India has removed several VPN apps, including Cloudflare's popular 1.1.1.1, from its app stores citing a 2022 regulation requiring VPN providers to store user data for five years. This move has sparked backlash from the industry, with some VPN providers withdrawing from India or ceasing marketing there. The action marks a significant tightening of VPN regulations in India.
dbt Labs announced the acquisition of SDF Labs, a company with cutting-edge SQL comprehension technology. This acquisition will dramatically improve the dbt developer experience, including significantly faster compilation speeds, IDE autocompletion, and higher-fidelity data lineage. SDF's technology allows dbt to understand user-written SQL more deeply, enabling more powerful features and a smoother development workflow, described as a 'React moment' for the data world.
This post shares two CSS tricks for enhancing the HTML `` element. First, it demonstrates how to subtly blur the background behind the dialog using `backdrop-filter: blur(2px);` applied to the `::backdrop` pseudo-element. Second, it shows how to prevent page scrolling while the dialog is open by using the selector `body:has(dialog[open]) { overflow: hidden; }`. This prevents the underlying page from shifting while interacting with the dialog. These simple CSS additions improve the user experience.
New research suggests Mars' iconic dichotomy boundary, separating the higher southern hemisphere from the lower northern one, may have receded hundreds of kilometers due to water erosion. Researchers analyzed data from the Mars Express and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, finding that thousands of buttes and mesas near Mawrth Vallis, situated at the dichotomy boundary, share a similar height with a nearby higher-elevation plateau, indicating they are remnants of a larger plateau eroded away. This massive erosion suggests an active water cycle early in Mars' history, consistent with the theory of a northern ocean but also potentially caused by other hydrological processes like ice cap melting. The finding offers new clues about early Martian climate and geological evolution, adding to evidence for a past ocean but also raising new questions.
Ars Technica reports that the research paper sharing site Sci-Hub continues to host a significant number of retracted papers, with 85% lacking any indication of retraction. Sci-Hub circumvents paywalls by illegally obtaining PDFs, providing access to researchers. However, its database lacks an effective update mechanism, meaning retracted papers remain available, potentially leading to miscitations and wasted resources. Researchers urge Sci-Hub to update its database to flag retracted papers and uphold academic integrity.
The Letterform Archive's recent acquisition of over 500 Japanese chopstick sleeves reveals a fascinating history of Japanese culture and design. From Heian-era silk wrappings to modern printed advertisements, these seemingly humble objects chronicle societal shifts. Designs range from iconic Mount Fuji imagery and Edo-period woodblock prints to modern fusions of East and West, reflecting evolving aesthetics and national identity. The collector's meticulous preservation embodies the Japanese concept of 'mottainai,' highlighting the value found in even the most ephemeral objects.
GitHub has released a major update to Issues, including sub-issues, issue types, and advanced search. Sub-issues allow breaking down problems into smaller units for better progress tracking. Issue types help teams classify and manage issues with a consistent language. Advanced search enables more complex filtering to find specific issues. The Issues UI has also been updated for improved efficiency and usability. Additionally, CodeQL Action v2 is officially retired, requiring users to upgrade to v3. Secret scanning default patterns now support more secret types, enhancing security.
This article analyzes Apple's recently released Apple Intelligence, a suite of features designed to bring intelligence to iPhones. While Apple achieved a remarkable feat in building a secure 'Private Cloud Compute' system, prioritizing user data privacy and security, the actual implementation of these features is underwhelming. The author dissects each feature, from Writing Tools and notification summaries to Image Playground, revealing shortcomings and a lack of maturity that fall short of Apple's usual high standards. The article argues Apple missed an opportunity to create a 'bicycle for the mind' (Steve Jobs' analogy for computers), squandering a powerful technological foundation on lackluster applications. The exception is Math Notes, which the author praises highly. The piece concludes by exploring the nature and proper applications of generative AI, suggesting its strength lies in backend tasks like data analysis rather than direct-to-consumer products. The author laments the unfulfilled potential of Apple Intelligence, comparing it unfavorably to alternative, more effective open-source tools.
Stripe quietly released its V2 API in October, featuring a shift from form-encoded request bodies to JSON and the introduction of HATEOAS-style pagination. V2 aims for speed improvements and controlled sub-object loading via an `include` parameter. True idempotency is also attempted for better handling of failed requests. However, improvements are still needed in REST verb usage and resource modeling. The author argues that a great developer experience (DX) now hinges more on high-quality SDKs than a perfect REST API.
At CES 2025, TV manufacturers showcased AI-powered smart TVs, but Ars Technica's author expresses disappointment. Many touted AI features, such as LG's AI remote lacking a direct input switching button and Samsung's AI food recognition, prioritize corporate interests over user needs. Google TV's Gemini-enhanced Assistant also raises questions about practicality and potential subscription fees. The author argues that the industry's focus on software and data collection overshadows hardware improvements and user experience, forcing consumers to pay for largely useless features. Ultimately, many consumers simply desire TVs with superior picture and sound quality, a goal increasingly difficult to achieve without navigating through excessive gimmicks.
JPMorgan Chase, America's largest bank, is reportedly ending remote work for over 300,000 employees, mandating a five-day-a-week return to the office. CEO Jamie Dimon's strong advocacy for in-person collaboration is driving this decision, prioritizing innovation and teamwork. This move reflects a broader trend among large corporations shifting away from remote work, sparking debate about workplace flexibility and impacting numerous employees.
The Roto VR Explorer chair automatically rotates to match your head movements in VR, significantly enhancing comfort and immersion. By tracking a sensor on your headset, the chair synchronizes its rotation, mitigating motion sickness and improving comfort during extended VR sessions. A Pro version and add-ons are available for productivity, such as working with virtual monitors. While some lag and control issues exist, Roto VR's core concept is innovative, particularly excelling in relaxed VR experiences, showing immense potential for future development.
Tired of the declining moral standards and manipulative algorithms of social media platforms? A game developer shares his experience deleting Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. He describes the frustrating account deletion process and the feeling of regaining control of his time after quitting social media. The article reflects on the negative impacts of social media on teens and adults, urging readers to reconsider their engagement with these platforms.
After a year of using bcachefs, Steinar Gunderson has migrated to XFS. His reason? A lack of confidence in bcachefs' future. While appreciating its compression and mixed SSD/HDD capabilities, he found the developer's uncompromising attitude, hostility towards distributions like Debian, and numerous unfixed bugs (including catastrophic data loss) unbearable. Reporting bugs proved a frustrating experience, with the developer prioritizing arguments with Debian over bug fixes. He ultimately chose the stability of XFS, sacrificing compression benefits, a trade-off he deems worthwhile.
Discuo, initially built for developers to share progress and discuss code, has evolved into a minimalist discussion platform covering diverse topics. Its distraction-free design and infinite thread exploration allow for focused conversation. No account is needed to post or comment, and its categorized structure (Anime & Manga, Gaming, Tech & Dev, etc.) offers a wide range of discussion areas.
This article reviews Mike Gray's book, *Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon*, focusing on North American Aviation's pivotal role and chief engineer Harrison Storms's struggles in the Apollo program. From blueprints to launchpad, Storms led his team through countless challenges, including developing the supersonic B-70 bomber and the X-15 hypersonic aircraft, and advancing rocket engine technology. Apollo's success relied heavily on Storms' team's innovations in materials science, welding, and rocket construction. However, after the Apollo 1 fire, Storms was unjustly dismissed, fading into relative obscurity. This book reveals the human cost and unforeseen challenges behind one of humanity's greatest achievements.
The death of Suchir Balaji, a former OpenAI researcher, has taken a dramatic turn. Initially ruled a suicide, the San Francisco Police Department has reopened the case as an 'active and open investigation' following allegations from Balaji's family and inconsistencies in the initial autopsy. Balaji publicly criticized OpenAI's practices before his death, sparking speculation about foul play, even drawing comment from Elon Musk. This case highlights the risks faced by whistleblowers in the tech industry and raises crucial questions about ethics and accountability in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
Akamai announced that it will decommission its China CDN services on June 30, 2026. To ensure a smooth transition, Akamai has partnered with Tencent Cloud and Wangsu Science & Technology to provide alternative solutions. Akamai will act as a reseller, offering migration services and support to help customers transition seamlessly to the new solutions and ensure compliance with evolving Chinese regulations. All existing China CDN customers must complete the transition by June 30, 2026.
The seemingly simple act of playing cards hides an incredible mathematical complexity. From the randomness of shuffling to the 'aha' moments in card games, the topic has fascinated mathematicians and game designers alike. This article explores the origins and evolution of playing cards, their use in modern game design, and the captivating allure that keeps us hooked, highlighting the challenges they present in mathematics and game development.
This GitHub project is a port of the `lc` command-line utility from Mark Williams Company's Coherent UNIX. `lc` lists files in categories and columns. This port adds support for symbolic links. It's a handy tool for managing and viewing files.
KubeStatus Operator is a free and open-source tool that easily adds a status page to your Kubernetes cluster, displaying the operational status (operational, degraded, or DOWN) of services. Written in Go and utilizing the Kubernetes API to fetch cluster and resource information, KubeStatus provides a simple and convenient way to view the current state of your cluster and resources without needing the kubectl command-line tool or the Kubernetes dashboard. It also offers a user-friendly page that can serve as your main status page.
FOSDEM 2025 organizers issued a statement addressing planned protests against a controversial talk. The statement clarifies that the talk's inclusion wasn't influenced by sponsorship; claims suggesting otherwise are false. FOSDEM has always welcomed peaceful protests, provided they don't disrupt proceedings. Organizers urge protest organizers to contact them beforehand to ensure safety and fire regulations are met.
In November 2024, the London Elizabeth Line suffered a two-day shutdown due to signaling system failures. The article details the timeline of events, starting with intermittent communication problems at 5 am and culminating in a full restoration two days later. While the root cause remains undisclosed for security reasons, the breakdown involved multiple systems including communication networks, the core signaling system (CBTC), Automatic Route Setting (ARS), and GSMR radio links. Engineers undertook numerous system reboots and troubleshooting efforts, ultimately resolving the issue with Siemens' assistance. The incident highlights the complexities and vulnerabilities of modern transportation systems.
MoonshotAI has unveiled Kimi k1.5, a new multi-modal large language model trained with reinforcement learning, achieving state-of-the-art results across various benchmarks. Key to Kimi k1.5's success is its 128k context window and improved policy optimization, enabling strong reasoning capabilities without complex techniques like Monte Carlo tree search. It outperforms GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet 3.5 on tests like AIME, MATH-500, and Codeforces, also showing significant improvements in short-context reasoning. Kimi k1.5 will soon be available at https://kimi.ai.
This 22-page, full-color zine, "DIY Web Archiving," empowers everyone to participate in preserving online content they value. Created by five authors, it provides a practical guide to web archiving, requiring no special expertise. Based on a November 2024 workshop, the zine explains why web archiving is crucial and how to do it. A full-color PDF and a poster version are available now, with a black-and-white version and printing instructions coming soon.
This is a brain-teasing puzzle game that tests your spatial reasoning skills - connect the dots without crossing lines. The goal is to connect all the dots without any lines intersecting. It seems simple, but it involves complex logic, requiring players to carefully consider and plan their routes to successfully complete the challenge. The difficulty gradually increases, testing your patience and strategy. Suitable for players of all ages to enjoy the fun of puzzle-solving.
This paper introduces Gradient Agreement Filtering (GAF), a novel method to improve gradient averaging in distributed deep learning optimization. Traditional methods average micro-batch gradients to compute a macro-batch gradient, but this can lead to orthogonal or negatively correlated gradients in later training stages, resulting in overfitting. GAF reduces gradient variance by computing the cosine distance between micro-gradients and filtering out conflicting updates before averaging. Experiments on image classification benchmarks like CIFAR-100 and CIFAR-100N-Fine show that GAF significantly improves validation accuracy, even with smaller micro-batch sizes, achieving up to an 18.2% improvement over traditional approaches while reducing computational cost.
A new study reveals that California's main grid ran on over 100% renewable energy (wind, water, solar) for a record 98 out of 116 days in 2024, without blackouts or increased costs. Solar output surged 31%, wind power rose 8%, and battery storage saw a staggering 105% increase, supplying up to 12% of nighttime demand. The study debunks the myth that renewables cause high electricity prices, attributing California's high costs to other factors. The findings demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of large-scale renewable energy grids, offering a compelling case for global clean energy transition.
This article details an experiment to determine the maximum number of Alpine Linux packages installable simultaneously. The author parsed Alpine's APKINDEX files, extracting package dependencies, conflicts, and provides relationships. These were translated into constraints for a PuLP solver. The experiment successfully installed 98.5% of packages from the main repository and 97.8% from main + community. This showcases algorithmic optimization of package installation, offering insights into building leaner container images.
Apache Hudi is an open-source data lakehouse platform built on a high-performance open table format for ingesting, indexing, storing, serving, transforming, and managing data across multiple cloud data environments. It supports various data formats and sources, offers atomic commits with rollback/restore, and boasts fast upsert/delete capabilities. A scalable indexing subsystem accelerates queries, while support for snapshot, incremental, and time-travel queries provides flexibility. Integration with metadata stores like Apache Hive Metastore is also included.
