Boris Okunskiy has released Differential Growth, a Blender add-on that procedurally generates organic shapes and patterns inspired by nature. This free, open-source addon allows users to simulate growth processes, creating textures and forms reminiscent of lichen, lettuce, and algae. The author encourages users to download, experiment, and share their creations within the community.
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Austrian conceptual artist Michael Marcovici's project, "Rat Traders," trained rats to predict foreign exchange futures prices. He converted price fluctuations into piano notes, and the rats predicted subsequent note changes. Surprisingly, trained rats seemingly outperformed human traders after months, though this lacked rigorous statistical testing. Marcovici's project satirizes the belief in market prediction and the human desire for shortcuts to profit in a chaotic system. The project ultimately ended due to rats' limited trading capacity, highlighting the unreliability of market prediction.
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The "How to Design Languages" track at Racket School 2019 offered a deep dive into language-oriented programming and language building using Racket. The curriculum covered core concepts like macro expansion, modules, and type checking, reinforced with hands-on labs. Participants built simple macros and typed languages, gaining a practical understanding of language design principles. Lectures and labs provided a balanced learning experience, culminating in the ability to design and build custom languages.
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Fine-tuning large language models typically requires substantial computational resources. This article introduces LoRA, a parameter-efficient fine-tuning technique. LoRA significantly reduces the number of parameters needing training by inserting low-rank matrices as adapters into a pre-trained model, thus lowering computational and storage costs. This first part explains the principles behind LoRA, including the shortcomings of traditional fine-tuning, the advantages of parameter-efficient methods, and the mathematical basis of low-rank approximation. Subsequent parts will delve into the specific implementation and application of LoRA.
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Researchers achieved a >97% win rate against the state-of-the-art Go AI, KataGo, by training adversarial policies. These adversaries didn't win by playing Go well, but by tricking KataGo into making critical blunders. The attack transferred zero-shot to other superhuman Go AIs and was simple enough for human experts to replicate without algorithmic assistance. The vulnerability persisted even after KataGo was adversarially trained to defend against it, highlighting surprising failure modes in even superhuman AI systems.
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Harvard University, in collaboration with Microsoft and OpenAI, has released a massive AI training dataset comprising nearly 1 million public domain books. Created by Harvard's Institutional Data Initiative, this dataset aims to 'level the playing field' by providing smaller players and individual researchers access to high-quality training data previously only available to large tech companies. Similar to the impact of Linux, this resource, spanning various genres, decades, and languages, will fuel AI model development. However, companies will still need additional licensed data to differentiate their models.
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The National Cryptologic Museum has opened exciting new exhibits ranging from psychic espionage to the search for extraterrestrial life. The "Project Star Gate" exhibit reveals the Cold War-era government program using psychics for intelligence gathering, featuring artwork from agent Joe McMoneagle. The "Mind Machine" exhibit demonstrates the power of the mind to alter machine output, while the "SETI" exhibit explores the search for alien life, including attempts to communicate via radio signals. New permanent exhibits include a linguist's dream—a Language Whiteboard—and a "You Are Leaving the American Sector" sign from the Berlin Wall. These captivating exhibits are on display until mid-December.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed the first case of severe bird flu in the United States. A Louisiana resident over 65 with underlying health conditions is hospitalized with severe respiratory illness due to avian influenza. The patient had contact with backyard birds, and genomic data shows the virus strain matches one recently spreading in US wild birds and poultry. While 61 human cases have been reported in the US since April, most were mild and recovered with antiviral treatment. The CDC stresses the risk of human-to-human transmission is low, but advises precautions for those working with or around poultry.
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AWS engineer Daniel Doubrovkine shares his experience with maintaining a public CHANGELOG of his work. By openly documenting his weekly tasks, he fosters transparency and collaboration. This practice has yielded significant benefits: more productive 1:1s, smoother onboarding for new engineers, easy access to past work, enhanced self-reflection, and increased trust among colleagues. He encourages others to adopt this approach and shares his simple logging method along with a Ruby script for generating a yearly table of contents.
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ast-grep is an Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)-based code search tool designed for ease of use, expressiveness, and precision. This blog post delves into the design space of code search queries, categorizing them into informal queries, formal queries based on existing programming languages, formal queries using custom languages, and hybrid queries. Each type's strengths and weaknesses are analyzed. ast-grep employs a hybrid approach, allowing users to write queries using familiar programming language syntax and offering more powerful expressiveness through YAML configuration files or a programmatic API for precise code search.
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Destination 2D, a California-based startup, claims to have solved two longstanding challenges in integrating graphene into chip manufacturing: high-temperature deposition and low charge carrier density. They've developed a technique to deposit graphene interconnects at 300°C, compatible with traditional CMOS processes. Furthermore, using intercalation doping, they've achieved graphene current densities 100 times that of copper. This technology promises to extend Moore's Law and support future generations of semiconductor technology.
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GitHub Assistant is a proof-of-concept project that lets users explore GitHub repositories using natural language questions. Built with Relta and assistant-ui, it allows users to ask questions in plain English and receive relevant repository information. The Relta sub-module is currently closed source but available upon request. Requires Python 3.9+, npm, Git, and configuration of an OpenAI API key and database connection URI.
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Three new types of superconductors were discovered this year, challenging our understanding of this phenomenon. These two-dimensional materials, like graphene, exhibit unprecedented flexibility, switching between insulating, conducting, and superconducting states with simple adjustments. One even defies expectations by strengthening in a magnetic field. These discoveries deepen the mystery of superconductivity while offering hope for room-temperature superconductors, potentially revolutionizing energy and transportation.
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This article explores key events and misconceptions surrounding the development of highways after World War II. It clarifies that Germany's Autobahn was not initially designed for military purposes, but rather to stimulate the economy and enhance national prestige. While Allied forces utilized the Autobahn in the later stages of WWII, this wasn't its original intent. The article debunks the myth that the US Interstate system was designed with one mile in five being straight and level for emergency bomber landings, explaining its true purpose was civilian benefit and economic development, although it also served military needs, such as troop movement and industrial production. Finally, the article reviews post-WWII attempts and exercises by various militaries to utilize highways as emergency runways for aircraft, highlighting their limitations and ultimate replacement by dedicated airfields.
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A friend, Victor, conducted a unique experiment exploring the impact of language on personality. Using a standardized personality test on English/German bilinguals, he found half showed significant personality shifts depending on the language used. This fascinating result sparked a discussion on coordinate and compound bilingualism, and touched upon linguistic relativity and determinism. While the data is limited, Victor's study hints at a subtle but intriguing link between language and personality.
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This article recounts the author's experience at an international ventriloquism convention. The convention brought together ventriloquists and their puppets from around the world, creating a vibrant and unusual atmosphere. The author vividly describes the diverse attendees, captivating performances, and the techniques behind the art of ventriloquism, revealing the unique charm and legacy of this ancient art form. The piece also explores the future of ventriloquism and its reflection of human nature and the profound implications of performance art, offering a captivating blend of entertainment and insightful reflection.
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The rise of generative AI and AI-based developer tools is reshaping best practices in AI product management. This article highlights the importance of using concrete examples (inputs and desired outputs) to clearly define product specifications. This not only helps teams move faster but also improves the efficiency of assessing technical feasibility. For example, prompting LLMs to test their accuracy on specific tasks allows for quick validation of product ideas. Furthermore, tools like Replit and Vercel empower product managers to build prototypes independently and gather user feedback, accelerating iteration. In short, AI is revolutionizing AI product management, demanding that product managers master new best practices to meet the rapidly evolving market demands.
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The isle project has achieved a functionally complete decompilation of the classic game LEGO Island (Version 1.1, English) released in 1997. The goal is to create an accurate representation of the original game's code, matching recompiled instructions to the original machine code. Both ISLE.EXE and LEGO1.DLL are fully decompiled and functionally identical to the originals. Further work focuses on improving code accuracy, naming, documentation, and structure. While some bugs may remain, the game is playable. The project uses CMake and recommends Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2 for compiling for optimal accuracy.
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Alvaro Duran's "The Payments Engineer Playbook" introduces a revolutionary approach to payment system design: processing payments without a database. He argues that the prevalence of asynchronous programming stems from the assumption of database necessity. Using event sourcing, each step in the payment process is recorded as an event, not as a persistent state. These events are temporarily stored in memory, and the system reconstructs the payment status from the event stream, eliminating the need for persistent storage. This high-performance, high-reliability approach, inspired by high-frequency trading, allows for quick recovery from outages through hot backups. The article details this concept using a payment flow example and looks toward future applications in payment systems.
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Artemis is a web reader designed for a calm and peaceful reading experience. It updates once a day around 12 am in your timezone, allowing you to leisurely check your favorite websites. Artemis prioritizes a minimalist and slow design, promoting a relaxed browsing experience. It's free to use and offers information on data storage and accessibility, with contact details provided for tech support.
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A study tracking over 3 million employees at 54 S&P 500 high-tech and financial firms reveals that return-to-office (RTO) mandates are causing companies to lose top talent and struggle to find replacements. The research found a 14 percent average increase in employee turnover after RTO policies were implemented, with senior and skilled employees more likely to leave. Women experienced nearly three times the attrition rate of men. Furthermore, RTO mandates prolonged hiring times and increased costs. Companies' attempts to enforce RTO policies through surveillance tactics, such as VPN tracking and badge swipe monitoring, fueled employee resentment and furthered the exodus. The study suggests that RTO mandates reflect a culture of distrust and ineffective management, leading to decreased employee engagement.
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NVIDIA researchers have developed Meshtron, a novel model capable of generating high-quality 3D meshes at unprecedented scale and fidelity. Employing an autoregressive architecture and sliding window attention, Meshtron represents meshes as a sequence of tokens and utilizes an Hourglass Transformer architecture to efficiently address the scalability and efficiency challenges of existing methods in generating complex 3D models. Generating meshes with artist-like detail, Meshtron offers strong controllability with inputs such as point clouds, face count, and creativity level, paving the way for more realistic 3D asset generation in animation, gaming, and virtual environments.
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In 1983, a programmer working at a large defense contractor planned to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry. A chance conversation over a wall with the manager of the neighboring "Microcomputer Group" (a tinkerer) led to an invitation to a meeting about Apple II. There, he was tasked with building a VT-100 terminal emulator in 6502 assembly language within a week to enable the company president to read email at home. This experience not only redirected his career path, leading him to join the Microcomputer Group and become the company's sole PC programmer, but also ultimately led him to start his own company. Years later, he reflected on how chance encounters and interpersonal connections significantly shaped his life.
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Mitchell Hashimoto's journey to release Ghostty 1.0, his terminal emulator, spanned two years and overcame numerous challenges. Initially a personal project to explore Zig and graphics programming, Ghostty unexpectedly gained significant traction. To balance family life and development, Hashimoto employed a private beta, yielding invaluable community feedback but also resulting in frustration from those excluded. Ghostty 1.0 distinguishes itself with its unique tech stack (Zig core and platform-specific GUIs) and impressive performance. Future plans include open-sourcing the core library, libghostty, to further expand Ghostty's impact.
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The surprisingly high fertility rate among employees of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer, has drawn significant attention. While TSMC employees constitute only 0.3% of Taiwan's population, they account for 1.8% of all babies born in Taiwan—meaning one in every fifty Taiwanese babies is a 'TSMC baby'. This phenomenon is attributed to TSMC's family-friendly policies, including childcare services from 7 am to 8 pm, flexible work arrangements, and generous maternity leave. The company's culture, fostering positive peer interactions and encouraging parenthood, also plays a vital role, creating a positive feedback loop that boosts birth rates.
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Recent data reveals an unexpected improvement in American health, with decreases in drug overdose deaths, traffic fatalities, obesity rates, and murder rates. This contrasts sharply with America's long-standing image as a "rich death trap." While some attribute this to effective policies like increased access to drug addiction treatment and expanded availability of Narcan, experts suggest these policies' impact might be overstated. Other factors, such as the natural decline in overdose deaths post-pandemic and changes in law enforcement, likely played a role. The precise causes of this improvement remain unclear, highlighting the complexities of reality often obscured by simplistic explanations.
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This article delves into the low-level mechanics of a running program. Using the analogy of a video game cartridge on an NES, it explains how modern operating systems virtualize program execution. Key concepts like virtual address spaces, threads of execution, executable images, loaders, modules, and processes are detailed. The article explains how virtual address spaces, via page tables, map virtual addresses to physical addresses, allowing multiple programs to share physical memory without interference. It also covers thread scheduling, executable image formats (PE and ELF), the loader's role, and dynamic module loading/unloading. Finally, it summarizes the concept of a process, which integrates threads, modules, and virtual address spaces.
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While improving a DOS emulator, a developer stumbled upon a seemingly trivial bug in file I/O: appending text to a file using the `echo` command produced unexpected results. Debugging revealed a flaw in how C runtime libraries handle switching between reading and writing, a flaw tracing back to the 1970s and even earlier UNIX systems. The article delves into the historical context, from early K&R C to modern C standards, exploring implementation differences across various UNIX versions and C compilers. The root cause is identified as limitations in early C libraries' handling of update mode, with variations in how different operating systems and compilers addressed these limitations. The author concludes that even today, for portable C code, an explicit `fseek` call is necessary when switching between reading and writing a file.
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A Milan court has ordered Cloudflare to block pirate streaming services offering Serie A football matches across all its services, including CDN, DNS, WARP, and proxy. The court ruled Cloudflare's services facilitate access to illegal streams, undermining Italy's 'Piracy Shield' legislation. The order also mandates broad data disclosure, requiring Cloudflare to identify customers using its services for piracy. This landmark ruling highlights the responsibility of third-party intermediaries in combating digital piracy and represents a significant step forward in anti-piracy efforts.
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A paper titled "Dispelling the nice or naughty myth" claims Santa Claus's gift-giving isn't solely based on children's behavior but strongly correlates with socioeconomic status. The study reveals that children in impoverished areas are less likely to receive gifts, raising ethical concerns and sparking debate. A cited Reddit comment suggests Santa's contract prevents altering socioeconomic status, limiting his ability to reach all children. The commentary section criticizes the methodology, sample selection, and even Santa's delivery timing and routes, suggesting Brexit voting data should be included. The paper's publication has caused a stir, with some even calling for its retraction.
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