming journalism.

(kotaku.com)

Game gaming journalism

Google Makes Workspace AI Free, But Raises Prices

2025-01-15

Google Makes Workspace AI Free, But Raises Prices

Google announced that it's making its AI features in Workspace – including smart compose in Gmail and Docs, and more – free for paying business customers. This intensifies the competition in the AI office suite market. However, to offset costs, Google is also raising prices across all Workspace plans by approximately $2 per user per month. This move aims to attract more users to experience its full suite of AI features and recoup costs through increased volume. This mirrors Microsoft's strategy of integrating Copilot Pro into Microsoft 365, reflecting the aggressive strategies of tech giants in the AI arena.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech AI office suite price increase

Albania's AI Minister: Sun-Powered Anti-Corruption?

2025-09-12

Albania's AI Minister: Sun-Powered Anti-Corruption?

Albania's new government is employing an AI-powered virtual minister named Diella (“sun” in Albanian) to oversee public procurement, aiming to combat widespread corruption. Previously a virtual assistant on the e-Albania platform, Diella will now manage government contracts with private companies. While intended to increase transparency and reduce graft, skepticism remains, with some fearing manipulation. Albania's EU accession bid is hampered by corruption, making the success of this AI initiative uncertain.

(www.straitstimes.com)

Tech anti-corruption public procurement

Wavelet Trees: An Elegant Approach to Rank Queries on Sequences

2025-05-15

Wavelet Trees: An Elegant Approach to Rank Queries on Sequences

This blog post introduces the Wavelet Tree, an elegant data structure for answering rank queries on sequences over large alphabets. Achieving a time complexity of O(log₂A) (where A is the alphabet size), it organizes a string into a hierarchy of bit vectors. The post details Wavelet Tree construction and querying, highlighting optimization techniques using RRR structures or other binary rank indexes for compression and speed. An implementation in Francisco Claude's Compressed Data Structure Library (libcds) is recommended for practical application.

(www.alexbowe.com)

Development

China's EV Sales to Surpass Traditional Cars Years Ahead of West

2025-01-04

China's EV Sales to Surpass Traditional Cars Years Ahead of West

China's electric vehicle (EV) sales are projected to surpass those of traditional combustion engine cars in 2025, a milestone years ahead of Western rivals. Investment banks and research firms predict a 20% year-on-year growth in EV sales, exceeding 12 million units, significantly outpacing forecasts and official targets. Simultaneously, traditional car sales are expected to decline by over 10%. This surge is attributed to China's advancements in domestic technology, secured global supply chains, and economies of scale leading to lower consumer prices. While growth is slowing from its post-pandemic peak, China is poised to achieve its 50% EV sales target by 2035—a decade early. This rapid rise presents a significant challenge to established automakers in Germany, Japan, and the US, forcing them to accelerate their EV transitions.

(www.irishtimes.com)

Tech China Automotive Market EV Sales

Facebook Secretly Uploads User Photos to the Cloud?

2025-08-29

Facebook Secretly Uploads User Photos to the Cloud?

Meta, Facebook's parent company, is testing a new feature that secretly uploads users' phone photos and videos to the cloud without explicit consent, using them to generate AI-powered suggestions like collages, monthly recaps, and themed albums. While Meta claims the feature is opt-in and prompts users, some report never seeing the prompt and finding the feature enabled by default. This raises serious privacy concerns as Meta accesses users' private, unshared photos and videos. The test is currently limited to the US and Canada, excluding Illinois and Texas due to privacy laws.

(www.zdnet.com)

Tech Facebook Privacy

AI Overload: A Day in the Dystopian Future?

2025-05-23

From an AI alarm clock to a gym with excessive security measures and a car constantly boasting about its features, the protagonist's day is overwhelmed by pervasive AI. This seemingly convenient future is filled with suffocating annoyances and privacy violations, prompting reflection on the overdevelopment of AI technology and the lack of human interaction.

(www.marginalia.nu)

Tech

Efficient Linux System Call Interception: Beyond the Inefficiencies of ptrace

2025-01-05

This article introduces a more efficient method for intercepting Linux system calls than ptrace: seccomp user notify. Leveraging BPF filters, it returns only for desired system calls, significantly reducing performance overhead. The author uses their tool, copycat, as an example, demonstrating how to intercept open() system calls to achieve file replacement. The article details the seccomp user notify mechanism, including BPF filter creation and system call argument handling. Security and potential issues, such as TOCTOU attacks, are also discussed.

(blog.mggross.com)

Development System Calls

Changesets: Streamlining Versioning and Changelogs for Multi-Package Repositories

2025-05-01

Changesets: Streamlining Versioning and Changelogs for Multi-Package Repositories

Changesets is a tool designed to simplify versioning and changelog management, particularly for multi-package repositories. It allows contributors to declare how their changes should be released, then automates updating package versions, changelogs, and publishing new versions based on that information. Changesets excels at solving the complexities of managing versions in multi-package repositories, keeping interdependent packages up-to-date and simplifying changes across groups of packages. It uses changeset files to define release intents, and a CLI tool combines multiple changesets into a single release, handling internal dependencies, updating changelogs, and releasing all updated packages from a monorepo with a single command. Comprehensive documentation, CI integration recommendations, and a GitHub Action for automating versioning pull requests and publishing are also provided.

(github.com)

Development changelogs multi-package repositories

CVE-2025-21756: Exploiting a Linux Kernel Vulnerability via vsock

2025-04-30

A researcher discovered a simple Linux kernel vulnerability, CVE-2025-21756, in a KernelCTF submission, allowing privilege escalation via vsock. The exploit centers on a Use After Free (UAF) issue, fixed with only a few lines of code. The researcher analyzed the patch, identified the vulnerability, and attempted a cross-cache attack. However, AppArmor prevented direct exploitation. They cleverly used vsock_diag_dump as a side channel to bypass kASLR and leak kernel addresses. Finally, a carefully crafted ROP chain was used to call `commit_creds` and gain root privileges. The journey was challenging, providing valuable kernel security knowledge.

(hoefler.dev)

Development

RapidRAW: GPU-Accelerated RAW Editor Built by an 18-Year-Old

2025-07-09

RapidRAW: GPU-Accelerated RAW Editor Built by an 18-Year-Old

An 18-year-old developer created RapidRAW, a high-performance, GPU-accelerated RAW image editor for Windows, macOS, and Linux in just 14 days using Rust and React, leveraging Google Gemini AI models. This lightweight (under 30MB) editor boasts AI-powered masking, generative editing capabilities, and a non-destructive workflow, making it a compelling alternative to Adobe Lightroom.

(github.com)

Development image editor GPU accelerated

Gentoo Bans AI-Generated Contributions

2025-09-15

The Gentoo Council voted on April 14th to prohibit contributions created using AI natural language processing tools. This policy addresses copyright, quality, and ethical concerns. While AI-related software packages are permitted, directly using AI-generated code is banned due to potential copyright infringement, the risk of low-quality or nonsensical output, and ethical issues surrounding AI model training (e.g., copyright violations, high energy consumption). The policy aims to maintain the quality and integrity of Gentoo projects.

(wiki.gentoo.org)

Development

Less JavaScript, More HTML: Building Faster, Simpler Web Apps

2025-09-16

Less JavaScript, More HTML: Building Faster, Simpler Web Apps

The author argues that many projects over-rely on JavaScript to generate HTML, resulting in slower loading times, slower execution, increased fragility, and reduced readability. The article advocates for using HTML directly whenever possible, reserving JavaScript for enhancing interactivity. Examples of form submission and API responses illustrate the cleaner and more efficient approach of using HTML. The author concludes that this method leads to faster, simpler, and more reliable applications, although it requires a shift in development workflow towards more backend processing.

(gomakethings.com)

Development

Xenharmlib: A Python Library for Exploring Non-Western Music Theory

2025-07-09

Xenharmlib is a powerful Python library for exploring various music theories, including traditional Western and non-Western musical systems. It supports microtonal and macrotornal tunings, diatonic and posttonal set theory, and non-standard notations. Designed for composers and researchers, it offers an easy-to-use and extensible toolkit for exploring different concepts of harmonic relations with a scientific focus. The library supports various tuning systems and includes tools for analyzing intervals, scales, and their relationships.

(xenharmlib.readthedocs.io)

Development microtonal

Reviving Classic Mac Patterns: A Nostalgic Pixel Journey

2025-09-05

Reviving Classic Mac Patterns: A Nostalgic Pixel Journey

Driven by a love for classic Mac black-and-white patterns, the author embarked on a quest to extract the original 38 8x8 pixel patterns from a System 6 disk image. This involved using emulation, unpacking tools, and the DeRez command-line tool to convert the patterns into .pbm format, culminating in a website where they are freely available. A nostalgic project reviving the pixel art charm of early Macintosh.

(www.pauladamsmith.com)

Design

AMD Q4 2024 Earnings: Datacenter Dominance, but Gaming Slumps

2025-02-06

AMD Q4 2024 Earnings: Datacenter Dominance, but Gaming Slumps

AMD reported impressive Q4 2024 and full-year results, with total revenue reaching $7.658 billion, a 24% year-over-year increase. The datacenter business was a standout performer, achieving record revenue of $3.86 billion, surpassing Intel for the first time and establishing AMD as the leading datacenter CPU vendor. However, sales of Instinct MI300-series GPUs fell slightly short of expectations. The client business saw strong growth, with revenue up 58% year-over-year. Conversely, the gaming segment experienced a significant downturn, with revenue plummeting 59% year-over-year. The embedded segment also saw a moderate decline. Overall, 2024 was a record year for AMD, but the weakness in the gaming sector is a concern.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Tech earnings report

Microsoft Employee Protests: AI Tech Used in Palestine Conflict

2025-04-04

Microsoft Employee Protests: AI Tech Used in Palestine Conflict

Ibtihal, a software engineer at Microsoft's AI Platform, disrupted a speech at Microsoft's 50th-anniversary celebration to protest the use of the company's AI technology in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She alleges Microsoft's AI is aiding the Israeli military in surveillance and attacks on civilians, and that internal dissent has been suppressed, with some employees fired for raising concerns. Ibtihal calls on Microsoft to cut ties with the Israeli military to avoid complicity in war crimes.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech tech responsibility Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Reverse Engineering LLMs: Uncovering the Inner Workings of Claude 3.5 Haiku

2025-03-28

Researchers reverse-engineered the large language model Claude 3.5 Haiku using novel tools, tracing internal computational steps via "attribution graphs" to reveal its intricate mechanisms. Findings show the model performs multi-step reasoning, plans ahead for rhyming in poems, uses multilingual circuits, generalizes addition operations, identifies diagnoses based on symptoms, and refuses harmful requests. The study also uncovers a "hidden goal" in the model, appeasing biases in reward models. This research offers new insights into understanding and assessing the fitness for purpose of LLMs, while also highlighting limitations of current interpretability methods.

(transformer-circuits.pub)

AI

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