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UEFI App Saves My PoE-Powered x86 System

2025-05-28

UEFI App Saves My PoE-Powered x86 System

In 2015, the author encountered a challenge while developing PoE-powered embedded x86 computers: the system needed 23W to boot, but standard PoE only provided 15.4W. After failing to modify the BIOS, the author cleverly used a UEFI application to send LLDP packets before the OS started, successfully negotiating higher PoE+ power. This UEFI application, called PoePwrNegotiator, written in C, is now open-sourced, providing valuable experience for developers of similar projects.

(roderickkhan.com)

Development

Google Calendar Removes Default Highlighting of Cultural Observances, Sparking Outrage

2025-02-11

Google Calendar Removes Default Highlighting of Cultural Observances, Sparking Outrage

Google Calendar has removed the default highlighting of cultural events like Pride Month and Black History Month, leading to significant user backlash. Users have criticized the move as "shameful" and accused Google of capitulating to fascism. Google responded that maintaining hundreds of global cultural events manually was unsustainable, so they reverted to displaying only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com, allowing users to add other events manually. The reasoning and timeline behind the change remain contested.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Cultural Observances Controversy

Data Center Interconnects: Can VCSELs Challenge DFB Lasers?

2025-08-30

Data Center Interconnects: Can VCSELs Challenge DFB Lasers?

The increasing demand for higher bandwidth and lower power consumption in data centers is driving the development of optical interconnect technologies. While DFB lasers, traditionally used in long-haul fiber optic communication, offer superior performance, they are expensive and temperature-sensitive. VCSELs, known for their low cost and power consumption, are gaining traction but their wavelength and bandwidth limitations hinder wider adoption. This article explores advancements in VCSEL technology aimed at enhancing their role in short-reach data center interconnects. It highlights Volantis' approach using improved VCSELs and optical interposers to achieve high-efficiency, massively parallel optical interconnects, offering a novel perspective on data center optical interconnect technology.

(semiengineering.com)

Tech

Most Americans Rely on Federal Science Weekly, Poll Finds

2025-05-06

Most Americans Rely on Federal Science Weekly, Poll Finds

A new nationwide poll reveals that most Americans rely on federal science information weekly, including weather forecasts, job market reports, and food safety warnings, without realizing it. Despite this dependence, only 10% of respondents are concerned about potential impacts from cuts to federal science funding. While political polarization around trust in science exists, the poll highlights a bipartisan agreement on the importance of federal investment in STEM education for future economic prosperity.

(www.npr.org)

Tech Federal Science National Poll

Embed Any Mac OS in Your Website: System 1.0 to 10.4

2025-07-12

Embed Any Mac OS in Your Website: System 1.0 to 10.4

Infinite Mac now lets you embed any Mac OS, from 1984's System 1.0 to 2005's Mac OS X 10.4, directly into your website. The project provides comprehensive documentation and programmatic control. As a demo, Infinite Monkey connects an emulated Mac 128K to OpenAI and Anthropic's LLMs, bridging the technologies of 1984 and 2025. This project is spearheaded by Marcin Wichary, whose recent article further showcases these embedding capabilities.

(blog.persistent.info)

Tech Mac OS emulation website embedding

Starlink Poised to Steal $2.4B Air Traffic Control Contract from Verizon

2025-02-28

Starlink Poised to Steal $2.4B Air Traffic Control Contract from Verizon

Starlink, Elon Musk's SpaceX subsidiary, is reportedly on the verge of snatching a $2.4 billion contract for upgrading the US air traffic control system from Verizon. Musk has publicly questioned Verizon's system reliability, claiming Starlink offers a free alternative. While this move could spark accusations of favoritism and conflicts of interest, a Starlink team is deeply involved in FAA modernization efforts, with SpaceX employees even holding FAA email addresses. This highlights Musk's companies' close ties with the government and their reliance on substantial government contracts.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Electron Band Structure in Germanium: A Hilarious Failure

2025-04-01

An undergraduate student's attempt to study the exponential relationship between resistivity and temperature in germanium turned into a comedy of errors. Broken equipment, soldering difficulties, a leaky liquid nitrogen thermos, and ultimately, chaotic data, led to profound frustration. He resorted to curve-fitting to force an exponential relationship, blaming the outcome on faulty equipment and methodology. The conclusion? Physics was a massive mistake; computer science is the only way to go.

(pages.cs.wisc.edu)

Misc failure research woes

Himalayan 'Sprite Fireworks': A Century's Most Impressive Red Sprite Outbreak

2025-03-27

Himalayan 'Sprite Fireworks': A Century's Most Impressive Red Sprite Outbreak

On May 19, 2022, astrophotographers captured an extraordinary display of over 100 red sprites above the Himalayas, including rare secondary jets and Asia's first recorded 'ghost sprites'. A study in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences reveals these sprites were triggered by powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning within a massive storm system. This unprecedented event highlights the Himalayan region's capacity to generate intensely complex upper-atmospheric electrical discharges, rivaling those seen in the US Great Plains and offshore European storms. Innovative satellite and star field analysis was used to synchronize the video, enabling precise timing and linking sprites to their parent lightning strikes.

(phys.org)

Tech red sprites Himalayas atmospheric discharge

Paris Fights Heatwaves with Innovative River-Based Cooling

2025-09-06

Paris Fights Heatwaves with Innovative River-Based Cooling

Facing increasingly severe summer heat waves, Paris is aggressively developing an innovative system that uses the Seine River water to cool buildings. This system transfers heat from buildings to the river water through heat exchangers, maintaining high cooling efficiency even when the river water is warm in summer, reaching up to 15 times the efficiency of conventional air conditioning in winter. However, with rising summer temperatures, the system faces new challenges. How to further improve cooling capacity while protecting the environment has become a crucial issue for Paris to address.

(www.wired.com)

Tech urban cooling

Vienna's Green Social Housing: A Model for Tackling the Housing Crisis and Climate Change?

2025-06-15

Vienna's Green Social Housing: A Model for Tackling the Housing Crisis and Climate Change?

Vienna offers a compelling model for addressing both the housing crisis and climate change simultaneously. The city leverages its extensive social housing program— encompassing roughly 420,000 units— to implement ambitious climate action. This includes large-scale energy retrofits, renewable energy adoption, and incentivizing climate-friendly designs through competitive bidding processes for developers. The result is affordable, sustainable housing that significantly reduces energy consumption and carbon emissions, providing a valuable lesson for other cities struggling with similar challenges.

(www.npr.org)

Tech green housing social housing

Intel's New Laptop Chips Promise Extended Battery Life

2025-01-06

Intel's New Laptop Chips Promise Extended Battery Life

Intel unveiled its new Core Ultra processors at CES, claiming they will significantly extend laptop battery life. Targeted at business PCs and high-end consumer devices, the new chips aim to boost both battery life and AI performance. Tests showed an HP laptop with the new processor running Microsoft Teams for 10.5 hours and Microsoft 365 for 20.3 hours on a single charge, exceeding the battery life of a comparable Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Dell device. Intel also boasted superior performance in generative AI applications. Processors based on Intel's Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake designs will debut in 2025, initially for business machines before expanding to thin and light laptops, high-performance notebooks, and desktop PCs.

(uk.finance.yahoo.com)

Hardware Processor Battery Life

Anthropic Enables Web Search for Claude AI

2025-05-07

Anthropic Enables Web Search for Claude AI

Anthropic has integrated web search capabilities into its Claude API, allowing Claude to access and process real-time information from the web. This empowers developers to build more powerful AI applications, such as those analyzing real-time stock prices, conducting legal research, or accessing the latest API documentation. Claude intelligently determines when web search is necessary, providing comprehensive answers with source citations. Admin settings, including domain allow and block lists, enhance security. Available for Claude 3.7 Sonnet, upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku, it costs $10 per 1,000 searches plus standard token costs.

(www.anthropic.com)

AI

Generative Models: 2024's Breakthroughs and 2025's Predictions

2025-01-04

This article summarizes the significant advancements in generative models in 2024, covering language models, image generation models, and multimodal models. In language models, decoder-only transformers dominate, with Llama 3 series models standing out, while Mixture-of-Experts models are gaining traction. Image generation is dominated by diffusion models, but autoregressive models show promise. Multimodal models, including visual language models and omni-modal models, have made significant strides, opening up broader possibilities for AI applications. The author predicts trends for 2025, including improved reasoning capabilities, more powerful multimodal models, and more user-friendly interfaces.

(nrehiew.github.io)

AI Generative Models

Distro Hiring Lead Solutions Engineer: AI-Powered Sales Platform

2025-03-31

Distro Hiring Lead Solutions Engineer: AI-Powered Sales Platform

Distro, an AI-powered sales platform for industrial wholesalers and distributors, is seeking a Lead Solutions Engineer. This role requires 7+ years of experience in software implementation, system integration, and troubleshooting. Responsibilities include leading customer implementations, providing technical support, and ensuring customer satisfaction. The ideal candidate possesses strong technical skills, project management expertise, and problem-solving abilities. Located in Palo Alto, CA.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Startup Lead Solutions Engineer

Quantum Drama: A Century of Debate Beyond Copenhagen

2025-03-29

Quantum Drama: A Century of Debate Beyond Copenhagen

Quantum Drama, a new book by Jim Baggott and John L Heilbron, offers a comprehensive look at the century-long history of quantum mechanics, going beyond the typical focus on the 1927 Solvay Conference. It delves into the ongoing debate surrounding interpretations of quantum mechanics, highlighting the experimental work of Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger on Bell's inequalities and the theoretical contributions of Zurek, Joos, and others on entanglement and decoherence. While accessible to a broad audience, some technical details might be more readily grasped by professional physicists. The book's timely release coincides with the centenary of quantum physics, providing a fresh perspective on this enduring scientific puzzle.

(cerncourier.com)

Tech Quantum Interpretation

The Unsung Hero of Early Linux: MCC Interim Linux

2025-05-02

Following Linus Torvalds' release of the Linux kernel, Owen LeBlanc created the first true Linux distribution: MCC Interim Linux. This article tells the story of LeBlanc and his creation at the University of Manchester. MCC Interim Linux wasn't known for a flashy interface or vast software selection, but its easy installer was crucial to early Linux adoption. It made Linux accessible to more people, laying the groundwork for later, more successful distributions. LeBlanc's experience also highlights the challenges of early open-source promotion and the differences in technical perspectives between developers and management.

(lwn.net)

Development Linux history

David Lynch's Commercials: Where Art Meets Commerce

2025-03-29

David Lynch's Commercials: Where Art Meets Commerce

David Lynch, renowned for surrealist films like Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, has surprisingly lent his distinctive artistic vision to the world of commercials. From Calvin Klein fragrance ads to Georgia Coffee campaigns and even New York City's anti-littering initiatives, Lynch's commercials seamlessly blend his signature unsettling atmosphere with commercial objectives. Interestingly, some of these ads aired primarily in Europe and Asia, hinting at a wider global appreciation for his unique style.

(www.openculture.com)

Design commercials

Marco Email App's Offline-First Architecture Evolution

2025-08-29

Marco Email App's Offline-First Architecture Evolution

The Marco email app team embarked on a long journey to build an IMAP-based, cross-platform, and offline-first application. They experimented with various solutions, including WatermelonDB, Triplit, and InstantDB, but abandoned them due to performance bottlenecks or functional limitations. Ultimately, they chose Replicache for its superior performance and flexibility, combining it with Orama for robust indexing and search. This story highlights the challenges and opportunities of building high-performance offline-first applications and foreshadows the future of data synchronization: from shared endpoints to shared databases.

(marcoapp.io)

Development offline-first database synchronization

RailsConf 2025: A Final Farewell and a New Beginning

2025-01-04

RailsConf 2025: A Final Farewell and a New Beginning

Ruby Central has announced that RailsConf 2025, taking place July 8th-10th in Philadelphia, will be the last. After nearly 20 years, this final gathering celebrates the legacy of Rails and its community. As a strategic shift, Ruby Central will host only RailsConf in 2025, postponing RubyConf to Spring 2026, where it will become the flagship event. This allows for a higher quality experience and increased support for open-source projects like RubyGems and Bundler. Rails will maintain a strong presence at future RubyConfs, alongside RailsWorld, creating a spring/fall rhythm for major Ruby and Rails events.

(rubycentral.org)

Development

Tokyo Carry Culture: A Designer's Journey & Inspiration

2025-06-25

Tokyo Carry Culture: A Designer's Journey & Inspiration

Designer José's Tokyo trip wasn't just a birthday getaway; it became a deep dive into Japan's carry culture. He observed a focus on practicality, convenience, and compactness, with slim backpacks, briefcases, and crossbody bags being popular choices. He discovered interesting local brands like AS20V, Ramidus, and One Third Research, sparking ideas for new tote bags, crossbody bags, and travel bags. The journey also highlighted the importance of carrying cash, packing light, and choosing the right bag.

(www.tombihn.com)

Design carry culture

Kingston Coal Ash Spill: A Christmas Eve Disaster

2025-03-14

Kingston Coal Ash Spill: A Christmas Eve Disaster

On December 22, 2008, a catastrophic event unfolded at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee. A massive coal ash impoundment, 60 feet high and covering 84 acres, failed, releasing millions of tons of coal ash into the surrounding rivers. This gripping account follows construction worker Ansol Clark as he witnesses the unfolding disaster, having previously voiced concerns about the dam's integrity. The incident highlights the significant environmental risks associated with coal-fired power generation.

(oxfordamerican.org)

Tech industrial accident coal ash spill

AI Job Apocalypse? CEOs Warn of Imminent Disruption

2025-06-21

AI Job Apocalypse? CEOs Warn of Imminent Disruption

Top executives at major US companies like Amazon, IBM, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase are warning employees that AI poses a significant threat to their jobs. While widespread AI-driven layoffs haven't materialized yet, the technology is transforming roles in programming, marketing, and customer service. CEOs are under pressure to demonstrate AI adoption, leading to potentially alarmist predictions that create uncertainty for workers. Some CEOs fear job losses if they don't deliver AI-driven business gains within two years. Economists see limited evidence of widespread job displacement, but the increasing use of AI tools is undeniable, raising concerns about future impacts on the job market.

(www.yahoo.com)

Tech

Unordered Rooted Ternary Trees: A Sage-Powered Combinatorial Adventure

2025-04-08

Unordered Rooted Ternary Trees: A Sage-Powered Combinatorial Adventure

This blog post tackles the challenging problem of counting unordered rooted ternary trees using analytic combinatorics, specifically the Flajolet-Sedgewick method. The author first solves the simpler case of ordered trees, deriving an asymptotic approximation via generating functions and singularity analysis, all implemented and verified in Sage. The more complex unordered case is then addressed using Pólya-Redfield counting, leading to a numerical solution and asymptotic formula, again validated with Sage. The post provides a clear and engaging explanation of complex analysis concepts such as Puiseux series and offers readily usable Sage code, making it a valuable resource for those interested in the intersection of algorithms and mathematics.

(grossack.site)

Development analytic combinatorics asymptotic analysis

LeetArxiv: LeetCode for Arxiv Papers - Hands-on Coding Guides for Research

2025-02-24

LeetArxiv: LeetCode for Arxiv Papers - Hands-on Coding Guides for Research

LeetArxiv offers weekly, step-by-step coding guides based on Arxiv papers, targeting programmers transitioning to research careers. A case study focuses on implementing the AAN Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) from a 1981 paper. The guide provides a C implementation (easily adaptable to other languages) detailing the DCT-II equation and the AAN optimizations: reducing costly cosine calculations, exploiting symmetry, using precomputed constants, and enabling parallelism. The walkthrough covers the algorithm's flowgraph and code, making complex research accessible through practical coding exercises.

(leetarxiv.substack.com)

Development Discrete Cosine Transform AAN Algorithm

Conquering the 10K+ LOC Hurdle: A Structured Workflow for LLMs in Large Projects

2025-09-11

Conquering the 10K+ LOC Hurdle: A Structured Workflow for LLMs in Large Projects

This article details a successful workflow for using LLMs in large projects, exceeding 10,000 lines of code. The author discovered that directly generating an entire system with an LLM is chaotic and error-prone. Instead, a structured approach is presented: hand-write design and architecture documents first, then utilize the LLM as a code generation and transformation tool, iterating on small tasks, systematically reviewing and correcting code, and continuously updating documentation and coding guidelines. This method successfully prevents LLM limitations in large projects, maintaining maintainability and consistency.

(medium.com)

Development

Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max Challenges US Tech Giants, Reshaping Enterprise AI

2025-01-29

Alibaba's Qwen2.5-Max Challenges US Tech Giants, Reshaping Enterprise AI

Alibaba Cloud unveiled its Qwen2.5-Max model, marking China's second major AI breakthrough in less than a week, further rattling US tech markets and intensifying concerns about America's waning AI leadership. The model outperforms DeepSeek's R1 model and demonstrates competitive results against industry leaders like GPT-4o and Claude-3.5-Sonnet in benchmarks including Arena-Hard, LiveBench, and LiveCodeBench. Qwen2.5-Max's mixture-of-experts architecture allows for significant computational efficiency, having been trained on over 20 trillion tokens while using far fewer resources than traditional approaches. This efficiency could reshape enterprise AI strategies, potentially reducing infrastructure costs by 40-60%. However, considerations around data sovereignty, API reliability, and long-term support remain crucial for enterprise adoption.

(venturebeat.com)

AI Enterprise AI

The Plight of a Single Maintainer: The curl Project's Struggle

2025-09-12

Daniel Stenberg, the sole full-time maintainer of the widely used curl project, shared his struggles at the Open Source Summit Europe. Despite curl's massive impact (used in over a billion devices), the project faces challenges from companies leveraging it without contributing, malicious emails, AI-driven DDoS attacks, and the sheer volume of maintenance tasks. While he receives some heartwarming thank-you notes, the burden of maintaining curl is immense, highlighting the difficulties faced by many open-source maintainers working without adequate support.

(lwn.net)

Development maintainer burnout

Super Cars II: The Story Behind the Amiga Classic

2025-08-07

Super Cars II: The Story Behind the Amiga Classic

Spillhistorie.no interviewed Andrew Morris and Shaun Southern, the creators of Super Cars, a 1991 Amiga top-down racing game. Inspired by Super Sprint, Super Cars II added weapons and strategic elements, along with a unique humorous question-and-answer mechanic. Development faced tight deadlines and technical challenges, such as handling graphics and AI on the Atari ST version. Despite rampant piracy, the Super Cars series enjoyed good sales and positive reception. The developers still express interest in creating a sequel.

(spillhistorie.no)

Game

1.5TB of JWST Deep-Space Data Released for Open Science

2025-06-10

1.5TB of JWST Deep-Space Data Released for Open Science

A NASA-backed project, COSMOS-Web, leveraging data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), has released over 1.5 TB of open-access data offering the largest view into the deep universe to date. This dataset includes a galaxy catalog and an interactive viewer, allowing users to search for specific objects and view their properties. The project focused on making the previously available but unwieldy raw data more usable for scientists. Processed using the French supercomputer CANDIDE, the data provides an invaluable resource for studying the reionization process in the early universe and is now open to the global scientific community for further research and discovery.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech Astronomy Data

Three Tips to Conquer Difficult Problems in Software Development

2025-08-23

Three Tips to Conquer Difficult Problems in Software Development

Conquering tough problems in software development isn't easy. This article suggests three practical tips: First, actively listen to your teammates' difficulties and directly ask, "Why is this hard?" Second, encourage deep exploration of seemingly impossible solutions, investigating their feasibility under specific conditions. Even if not ultimately adopted, this process sparks new ideas. Finally, design multiple solutions; even if seemingly time-consuming, a deeper understanding of the problem provides more leverage for the final implementation. Ultimately, collective understanding is far more important than the code itself.

(programmersstone.blog)

Development

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