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Building a Full Computer Emulator in C: From NAND Gate to Tetris

2024-12-30
Building a Full Computer Emulator in C: From NAND Gate to Tetris

This project aims to build a complete computer emulator in C from scratch, following the NandToTetris course. It starts with a single NAND gate and progressively builds more complex chips like multiplexers and demultiplexers, ultimately culminating in a system capable of running Tetris. Unlike other emulator projects that start at the CPU level, this one meticulously constructs the entire hardware stack. The project is in its early stages, with the author planning to implement an assembler after completing the hardware components.

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(github.com)
Development computer emulator C programming

Rescue Your Crashed Linux System: The Chroot Technique

2025-04-09
Rescue Your Crashed Linux System: The Chroot Technique

Is your Linux system refusing to boot? Don't panic! This post introduces the chroot technique, a true Swiss Army knife for Linux systems. By mounting the hard drive of your broken system into a working one (e.g., a live USB), you cleverly create a new root directory containing the broken system's files and essential system folders. After using the `chroot` command to switch to this new root, you can fix your broken system as if it were running normally, executing commands like `apt update` and `dpkg-reconfigure`. This technique once saved the author's Nanopore GridION device!

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(livesys.se)
Development system repair

Scalable Quantum Computing Takes a Leap Forward with Integrated Photonics

2025-03-01
Scalable Quantum Computing Takes a Leap Forward with Integrated Photonics

Researchers at ETH Zurich have made a breakthrough in building scalable quantum computers. They overcame a major hurdle in trapped-ion quantum computing: instability in ion transport caused by the interaction between optical components and the ion trap. Using ingenious compensation methods, they achieved over 99% fidelity for single-qubit logic gates, paving the way for larger, more powerful quantum computers. This research represents a significant step towards practical quantum computing.

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(physics.aps.org)
Tech integrated photonics ion trap

Leaked Xbox UI Hints at Steam Game Integration

2025-03-21
Leaked Xbox UI Hints at Steam Game Integration

Microsoft accidentally leaked, then quickly removed, an image showcasing a new Xbox UI. The image reveals a cross-device UI seemingly capable of displaying Steam games. Sources say Microsoft is developing an Xbox app update to list all PC games, including those from Steam and the Epic Games Store. While still early in development, this suggests a potential move towards greater PC game platform integration, solidifying the Xbox app as a central hub for PC gaming.

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(www.theverge.com)
Game Cross-Platform Gaming

SpaceX's Fram2 Mission: A Polar Orbit Premiere and a Tale of Space Sickness

2025-04-05
SpaceX's Fram2 Mission: A Polar Orbit Premiere and a Tale of Space Sickness

SpaceX's privately funded Fram2 mission concluded successfully, with four passengers completing a unique flight aboard a Crew Dragon capsule, marking the first time humans have flown directly over the Earth's North and South Poles. Bankrolled by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, the crew conducted various research projects, including capturing aurora images and documenting space motion sickness. While space sickness proved a challenge, the crew overcame it, achieving several 'firsts,' including the first West Coast splashdown and a self-conducted egress experiment. This mission provided valuable scientific data and showcased the potential of private space exploration.

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(edition.cnn.com)
Tech

Michigan's Disruptive Linear Algebra Course: ROB 101

2025-01-08
Michigan's Disruptive Linear Algebra Course: ROB 101

The University of Michigan is launching a revolutionary linear algebra course, ROB 101, for first-year engineering students. The course integrates linear algebra theory with practical application using the Julia programming language, allowing students to solve real-world engineering problems, such as robot navigation mapping, from day one. The hybrid course format offers both online and in-person resources, breaking from traditional engineering math pedagogy and providing early exposure to the practical value of mathematics in engineering.

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(robotics.umich.edu)
Development Julia programming

College Baseball and Venture Capital: A Striking Parallel

2025-06-20

The author uses his son's experience as a college baseball player to draw a clever analogy between the college sports recruiting process and the venture capital fundraising process. He points out that both are full of uncertainty, high risk, and high reward, requiring shrewd decision-making and judgment about the future. The article details the striking similarities in process and strategy, comparing aspects like "pitch decks," "long maybes," and "term sheets." Ultimately, it offers advice beneficial to both athletes and entrepreneurs: clarify your goals, stick to your goals, and choose those who genuinely want you.

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(bcantrill.dtrace.org)
Misc

The $10 Chargeback That Cost $43.95: A SaaS Nightmare

2025-09-15
The $10 Chargeback That Cost $43.95: A SaaS Nightmare

A SaaS company shares its frustrating experience with chargebacks. Despite proactive measures like pre-subscription notifications and easy cancellation options, customers still initiate disputes. The problem isn't just the lost revenue; even winning a dispute incurs fees, making small chargebacks disproportionately costly. The author details a $10 charge that resulted in a $43.95 loss, highlighting the unfairness of the system where banks often side with cardholders regardless of evidence. The company's efforts to fight disputes are questioned due to the lack of responsiveness and effectiveness from both banks and payment processors.

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(medium.com)
Startup chargebacks payment disputes

OpenAI and News Orgs Battle Over ChatGPT Log Data

2025-07-03
OpenAI and News Orgs Battle Over ChatGPT Log Data

A tug-of-war is underway between OpenAI and news organizations over access to ChatGPT log data. News outlets seek access to demonstrate copyright infringement and market dilution of their content. OpenAI, concerned about exposing itself to further legal risk, has agreed only to provide anonymized subsets of the data, and negotiations continue on the search process. Legal experts express concern that judges aren't fully considering the impact on a widely used product and the data security risks involved.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech

Anscombe's Quartet: Why Data Visualization Matters

2025-09-09
Anscombe's Quartet: Why Data Visualization Matters

Anscombe's quartet is a classic statistical example illustrating the importance of data visualization. Four datasets with nearly identical descriptive statistics reveal drastically different distributions and visual appearances. This highlights the inadequacy of relying solely on summary statistics and emphasizes the need to graph data before drawing conclusions. The quartet demonstrates how outliers and influential observations can significantly skew statistical properties, underscoring the crucial role of visual analysis in understanding data.

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(en.wikipedia.org)
Misc outliers

Reviving the UCSD p-System: A Cross-Platform Compilation Legend

2025-04-16
Reviving the UCSD p-System: A Cross-Platform Compilation Legend

The author revisits the UCSD p-System, a cross-platform operating system and compiler from the 1970s. It achieved portability across diverse machines (from PDP-11 to Apple II) through its p-machine virtual machine. The author shares personal experiences using Apple Pascal and UCSD Pascal in high school and plans to rebuild a p-machine emulator in Rust, continuing its legacy and addressing issues with missing documentation and outdated compiler dependencies in existing tools.

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(markbessey.blog)
Development

Rebuilding Culture in a Fragmented Age: The Power of Leisurely Research

2025-03-19
Rebuilding Culture in a Fragmented Age: The Power of Leisurely Research

This essay explores how reading, in an age of information overload, has shifted from immersive experience to passive consumption, and how to rebuild cultural cohesion. Tracing the anxieties of thinkers from Galileo to Susan Sontag about the future of reading, the author argues that the key isn't the disappearance of books but the loss of cultural coherence. The essay advocates for "leisurely research," framing reading as a playful exploration, encouraging proactive questioning, seeking answers, and building knowledge communities through sharing research findings to rebuild cultural connections.

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(kasurian.com)
Misc knowledge communities

Sortition: A Return to Ancient Athenian Democracy?

2025-05-21
Sortition: A Return to Ancient Athenian Democracy?

This article explores the potential of replacing elections with sortition (random selection) of political representatives. Ancient Athenian democracy utilized sortition for council and jury selection, embodying the principle of rotational governance. Today, facing issues of underrepresentation in electoral systems, scholars and activists propose reviving sortition to enhance decision-making's representativeness and inclusivity. The article analyzes the experiences of citizen assemblies in Canada, Ireland, and elsewhere, acknowledging sortition's potential to improve decision quality and representation while highlighting challenges in accountability and public engagement. Ultimately, the article argues that sortition isn't a simple replacement for elections but should complement them, coupled with effective public communication mechanisms, to better achieve democratic goals.

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(thewalrus.ca)
Misc electoral reform citizen participation

Hacking Coroutines into C: A Mad Macro Experiment

2025-07-13

This article details the author's ingenious use of C macros to implement coroutines in embedded software development, avoiding the need for an RTOS and simplifying complex control flow logic. The author illustrates the complexity of the traditional state machine approach with an LED blinker example, then uses macros to transpile coroutine code into explicit state machines, achieving async-like functionality. While this method is verbose, it demonstrates the possibility of concurrent programming without an RTOS and showcases programmer creativity and deep understanding of low-level techniques. The article concludes by recommending Rust for serious coroutine development.

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(wiomoc.de)
Development

UK Tightens Online Safety Act to Combat Self-Harm Content

2025-09-09
UK Tightens Online Safety Act to Combat Self-Harm Content

The UK government has announced urgent action to strengthen the Online Safety Act, designating content encouraging or assisting serious self-harm as a priority offense. This move aims to protect users of all ages, requiring tech companies to proactively remove such harmful material instead of reacting passively. New regulations will compel platforms to use advanced technology to actively find and delete this content before it reaches users, preventing irreparable harm. This change reflects the government's commitment to online safety and mental health and will significantly impact tech companies.

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(www.gov.uk)
Tech self-harm

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.

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(spillhistorie.no)
Game

Codon Compiler: A Glimpse of Faster Python?

2025-03-16
Codon Compiler: A Glimpse of Faster Python?

Codon is a compiler aiming to dramatically improve Python's execution speed. While the author previously encountered compilation issues, recent updates have resolved them. Although a test script didn't show speed improvements, Codon demonstrated significant performance gains in NPBench NumPy benchmarks, reaching up to 900x speedup, largely due to the Codon team's direct port of NumPy. While the author didn't replicate the benchmark results, a trial of a supposedly 300x faster Python script hints at Codon's potential in specific use cases.

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(www.usenix.org)
Development

Cisco Firewall and TLS 1.3 Compatibility Issues

2025-05-22

A company encountered a problem with their Cisco firewall: due to TLS 1.3 encrypting server certificates, the firewall couldn't enforce URL or application access rules based on certificate content. To solve this, Cisco introduced TLS Server Identity Discovery, using an additional TLS 1.2 handshake to retrieve the certificate in plaintext. However, this clashed with expected Postgres database behavior. The actual issue wasn't TLS 1.3 incompatibility, but rather the firewall wasn't configured to block unknown applications; it attempted to learn the certificate for 3 seconds before giving up and allowing the connection.

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(marc-bowes.com)
Tech

Shrinking Godot's Build Size: From 93MB to 6.4MB

2025-03-11
Shrinking Godot's Build Size: From 93MB to 6.4MB

This article details how to drastically reduce the build size of Godot game engine projects. The author systematically optimizes a project, starting with disabling 3D, advanced text servers, and unnecessary modules. Techniques like using the UPX compression tool, WebAssembly optimization (wasm-opt), and Brotli compression are also explored. The article uses a simple 2D bouncing game as an example, showcasing each step's impact with clear before-and-after comparisons. It's a practical guide covering various optimization strategies and their trade-offs.

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(popcar.bearblog.dev)
Development Engine Optimization

Why You Should Ditch GitHub for Your Open Source Project

2025-09-20

This article exposes the problematic aspects of using GitHub, a Microsoft-owned platform. It highlights issues such as limited user control, a centralized model, telemetry tracking, and vendor lock-in through features like GitHub Actions and Copilot. More critically, it details Microsoft's controversial partnerships with the US government and the Israeli military, including providing cloud services to ICE and AI technology to the Israeli Defense Forces, leading to internal employee protests. The author advocates for migrating open source projects to self-hosted solutions like Forgejo or Sourcehut to preserve the spirit and independence of open source.

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(unixdigest.com)
Development

English Hedgerows: A Shifting Landscape Mirrored in Sporting Art

2025-04-30
English Hedgerows: A Shifting Landscape Mirrored in Sporting Art

This article uses sporting art as a lens to explore the history of English hedgerows and their connection to socio-economic changes. Paintings from different eras reveal a fluctuating landscape: thriving hedgerows in prosperous periods contrasted with sparse, neglected ones during economic downturns. The post-WWII eradication of hedgerows for agricultural efficiency is highlighted, challenging the common perception of a perpetually biodiverse pre-1945 countryside. The article argues that the English landscape is dynamic, its appearance shaped by governmental policies, not solely by natural processes.

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(engelsbergideas.com)
Misc English countryside agriculture

A Teenage Encounter with Andy Warhol: A Factory Dream

2025-05-03
A Teenage Encounter with Andy Warhol: A Factory Dream

At sixteen, my obsession with Andy Warhol led to a meeting with the legendary artist. Our first encounter was at a fancy restaurant, where he was accompanied by Bianca Jagger. I sensed a distance beneath his friendly demeanor. Later, I was invited to write for his Interview magazine, an experience that revealed the loneliness and anxiety behind his glamorous facade, and a resonance with my own divided self: a yearning for belonging and a preference for solitude that struggle to reconcile.

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(granta.com)
Misc Andy Warhol The Factory

Programmer's 5-Year UTC Experiment: Ditching Time Zones for Productivity

2025-05-31
Programmer's 5-Year UTC Experiment: Ditching Time Zones for Productivity

A programmer shares his five-year experiment living solely on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). He found that ditching local time zones significantly simplified time management and boosted productivity, even with frequent international travel. While there's a minor learning curve and the occasional need to explain the 'wrong time' on his phone, the benefits far outweigh the inconveniences. The article details his journey and encourages readers to try UTC for a more efficient and less stressful approach to time management.

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(timestripe.com)
Development

Swift Takes on Android: Apple's Language Crosses the Platform Divide

2025-06-27
Swift Takes on Android: Apple's Language Crosses the Platform Divide

Apple's Swift programming language is expanding into Android app development. While Android primarily uses Kotlin, a newly formed Swift Android Working Group aims to make Android an officially supported platform. This group's goals include improving Android support for Swift, optimizing core Swift packages for Android's idioms, defining supported API levels and architectures, and establishing best practices for bridging Swift with Android's Java SDK. Although third-party tools already enabled Swift for Android development, Apple's move signifies a strategic expansion in mobile development.

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(9to5google.com)
Development

SteamOS Breaks Free from Steam Deck, Challenges Windows Gaming Hegemony?

2025-01-08
SteamOS Breaks Free from Steam Deck, Challenges Windows Gaming Hegemony?

Lenovo's Legion Go S is the first non-Valve hardware officially powered by SteamOS, marking SteamOS's expansion beyond the Steam Deck. This $500+ handheld will compete with a Windows 11 version, offering players more choice. Valve also announced a public beta of SteamOS to improve compatibility and plans to support more devices in the future. This move could challenge Windows' long-standing dominance in PC gaming, suggesting a flourishing Linux gaming ecosystem.

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(arstechnica.com)
Game Linux Gaming

NotebookLM Now Offers Multilingual Audio Summaries

2025-04-30
NotebookLM Now Offers Multilingual Audio Summaries

NotebookLM has updated its audio summarization feature, allowing users to select their preferred output language. Whether you upload a Portuguese documentary, a Spanish research paper, or an English study report, the system can generate an audio summary in your chosen language, facilitating the creation of multilingual content or learning materials. For instance, a teacher can share resources about the Amazon rainforest in various languages, and students can upload these and generate audio summaries in their native language, breaking down language barriers and making information more accessible.

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(blog.google)
Development audio summarization

1.5 Years of AI-Assisted Programming: Reflections and Lessons Learned

2025-08-07
1.5 Years of AI-Assisted Programming: Reflections and Lessons Learned

This post shares the author's 1.5-year experience using AI for programming. AI excels at repetitive coding tasks, refactoring, and simple projects, but struggles with complex problems and new development, often introducing errors and inefficient abstractions. CLI interfaces prove more effective than IDEs due to increased developer control. AI aids in design and writing, but 'vibe coding' (relying solely on AI-generated code) is discouraged, leading to significant technical debt and security vulnerabilities. The author concludes that the primary beneficiaries of AI aren't developers, but managers and clients, facilitating improved communication and collaboration. The future of AI in programming is bright, but companies shouldn't use it as an excuse for layoffs.

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(priver.dev)
Development

arXivLabs: Community Collaboration on New arXiv Features

2025-08-09
arXivLabs: Community Collaboration on New arXiv Features

arXivLabs is a framework for collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the arXiv website. Individuals and organizations working with arXivLabs embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who share them. Have an idea to improve the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

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(arxiv.org)
Development

Why Momentum Really Works: A Deep Dive into Gradient Descent Acceleration

2025-04-28
Why Momentum Really Works: A Deep Dive into Gradient Descent Acceleration

This article delves into the mechanics of momentum in optimization algorithms. By analyzing convex quadratic functions, it reveals how momentum accelerates gradient descent and explains the underlying mathematical principles. The article also explores the limitations of momentum and its combination with stochastic gradient descent, offering insights into future research directions. Using clear language and concrete examples like polynomial regression and image colorization, the article provides a comprehensive understanding of momentum's principles and applications, suitable for readers interested in optimization algorithms.

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(distill.pub)
Development momentum
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