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dlclose Failure: A Weird Interplay Between Rust and C++ Libraries

2025-08-30

This post recounts a perplexing debugging story: when using `dlclose` to unload a dynamic library, libA was successfully unloaded, but its dependency, libB, unexpectedly remained in memory. Investigation revealed the root cause was thread local storage (TLS) destructors registered in libB. Because the threads didn't exit, these destructors weren't executed, preventing libB from unloading. Enabling logging resolved the issue because the logging library also used TLS, preventing libA from unloading and thus maintaining consistent shared state between libA and libB. This case highlights the importance of understanding `dlclose` behavior and the impact of TLS destructors, recommending the use of the `LD_DEBUG` environment variable for debugging dynamic link libraries.

(kishoreganesh.com)

Development dynamic linking

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

Analyzing the Entire Hacker News Dataset with DuckDB

2025-04-30

Analyzing the Entire Hacker News Dataset with DuckDB

The author downloaded the complete Hacker News dataset—a 20GB JSON file containing everything ever posted on the site—and analyzed it using the DuckDB database. The post details the download process and uses SQL queries to calculate 12-week moving averages of the frequency of mentions for specific programming languages (Python, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, Rust). The author praises DuckDB's ease of use and speed, humorously suggesting future possibilities like training LLMs on the dataset.

(www.jasonthorsness.com)

Development

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.

(libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org)

Misc college education major choice

Mistral's New OCR Model Underwhelms; Google Gemini 2.0 Takes the Lead

2025-03-11

Mistral's New OCR Model Underwhelms; Google Gemini 2.0 Takes the Lead

Recent tests reveal that Mistral's newly released OCR-specific model underperforms its promotional claims. Developers Willis and Doria highlight issues with handling complex layouts and handwriting, including repeated city names, numerical errors, and hallucinations. In contrast, Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Pro Experimental excels, processing complex PDFs that stump Mistral, including those with handwritten content. Its large context window is a key advantage. While promising, LLM-powered OCR suffers from issues like fabricating information, misinterpreting instructions, and general data misinterpretation.

(arstechnica.com)

AI

DataFuel API: Turn Websites into LLM-Ready Data

2024-12-13

DataFuel API: Turn Websites into LLM-Ready Data

DataFuel is a powerful API that transforms websites and knowledge bases into LLM-ready data with a single query. It effortlessly scrapes entire websites, delivering clean, markdown-structured data perfect for RAG systems and AI model training. No complex scraping code is needed. DataFuel offers multiple output formats, including GPT-4 powered extraction for highly accurate results, and a free tier to get started. Trusted by industry leaders, DataFuel simplifies the data preparation process for building powerful AI applications.

(www.datafuel.dev)

3

AI web scraping

Game-Changing TCA Printing: Robust, Conformal Circuits on Any Surface

2025-02-16

Game-Changing TCA Printing: Robust, Conformal Circuits on Any Surface

A groundbreaking printing technique called TCA creates incredibly robust and high-resolution circuits on virtually any 3D surface, from curved glass to even chili peppers and eggshells! By embedding conductive materials within an adhesive, TCA creates a deeply interlocked interface, dramatically improving durability against scratching, high temperatures, and bending—even withstanding liquid nitrogen. This technology promises to revolutionize flexible electronics, sensors, and energy storage, opening doors for wearables, smart devices, and extreme environments.

(www.nature.com)

Hardware TCA printing flexible circuits

Civilization VII Founders Edition: Conquer the Ages!

2025-02-11

Civilization VII Founders Edition: Conquer the Ages!

Sid Meier's Civilization VII Founders Edition launches with early access on February 6th, 2025! It includes the base game, early access (up to 5 days early), the Tecumseh and Shawnee Pack, the Crossroads of the World Collection, and the Right to Rule Collection (6 DLCs total, releasing by September 2025). Enjoy additional leaders, civilizations, wonders, and cosmetic options. Experience a revamped empire-building journey across distinct ages with deeper strategic gameplay and cross-platform multiplayer.

(civilization.2k.com)

Game

NYT Shuts Down Its Tor Onion Service

2025-03-14

NYT Shuts Down Its Tor Onion Service

The New York Times has announced the shutdown of its Tor onion service, launched in 2017 to bypass censorship and surveillance, providing a secure way for readers to access its journalism. After years of experimentation, the NYT is applying lessons learned to improve its main website and products, enhancing overall security and accessibility. Readers can still access NYT journalism through the main website, newsletters, podcasts, and other channels.

(open.nytimes.com)

Tech

Local LLMs vs. Offline Wikipedia: A Size Comparison

2025-07-20

An article in MIT Technology Review sparked a discussion about using offline LLMs in an apocalyptic scenario. This prompted the author to compare the sizes of local LLMs and offline Wikipedia downloads. The results showed that smaller local LLMs (like Llama 3.2 3B) are roughly comparable in size to a selection of 50,000 Wikipedia articles, while the full Wikipedia is much larger than even the largest LLMs. Although their purposes differ, this comparison reveals an interesting contrast in storage space between local LLMs and offline knowledge bases.

(evanhahn.com)

AI

Michael Larabel: 20 Years of Linux Hardware Benchmarking

2025-06-26

Michael Larabel, founder and principal author of Phoronix.com, has been enriching the Linux hardware experience since 2004. He's written over 20,000 articles covering Linux hardware support, performance, graphics drivers, and more. He's also the lead developer behind the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org – automated benchmarking software crucial to the Linux community.

(www.phoronix.com)

Tech

Faster CI with Mill: Selective Testing Strategies

2024-12-30

Running all tests in large codebases is inefficient. This article explores three selective testing approaches: folder-based, dependency-based, and heuristic-based. Folder-based is simple but may miss errors; dependency-based is more thorough but can over-test; heuristic-based optimizes test selection with custom rules, balancing speed and thoroughness. The Mill build tool natively supports dependency-based selective testing, significantly improving CI efficiency. However, combining it with heuristic methods further optimizes the balance between speed and test coverage.

(mill-build.org)

Development Selective Testing Mill Build Tool

AI Generates 500+ Bizarre Music Genre Mashups

2025-05-02

A mysterious AI program has generated over 500 unusual music genre combinations, such as "Gothic Arabic Reggae" and "Saxophone Tuareg". These combinations boldly blend various cultures and musical styles, showcasing the limitless possibilities of AI in music creation. This sparks reflection on the future of music composition and provides musicians with new creative inspiration.

(suno.com)

AI Genre

Austrian Army Ditches Microsoft Office for LibreOffice: Digital Sovereignty Takes Precedence

2025-09-19

Austrian Army Ditches Microsoft Office for LibreOffice: Digital Sovereignty Takes Precedence

The Austrian Armed Forces have completely removed Microsoft Office from 16,000 workstations, switching to the open-source LibreOffice suite. This wasn't a cost-cutting measure, but a strategic decision to strengthen digital sovereignty and IT infrastructure independence, ensuring data is processed internally. Foreseeing Microsoft's cloud shift five years ago, the army initiated a three-year migration, training internal developers and contributing improvements back to the LibreOffice project. While some departments can still apply for Microsoft Office 2024 LTSC, the move highlights the Austrian army's prioritization of data security and autonomy, showcasing a significant contribution to open-source software.

(www.heise.de)

Tech

First-Ever Orbital Image of the Secretive X-37B Space Plane Released

2025-02-22

First-Ever Orbital Image of the Secretive X-37B Space Plane Released

The U.S. Space Force has released the first-ever public image of its X-37B space plane in orbit. Taken over the African continent, the photo shows one of the plane's solar panels and what appears to be its open payload bay. This is part of the X-37B's seventh mission, launched December 28, 2023, which includes experiments in a highly elliptical orbit and the first-ever use of aerobraking – using atmospheric drag to efficiently change orbits. The X-37B serves as a testbed for advanced reusable spacecraft technologies, including solar power beaming, thermal protection systems, and autonomous flight capabilities. While details of its mission remain classified, the image offers a rare glimpse into the X-37B's operations and highlights the ongoing competition in reusable spacecraft technology between the U.S. and China.

(www.space.com)

Tech Space Plane Aerobraking

Google's Kodak Moment: Missing the ChatGPT Revolution

2025-07-23

OpenAI's 2023 launch of ChatGPT represents a potential 'Kodak moment' for Google. Despite pioneering research and vast data resources underlying ChatGPT's technology, Google missed the opportunity to launch a history-making product. Its ad-based business model faces stiff competition from Meta, and losing search traffic to ChatGPT would force a desperate fight for screen-time against rivals like TikTok, Netflix, and game studios. Google's weakness in audio and its failure to commercialize its AR advantage further highlight its strategic shortcomings. Short-term stock pressures incentivize Google's leadership to prioritize immediate profits over a potentially necessary, albeit painful, long-term restructuring. This shortsightedness could ultimately lead to the company's downfall.

(tompccs.github.io)

Tech

Google's Privacy U-Turn: Digital Fingerprinting Returns

2025-01-12

Google's Privacy U-Turn: Digital Fingerprinting Returns

Google has reinstated digital fingerprinting for advertising purposes, raising privacy concerns. This technology tracks users across devices by collecting online signals (IP addresses, browser information, etc.), circumventing user control over cookies. While Google claims to employ privacy-enhancing technologies, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office labeled the move "irresponsible," citing reduced user control and potential risks to advertiser behavior. This contradicts Google's previous privacy pledges and reignites debate about data collection and user choice.

(mashable.com)

Tech Digital Fingerprinting

miniDiffusion: A Minimal Stable Diffusion 3.5 Reimplementation in PyTorch

2025-06-14

miniDiffusion: A Minimal Stable Diffusion 3.5 Reimplementation in PyTorch

miniDiffusion is a streamlined reimplementation of the Stable Diffusion 3.5 model using pure PyTorch with minimal dependencies. Designed for educational, experimental, and hacking purposes, its concise codebase (~2800 lines) covers VAE, DiT, training, and dataset scripts. The project provides scripts for both training and inference. Users need to install dependencies and download pretrained model weights. This open-source project is licensed under MIT.

(github.com)

AI

Rebuilding ProseMirror's Renderer in React: A Tale of Two Libraries

2025-02-10

The author recounts their experience working on the New York Times' rich text editor, Oak, built with React and ProseMirror. The integration, however, proved problematic, leading to persistent bugs. After four years of grappling with the complexities of both libraries, the team opted to rewrite ProseMirror's renderer in React. This resolved issues like state tearing, resulting in a new library, @handlewithcare/react-prosemirror, boasting improved performance and compatibility.

(smoores.dev)

Development Rich Text Editor

A Universal Rhythm Underlies Human Speech: 1.6-Second Intonation Units Discovered

2025-08-25

A Universal Rhythm Underlies Human Speech: 1.6-Second Intonation Units Discovered

A groundbreaking study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals a universal 1.6-second rhythm in human speech, called intonation units. Analyzing over 650 recordings across 48 languages, researchers discovered this rhythmic chunking regardless of language family or geographic location. This rhythm isn't cultural; it's deeply rooted in human biology and cognition, mirroring brain activity patterns linked to memory, attention, and voluntary action. The findings have implications for AI speech development, speech disorder treatments, and a deeper understanding of neurological function.

(phys.org)

Tech speech rhythm intonation units cognitive neuroscience

AI Levels the Playing Field in a David vs. Goliath Lawsuit

2025-06-10

After a grueling two-year lawsuit, Calm Company Fund, a small firm, secured a favorable settlement. The author details how leveraging AI helped level the playing field against a well-funded opponent. The article highlights the inherent bias against defendants in the US legal system, where costs are exorbitant, and recovery is rare even with a win. Initially relying on lawyers, the author found themselves trapped by mounting bills. The turning point came with using AI for legal research—reviewing contracts, understanding case law, and strategizing—significantly reducing costs and ultimately leading to a better settlement. The article stresses that AI doesn't replace lawyers but empowers entrepreneurs to understand legal processes better, improving negotiating leverage, and gaining an advantage in legal battles.

(tylertringas.com)

Startup

BlueOS: A Lightweight, Secure, and General-Purpose Rust Kernel

2025-07-27

BlueOS: A Lightweight, Secure, and General-Purpose Rust Kernel

BlueOS is a lightweight, secure, and general-purpose operating system kernel written in Rust. It's POSIX-compliant, supports the Rust standard library, and currently supports ARM32, ARM64, RISCV32, and RISCV64 architectures with QEMU emulation. Hardware board support is under development. The project includes the core kernel, a custom libc implementation, example applications, and comprehensive documentation, providing a complete environment for developers.

(github.com)

Development

OpenSSL 3.5.0 Released: Ditching the Three-Way Handshake for 0-RTT

2025-04-09

OpenSSL 3.5.0 Released: Ditching the Three-Way Handshake for 0-RTT

OpenSSL 3.5.0 has been released, featuring support for various post-quantum cryptography methods and 0-RTT connections. The traditional three-way TCP handshake is considered too slow in today's always-on world. 0-RTT (Zero Round Trip Time), integrated into TLS 1.3, lets clients reconnect instantly without the handshake. A full handshake occurs on the initial connection, generating a session ticket used for subsequent connections, allowing the client to send data immediately without waiting for a server response. While security risks like replay attacks exist, 0-RTT's compatibility with the UDP-based QUIC protocol positions it as a key trend in future network connections.

(billatnapier.medium.com)

Development

Microsoft's Xbox Division Facing Further Layoffs

2025-06-25

Microsoft's Xbox Division Facing Further Layoffs

Microsoft is reportedly planning further layoffs in its Xbox gaming division as early as next week. This follows the 6,000 job cuts in May and will impact the Xbox distribution and sales organizations, potentially affecting operations in some parts of central Europe. The move is part of a broader restructuring effort as Microsoft prepares for its next generation of consoles. These layoffs are the latest in a series of significant cuts in the gaming industry over the past 18 months, following the 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employee layoffs in January 2024 and the closure of several game studios in May 2024.

(www.theverge.com)

Game

20k Bounty: Help Achieve Parity Between Rust's rav1d and C's dav1d AV1 Decoders!

2025-05-14

20k Bounty: Help Achieve Parity Between Rust's rav1d and C's dav1d AV1 Decoders!

The rav1d AV1 decoder, written in Rust, is currently about 5% slower than its C-based counterpart, dav1d. To bridge this performance gap, a $20,000 bounty is offered for contributions that bring rav1d to performance parity with dav1d. Improvements can be made to the rav1d codebase, the Rust compiler, or the Rust standard library, but modifications are subject to specific rules (no modifying low-level assembly, no non-Rust code). The bounty will be distributed proportionally based on the performance improvements achieved.

(www.memorysafety.org)

Development

How Many Dimensions Does a Line Have?

2025-09-08

How Many Dimensions Does a Line Have?

This article explores the definition of dimensionality in geometric shapes. The author starts with an intuitive approach based on spatial containment, but this method falls short when dealing with curved line segments. A 'degrees of freedom' approach is then proposed, but this also proves ambiguous. Finally, the author introduces the Minkowski dimension, a more precise method using box counting that can even handle fractal shapes, resulting in non-integer dimensions—for example, the Sierpinski triangle has a dimension of approximately 1.6.

(lcamtuf.substack.com)

Math

Improving a Go HTTP Server: Unit Tests, Middleware, and Subrouters

2025-03-28

Improving a Go HTTP Server: Unit Tests, Middleware, and Subrouters

This blog post details improvements made to a Go HTTP server built from scratch. The author added unit tests, addressed reader feedback regarding case-insensitive headers and multiple header values, and improved handling of response streams and larger payloads. Key additions include middleware support for cleaner code and subrouters for enhanced route organization. The post showcases iterative development and practical problem-solving in Go.

(www.krayorn.com)

Development

Double Detonation: A New Theory for Type Ia Supernovae

2025-07-03

Double Detonation: A New Theory for Type Ia Supernovae

The origin of Type Ia supernovae has long puzzled astronomers. The traditional view involves a white dwarf accreting mass until it reaches the Chandrasekhar limit, triggering an explosion. However, observations suggest a higher frequency than this mechanism predicts. A promising new theory, the 'double detonation' model, suggests that helium accumulating on a white dwarf's surface fuses (first detonation), triggering the fusion of carbon and oxygen in the core (second detonation), leading to a supernova. This bypasses the need for the Chandrasekhar limit, potentially explaining the observed frequency, but the rapid succession of explosions and complex environment make observational verification challenging.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech Type Ia Supernovae White Dwarf Double Detonation

Faster bzip2 in Rust: Cross-Compilation Made Easy

2025-06-17

Faster bzip2 in Rust: Cross-Compilation Made Easy

The newly released bzip2 0.6.0 uses a Rust implementation (libbz2-rs-sys) by default, resulting in significant speed improvements for both compression and decompression, and simplified cross-compilation. This work addresses the continued reliance on bzip2 in many projects, with the Rust version offering solutions to longstanding compilation issues such as WebAssembly compilation and Windows/Android compatibility. Benchmark tests show that the Rust implementation generally outperforms the C implementation, and a Miri security audit ensures code reliability.

(trifectatech.org)

Development

Macron: Europe Lagging in AI Race, Needs to Catch Up

2025-02-10

Macron: Europe Lagging in AI Race, Needs to Catch Up

French President Emmanuel Macron, in an exclusive interview with CNN, warned that Europe is falling behind the US and China in the AI race, risking becoming a mere consumer of the technology. To counter this, France is hosting an AI summit and plans to build Europe's largest supercomputer, aiming for 20% of global data centers. However, securing funding and streamlining regulations are crucial challenges. Macron calls for simplified rules and a more business-friendly environment to attract investment and compete with US and Chinese dominance.

(edition.cnn.com)

Tech Europe Tech Competition

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