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Georgian Highland Villages: Tradition in Transition

2025-05-24

Georgian Highland Villages: Tradition in Transition

Over a decade, a photographer has revisited remote villages in Georgia's Adjara region, documenting the lives of a pastoral nomadic community. Facing challenges like limited access to education, healthcare, and essential services, these villages experience outmigration, and traditions like traditional weddings are fading. The photographer aims to showcase the community's adaptation and creation of new meaning in the modern world, not simply through nostalgia.

(www.thedial.world)

Misc traditional culture

The Monstrous Function That Broke Calculus

2025-01-24

The Monstrous Function That Broke Calculus

In the 19th century, Karl Weierstrass unveiled a function that sent shockwaves through the mathematical community. This function, continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere, resembled an infinitely jagged sawtooth, defying intuition and challenging the very foundations of calculus. Its seemingly paradoxical properties forced mathematicians to rigorously redefine continuity and differentiability, ultimately leading to the development of modern analysis. This 'mathematical monster' not only holds theoretical significance but also finds practical applications in fields like Brownian motion, showcasing the boundless possibilities within mathematics.

(www.quantamagazine.org)

Math Weierstrass function mathematical analysis

Demonic Possession Predicted the Fall of the Carolingian Empire

2024-12-13

Demonic Possession Predicted the Fall of the Carolingian Empire

In the early 9th century, a Frankish courtier recorded a tale of demonic possession. The demon, Wiggo, confessed to destroying crops, livestock, and spreading plagues, blaming the Franks' sins and their rulers' many crimes. Wiggo described rampant greed, mutual suspicion among rulers, and lack of piety. This story mirrored the crisis of the Carolingian Empire: internal strife, economic instability, and famine. The courtier, Einhard, used this tale to subtly criticize the rulers' corruption and foreshadow the empire's decline.

(www.smithsonianmag.com)

History Carolingian Empire Demonic Possession Medieval Europe

First-Person View Drones in Ukraine: A Disillusioning Reality Check

2025-06-26

First-Person View Drones in Ukraine: A Disillusioning Reality Check

A firsthand account from an international volunteer serving with the Ukrainian Armed Forces reveals the disappointing reality of using disposable first-person view (FPV) attack drones. Despite their marketing as cheap and effective precision-strike weapons, the author found their success rate to be a mere 20-30%, with most missions acting as secondary strikes on already-engaged targets. Technical limitations – susceptibility to interference, high malfunction rates, and difficult operation – were significant factors, alongside strategic deployment issues. The author concludes that investing in FPV drones is less effective than improving existing mortar capabilities and high-quality loitering munitions.

(warontherocks.com)

Tech

Machine Code: It's Not as Scary as You Think

2025-06-04

The author, initially intimidated by low-level languages after starting with ActionScript, decided to conquer their fear of machine code. Focusing on ARM 64-bit assembly, they demystify the process. The article breaks down the core concepts: instructions, registers, and memory, using examples from both ARM and x86-64 architectures. Machine code instructions are simply numbers, encoded differently depending on the architecture (e.g., ARM's 'add' instruction versus x86's REX and ModR/M prefixes). While intricate, understanding these low-level details significantly boosts programming skills and overcomes the intimidation factor often associated with low-level programming.

(jimmyhmiller.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

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

1862 Exposed MCP Servers: A Security Vulnerability Unveiled

2025-07-18

1862 Exposed MCP Servers: A Security Vulnerability Unveiled

Knostic's research team discovered 1,862 internet-exposed MCP servers lacking proper security measures. These servers, identified using Shodan and custom Python tools, allowed unauthenticated access to internal tool listings. The findings highlight the technology's early adoption stage and significant security risks, with many servers exhibiting instability and vulnerabilities. The researchers emphasize the need to address these security concerns, suggesting proactive security measures before widespread exploitation.

(www.knostic.ai)

Tech

Sharks' Sixth Sense: The Amazing World of Electroreception

2025-03-22

Sharks' Sixth Sense: The Amazing World of Electroreception

How do sharks hunt precisely in the dark depths of the ocean? The answer is electroreception! This amazing organ allows sharks to sense the weak bioelectric fields of their prey, even if the prey is hidden beneath the sand. The article delves into the evolutionary history, working mechanism, and applications of electroreception in different species, revealing the amazing biodiversity and evolutionary strategies of nature. From shark predation to electric eel discharge, the story of electroreception is full of wonder and scientific charm.

(nautil.us)

Tech electroreception sharks bioelectricity

Aussie Engineer's Take on Working for US Tech Firms: Time Zones, Culture, and Stability

2025-01-12

An Australian engineer shares his decade-long experience working for American tech companies. He details the challenges of cross-timezone collaboration: mornings are spent catching up on overnight work, but afternoons offer invaluable focused time. While loneliness can be an issue, strong teamwork and documentation culture mitigate this. He also notes the inherent instability of working for a US company from abroad, but highlights the larger scale, better compensation, and higher brand recognition as key motivators. Finally, he discusses cultural differences between Australia and the US, where Americans are more enthusiastic and Australians more understated, requiring adaptation to the American work culture.

(www.seangoedecke.com)

Development cross-cultural work

Open-Source Wi-Fi MAC Layer for ESP32 Takes Flight

2025-03-09

An ambitious open-source project is underway to create a fully open-source Wi-Fi MAC layer for the popular low-cost ESP32 microcontroller. Currently, the ESP32's Wi-Fi MAC layer is closed-source, limiting security audits, feature enhancements, and interoperability. This project reverse-engineers the hardware registers and software, resulting in two open-source MAC layer implementations in C and Rust. One utilizes FreeRTOS tasks, while the other is a pure async Rust implementation built on Embassy. The goal is to enhance ESP32's security, functionality, and research accessibility, paving the way for features like standards-compliant mesh networking.

(esp32-open-mac.be)

Hardware

Making a JavaScript-Optional Online Board Game: A Case Study in Progressive Enhancement

2025-08-23

This article details how an online board game website achieved fully optional JavaScript functionality using server-side rendering, standard HTML elements, and URL parameters. The author replaced real-time updates with page auto-refresh, and used native HTML elements for dropdown menus and modals. While increasing server load and code complexity, this approach improved initial page load speed and site robustness, yielding unexpected benefits like more semantically correct HTML. However, the author concludes the extra effort isn't worthwhile unless targeting a very JavaScript-averse audience, and plans to eventually remove the extra code.

(bejofo.com)

Development JavaScript-Optional

Beach Boys Co-Founder Brian Wilson Dies at 82

2025-06-11

Beach Boys Co-Founder Brian Wilson Dies at 82

Brian Wilson, co-founder and primary songwriter of the Beach Boys, has passed away at age 82. His family announced the news, sharing their heartbreak at the loss of the beloved musical auteur who pioneered the use of the studio as an instrument, influencing generations of musicians. Diagnosed earlier this year with a neurocognitive disorder similar to dementia, Wilson's legacy extends far beyond his iconic surf rock hits. From the band's humble beginnings in California to the groundbreaking experimental pop of *Pet Sounds*, Wilson's journey was marked by both creative genius and personal struggles, including a complex relationship with psychologist Eugene Landy and battles with addiction. Despite these challenges, his impact on music remains undeniable, leaving behind a body of work that continues to inspire and influence.

(pitchfork.com)

Music Beach Boys

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-06-10

arXivLabs is a platform enabling collaborators to build and share new arXiv features directly on the site. Participants, individuals and organizations alike, embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and partners only with those who share them. Got an idea for a project that will benefit the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Asahi Linux Founder Steps Down, Project Embraces Sustainable Future

2025-02-14

Asahi Linux Founder Steps Down, Project Embraces Sustainable Future

Following the resignation of founder Hector Martin, the Asahi Linux team announced a new governance structure and funding model to ensure the project's long-term sustainability. Seven developers will share decision-making power, and donations will be facilitated through Open Source Collective, replacing the previous Patreon model. The project will prioritize kernel upstreaming and continuous integration testing to improve stability and maintainability. While support for M3 and M4 chips is temporarily on hold, M1 and M2 users can look forward to features like DP alt mode, sparse image support in the Vulkan driver, and built-in microphone support.

(asahilinux.org)

Development

Neat Zig Idiom: Partially Matching Enums

2025-08-09

Zig offers an elegant solution for handling partial matching in enums, avoiding redundant code and runtime panics. The article details a clever technique using `inline` and `comptime unreachable` to allow the compiler to check for unnecessary `else` branches at compile time, improving code robustness and readability. This is particularly useful when dealing with numerous enum variants, significantly simplifying code logic.

(matklad.github.io)

Development Compile-time checks

Micron's Price Hike: AI Fuels Memory Chip Surge

2025-03-31

Micron's Price Hike: AI Fuels Memory Chip Surge

Micron Technology has announced price increases for DRAM and NAND flash memory, citing robust demand in the coming years. This price hike, expected to last through 2026, is driven by soaring demand from AI, data centers, and consumer electronics, coupled with supply constraints. A key driver is the surging demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), crucial for AI accelerators and next-gen GPUs, fueled by advancements from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. Micron is investing $7 billion in a new HBM assembly facility in Singapore to meet this demand. The resurgence of the PC and smartphone markets further bolsters memory demand, suggesting a sustained upward price trend.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Tech memory prices

Hollywood's Unsung Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story

2025-03-14

Hollywood's Unsung Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story

The documentary "Hollywood's Architect: The Paul R. Williams Story" chronicles the life of Paul Revere Williams, the first African American member of the American Institute of Architects. Overcoming immense racial barriers, Williams designed iconic buildings like LAX and homes for Hollywood legends. The film not only celebrates his extraordinary talent but also highlights the lack of diversity in architecture and the importance of preserving his legacy, prompting reflection on racial equality and cultural heritage preservation.

(www.latimes.com)

Design architecture racial equality

AI Blurs the Lines: PMs Become the New Engineers?

2025-02-25

AI Blurs the Lines: PMs Become the New Engineers?

The core of AI applications lies in prompt engineering, yet surprisingly, many companies entrust prompt creation to product managers, not engineers. This sparks an intriguing trend: AI is blurring the lines between product managers and engineers. Simple LLM applications merely require choosing a base model and a prompt template, while complex ones incorporate structures like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) or agents. Almost all AI applications follow the same structure; their behavior is determined not by code but by prompts, tool selection, and the base model. This makes excellent prompt engineers crucial, and PMs and domain experts often excel at prompt engineering over software engineers. Prompt engineering will remain vital, with PMs, not engineers, driving AI success in the future. AI is eating software engineering, automating coding tasks first, making the PM role even more critical due to their understanding of user needs and product shaping. The traditional boundary between product and engineering might vanish, with top AI teams needing individuals bridging the gap between both roles.

(humanloop.com)

AI Product Managers

Publisher: Open-Source Semantic Model Server for Malloy

2025-05-17

Publisher: Open-Source Semantic Model Server for Malloy

Publisher is an open-source semantic model server built on the Malloy data language. It allows you to create rich semantic data models—defining the meaning, relationships, and context behind your data—and exposes them through a server interface. Applications, AI agents, and users can query data consistently and reliably, leveraging the shared understanding defined in the Malloy model. Publisher solves the problem of untrustworthy answers when data meaning is unclear. It uses Malloy queries, compiling them into SQL behind the scenes to deliver reliable answers without redefining data meaning in every tool. It consists of three main components: a server, an SDK, and a reference application, supporting various databases and AI applications.

(github.com)

Development semantic model

Cascii: A Dependency-Free Online ASCII & Unicode Diagram Builder

2025-03-17

Cascii: A Dependency-Free Online ASCII & Unicode Diagram Builder

Cascii is a web-based ASCII and Unicode diagram builder written in vanilla JavaScript. It boasts zero dependencies on servers, web packing, or libraries, and uses no markup or stylesheets. Simply open cascii.html to start building diagrams. Cascii is also hosted at cascii.app, offering short links for diagrams, account creation, and more. Features include layer management, selection tools, grouping, ordering, duplication, dynamic tables, free drawing/erasing, autosave, paste/import text, history (undo/redo), and support for both ASCII and Unicode characters.

(github.com)

Development ASCII drawing Unicode drawing

Custom Shader in Three.js Simulates Foil Stickers

2025-09-02

Custom Shader in Three.js Simulates Foil Stickers

This post details creating a custom shader in Three.js that realistically simulates foil stickers, complete with angle-dependent iridescence and sparkling metallic flakes. By approximating thin-film interference and using procedural noise, the shader renders a premium holographic effect in real-time within the browser. The author provides a detailed explanation of the vertex and fragment shader code, along with an interactive demo showcasing the results.

(www.4rknova.com)

Development Foil Sticker

Math Meets Fiction: A Database of Over 1000 Stories

2025-05-28

Alex Kasman of the College of Charleston has compiled a database of over one thousand short stories, plays, novels, films, and comic books featuring math or mathematicians. This resource aims to catalog significant fictional references to mathematics, allowing users to browse by author, title, publication date, or search by genre, topic, motif, or medium. The site also features newly added entries and personal recommendations. Whether you're a math teacher, a fiction enthusiast, or curious about society's perception of mathematicians, this database is a treasure trove.

(kasmana.people.charleston.edu)

Misc Fiction

The Marvelous Disappearing Capacitor: A Clever Trick to Improve Photodiode Amplifier Performance

2024-12-12

The Marvelous Disappearing Capacitor: A Clever Trick to Improve Photodiode Amplifier Performance

This article introduces a clever technique to improve the performance of photodiode amplifiers: bootstrapping. The parasitic capacitance of a photodiode limits its ability to amplify rapidly changing signals. In a traditional transimpedance amplifier (TIA), this capacitance reduces bandwidth. The article analyzes the working principle of a TIA, explaining how the photodiode's parasitic capacitance affects circuit performance. The author presents a bootstrapped circuit using an op-amp and JFET, which effectively eliminates the parasitic capacitance by keeping the voltage across the photodiode terminals virtually the same, significantly improving bandwidth. The article also discusses a variant AC-coupled bootstrapped circuit and provides relevant formulas.

(lcamtuf.substack.com)

Hardware photodiode bootstrapping transimpedance amplifier

Juno's Jupiter Revelation: Challenging Our Understanding of Solar System Formation

2025-08-25

Juno's Jupiter Revelation: Challenging Our Understanding of Solar System Formation

NASA's Juno probe, defying expectations, continues to unravel Jupiter's mysteries. Far beyond its planned lifespan, Juno has revealed a Jupiter unlike any previously imagined: bizarre geometric storms, a surprisingly light and fluffy core, and an unusual ammonia distribution in its atmosphere. Juno's discoveries not only reshape our understanding of Jupiter but also challenge existing theories of solar system formation. Key findings include a core that's neither solid nor gaseous, but a diffuse mix of both, and the discovery of "ammonia ice rain" in Jupiter's atmosphere. While its mission is nearing its end, Juno's legacy is indelible.

(www.scientificamerican.com)

Tech Juno

Pixels Weren't Always Square: A Deep Dive into Retro Game Aspect Ratios

2025-05-30

Pixels Weren't Always Square: A Deep Dive into Retro Game Aspect Ratios

Did you know that pixels weren't always square? This article explores the fascinating history of pixel aspect ratios in retro computer games. From early consoles to PCs, pixel shapes varied wildly, far from the ubiquitous square we see today. The author analyzes the aspect ratios of games across various platforms (SNES, Apple II, TRS-80, Commodore 64, etc.), and how best to present them on modern displays. Concepts of 'authenticity' and 'super-authenticity' are discussed, comparing methods like nearest-neighbor, linear, and cubic scaling. Numerous game screenshots illustrate the visual impact of different aspect ratios, concluding that while most developers considered aspect ratio, it wasn't always accurate or consistent, and while a 4:3 display is often a good compromise, it's not always the best solution.

(datadrivengamer.blogspot.com)

Game

Fossil Fuel-Funded Groups Harass Scientists Blocking Offshore Wind

2025-08-27

Fossil Fuel-Funded Groups Harass Scientists Blocking Offshore Wind

A Brown University report exposes how fossil fuel-funded groups and their lawyers use legal battles and disinformation to impede the development of clean, affordable offshore wind energy on the US East Coast. These groups employ deceptive environmental claims, such as protecting North Atlantic right whales, to delay or cancel wind projects, thus protecting the fossil fuel industry's interests. One law firm even threatened Brown University to suppress research findings. The report highlights the connections between fossil fuel companies, the political right wing, and disinformation networks, and their obstruction of climate action. This incident underscores the challenges of energy transition and the pressures faced by academic research.

(electrek.co)

Tech Fossil Fuel Lobbying

NEC2: Legendary Numerical Electromagnetics Code

2025-07-05

This website is a central repository for documentation and code examples related to NEC2 (Numerical Electromagnetics Code), a Method of Moments based electromagnetic simulation software. Developed in 1981 by Jerry Burke and A. Poggio at Lawrence Livermore Labs for the US Navy, NEC2 is now publicly available. The site offers instructions on running NEC2 in a Windows environment, tutorials, sample models, and a user manual (HTML and PDF versions) covering program description and user guides. Additionally, it provides details on constructing a BiQuad antenna, its NEC simulation model, links to a NEC mailing list, and other related resources.

(www.nec2.org)

Development electromagnetic simulation

Microsoft's Giant 1-Bit AI Model: Impressive Performance, Limited Compatibility

2025-04-17

Microsoft researchers unveiled BitNet b1.58 2B4T, a groundbreaking 2-billion parameter 1-bit AI model. Trained on a massive dataset, it outperforms comparable models from Meta, Google, and Alibaba on benchmarks like GSM8K and PIQA, boasting double the speed and significantly lower memory usage. Surprisingly, it runs on CPUs, including Apple's M2. However, its reliance on Microsoft's custom bitnet.cpp framework, currently incompatible with GPUs, limits its broad adoption. While promising for resource-constrained devices, compatibility remains a major hurdle.

(techcrunch.com)

AI 1-bit AI

Uncomfortable Truths About Google's Android Developer Verification

2025-08-27

This blog post raises serious concerns about Google's upcoming Android developer verification program. Using the example of the ICEBlock app developer, who faced threats after revealing their identity, the post argues the program could harm developers needing anonymity. Five key questions are posed: How will legitimate needs for developer anonymity be addressed? Which civil society organizations were consulted, and what were the results? How should Google's privacy policy regarding sharing personal information be interpreted? How will the program handle debug keystores and duplicate package names commonly used in app development? What are the implications for those learning Android development? The post urges Google to engage in discussions and provides a feedback form.

(commonsware.com)

Development

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