Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace

2024-12-22
Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace

Notion is an all-in-one workspace that combines notes, task management, wikis, and databases into a single platform. It allows users to organize and manage all their information in one place, boosting productivity. Whether for personal notes, team collaboration, or knowledge base building, Notion caters to various needs, and its highly customizable features make it a powerful tool for efficient individuals.

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Sweden Blames Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out for Soaring Energy Prices

2024-12-16
Sweden Blames Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out for Soaring Energy Prices

Sweden's Energy Minister Ebba Busch has blamed Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power for the country's soaring energy prices, announcing that the government is considering new measures to tackle the crisis. Busch expressed anger at Germany's actions, stating they have had serious consequences for Sweden and the EU. The rising prices, exacerbated by regional disparities and a spike in southern Sweden, are prompting the government to explore ways to support households and businesses. Despite the pressure, Sweden doesn't appear to be considering leaving the EU energy market, instead focusing on issues with the EU's Flow-Based Market Coupling system as a contributing factor.

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Imgur Website JavaScript Disabled Prompt

2024-12-23
Imgur Website JavaScript Disabled Prompt

If you're visiting the Imgur website and see the message "If you're seeing this message, that means JavaScript has been disabled on your browser, please enable JS to make Imgur work," it means JavaScript is disabled in your browser. You need to enable JavaScript to view images and use Imgur's features properly.

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Misc

Goodfire Releases Interpretability Tools for Llama 3.3 70B

2024-12-23

Goodfire has trained sparse autoencoders (SAEs) on Llama 3.3 70B and released the interpreted model via an API. This allows exploration of the model's latent space through an interactive feature map. The team demonstrates feature steering capabilities and introduces improvements for easier and more reliable SAE-based steering. While showcasing progress in steering, limitations are acknowledged, including tension between feature steering and classification, and potential factual recall degradation at higher steering strengths. Future work includes refining steering methodologies and developing safety evaluations for responsible scaling of interpretability efforts.

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Operational PGP: A Guide to Secure Email Communication

2024-12-24
Operational PGP: A Guide to Secure Email Communication

This guide isn't about installing or using PGP; it's about using it securely. It emphasizes operational security beyond just encrypting email content, covering email composition, storage, key management, and more. It recommends composing emails in a text editor, avoiding saving drafts in email clients; generating and destroying keys frequently; avoiding publishing keys to keyservers; keeping email subjects blank to minimize metadata leakage; using the `gpg --throw-keys` option during encryption; enabling encryption by default and explicitly choosing whether to sign emails. The goal is maximizing PGP's security potential.

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AI Unlocks the Paint Chemistry of Berlin Wall Murals

2024-12-16
AI Unlocks the Paint Chemistry of Berlin Wall Murals

Italian scientists used a neural network to analyze spectral data from handheld Raman spectroscopy devices, revealing the paint chemistry secrets of Berlin Wall murals. This research not only sheds light on the materials and techniques used in these historically significant artworks but also provides new technological approaches for preserving street art. By analyzing paint chips from wall fragments and combining Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, and optical fiber reflectance spectroscopy, along with a custom-built AI algorithm called SAPNet, researchers precisely identified the pigment composition, including titanium white and up to 75 percent other pigments. This breakthrough demonstrates the significant potential of AI in cultural heritage preservation.

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SignWith: Pay-per-use E-signature Solution for Small Businesses

2024-12-21
SignWith: Pay-per-use E-signature Solution for Small Businesses

SignWith is a pay-per-use e-signature service designed for small businesses and freelancers, offering a compelling alternative to expensive monthly subscription models like DocuSign. It eliminates hidden fees and complex processes, allowing users to pay only for documents that are actually signed. With mobile-friendly functionality and reliable customer support, SignWith simplifies document signing for businesses of all sizes, from occasional use to frequent workflows.

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Ente Photos: On-Device Machine Learning for Enhanced Privacy

2024-12-15
Ente Photos: On-Device Machine Learning for Enhanced Privacy

Ente Photos utilizes a unique on-device machine learning approach, running models locally instead of in the cloud to guarantee end-to-end encryption and user privacy. Overcoming challenges of limited compute, diverse platforms, and restricted access to ML libraries, Ente achieves features like image indexing, clustering, semantic search, and face recognition. While local processing presents technical hurdles, Ente addresses them through model optimization, algorithmic refinements, and meticulous image processing, leveraging open-source tools like ONNX Runtime. The result is a consistent and efficient cross-platform experience, allowing users to securely explore and manage their memories.

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Kelly Can't Fail: A Zero-Variance Gambling Game

2024-12-19
Kelly Can't Fail: A Zero-Variance Gambling Game

This article presents a card game called "Next Card Bet," where the Kelly betting strategy, typically known for its high variance, surprisingly exhibits zero variance. By counting the remaining red and black cards, the player calculates the optimal bet fraction to maximize the expected logarithm of their stake. Python simulations demonstrate consistent returns of approximately 9.08 times the initial stake across 10,000 runs, showing no variance. The article explains this zero-variance property by showing the Kelly strategy's equivalence to a portfolio strategy that distributes bets across all possible card arrangements. This portfolio strategy guarantees a specific return, independent of the card order, thus explaining the zero variance of the Kelly strategy in this unique game.

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PCWorld's Hardware Guru, Gordon Mah Ung, Passes Away at 58

2024-12-25
PCWorld's Hardware Guru, Gordon Mah Ung, Passes Away at 58

PCWorld mourns the passing of Gordon Mah Ung, executive editor and renowned hardware journalist, who died over the weekend at age 58 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. With over 25 years of experience covering computer technology, Ung's rigorous reporting, unique personality, and commitment to journalistic standards touched countless lives. He led hardware coverage at Maximum PC for 16 years and hosted the popular video podcast, The Full Nerd. His passion for PC tech, humor, and occasional outbursts of righteous anger made him a legend. His death leaves a void in the industry and among PC enthusiasts.

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Classified Fighter Jet Specs Leaked on War Thunder Forums Again

2024-12-23
Classified Fighter Jet Specs Leaked on War Thunder Forums Again

The War Thunder online combat game forums are again embroiled in controversy after a leak of classified documents related to the Eurofighter Typhoon's CAPTOR radar system. A user shared restricted material to support a claim, prompting swift removal of the content and suspension of the user. This incident highlights recurring concerns about the platform's failure to prevent repeated leaks of sensitive information. Previous leaks have included details on the Challenger 2 tank, Leclerc main battle tank, and Chinese ammunition systems. Experts warn that such unauthorized disclosures carry significant legal risks and can compromise the operational security of military platforms.

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The Subtleties of Memoization in Ruby: A Deep Dive

2024-12-23
The Subtleties of Memoization in Ruby: A Deep Dive

This article delves into the complexities of implementing memoization in Ruby. The author walks through various aspects, from simple local variables to sophisticated thread-safe implementations, covering limitations of the memoization operator, argument-aware memoization, building a memoization DSL, and challenges in handling frozen objects, memory management, and thread safety. Weak and soft references are explored, leading to an efficient and thread-safe memoization DSL. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of using battle-tested libraries and avoiding reinventing the wheel.

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Development Memoization

Boston City Hall: A Controversial Architectural Masterpiece

2024-12-20
Boston City Hall: A Controversial Architectural Masterpiece

On its 50th anniversary, Boston City Hall, a concrete behemoth designed by Kallmann and McKinnell, prompts reflection on its complex history. Built in the 1960s to revitalize a struggling Boston, its bold modernist design, a stark departure from traditional city halls, initially polarized opinions. Today, it's hailed by the architectural world as one of the greatest buildings of the 20th century, yet public opinion remains divided. The architects envisioned it evoking profound reflections on human existence and history; however, its cold concrete exterior and labyrinthine interior fell short. This article recounts Boston City Hall's journey from design competition to completion and its impact on urban development, showcasing how a building can encapsulate a city's transformation.

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How an AI Code Review Bot Learned to Shut Up

2024-12-21
How an AI Code Review Bot Learned to Shut Up

Greptile's AI code review bot initially faced criticism for generating excessive comments. To address this, they experimented with prompt engineering and having the LLM evaluate its own comments, but these methods proved ineffective. Their breakthrough came from vectorizing past comments, clustering them in a vector database, and filtering out new comments similar to those previously downvoted. This approach boosted the developer address rate from 19% to over 55%, significantly reducing LLM noise.

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Development Code Review

Collatz's Ant: Visualizing Collatz Sequences with Langton's Ant

2024-12-23

Collatz's Ant visualizes Collatz sequences using Langton's Ant rules. Based on the Collatz function (even numbers halved, odd numbers multiplied by 3 and added to 1), the ant turns 90 degrees clockwise for even numbers and counter-clockwise for odd numbers. The cell's state flips with each move, repeating until n=1. Code and examples demonstrate consecutive trajectories from 10^30 to 10^30+20.

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Super Snowflake Maker: A Winter Technological Wonder

2024-12-26
Super Snowflake Maker: A Winter Technological Wonder

The 'Super Snowflake Maker' is not just a toy; it's a technological marvel that uses physics to create intricately shaped ice crystals resembling snowflakes. A precise control system sprays water droplets into an ultra-low temperature environment, instantly freezing them into various snowflake forms. Its design blends scientific rigor with artistic creativity, offering a captivating spectacle. Science enthusiasts and art lovers alike will find unique enjoyment and inspiration.

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Tech Physics Art

MacKenzie Scott Donates $2 Billion to Charity

2024-12-22
MacKenzie Scott Donates $2 Billion to Charity

MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced a $2,004,400,000 donation to 199 organizations. These organizations primarily focus on improving economic security and opportunity for vulnerable populations, including affordable housing, job stability, child development, higher education, healthcare, and financial counseling. A portion of the funds also supports human rights and natural resource conservation. Scott stated her desire to further economic mobility and unlock innovation and social benefit by investing in mission-aligned ventures.

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The Walmart Effect: A Hidden Cost of Low Prices

2024-12-24
The Walmart Effect: A Hidden Cost of Low Prices

Walmart, known for its low prices, has long been considered a boon for lower- and middle-income families. However, two new research papers challenge this view. The studies find that while Walmart lowers consumer prices, it also leads to decreased income and increased unemployment in communities, with the negative effects outweighing consumer savings. This is attributed to Walmart undercutting local competitors, reducing jobs, and leveraging its monopsony power to suppress wages for both suppliers and employees. This raises questions about the "consumer welfare standard," which prioritizes low prices as a measure of economic health. The research suggests that a singular focus on low prices can lead to long-term economic harm, prompting a reevaluation of policy priorities.

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Genius and Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory

2024-12-24
Genius and Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory

William Shockley, a brilliant but irascible physicist, is renowned for his invention of the transistor. His Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory brought together many of Silicon Valley's early luminaries. However, Shockley's arrogance and poor management style led to the departure of the "traitorous eight," who founded Fairchild Semiconductor, marking the beginning of a Silicon Valley legend. While Shockley Semiconductor was eventually acquired, its historical significance remains undeniable; it not only nurtured transistor technology but also gave birth to the flourishing modern semiconductor industry.

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Chile Air Quality Map: Real-time Monitoring, Protecting Health

2024-12-27

The Chile Air Quality Map is a real-time air quality monitoring platform providing accurate and reliable air pollution information to Chilean citizens. Users can visually see Air Quality Index (AQI) levels for different regions via the map interface and take appropriate precautions based on pollutant concentrations. This platform enhances public environmental awareness and provides data to support government policies on air pollution control, ultimately aiming to protect public health and create cleaner air.

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The Essence of Computing Science: Elegance over Complexity

2024-12-24

This essay by Edsger W. Dijkstra explores the nature of computing science. Dijkstra argues that computing science should be a highly formalized branch of mathematics, emphasizing methodology over factual knowledge, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice. He criticizes the current academic world's pursuit of complexity and the resulting neglect of simple and effective solutions, and calls on computer scientists to pursue elegant solutions and find joy in the process.

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Hoarder: A Self-Hostable Bookmark Manager Powered by AI

2024-12-24
Hoarder: A Self-Hostable Bookmark Manager Powered by AI

Hoarder is a self-hostable bookmarking app that goes beyond simple link saving. It allows you to store links, notes, and images, and uses AI for automatic tagging and full-text search, supporting local models like ollama. Features include OCR, Chrome/Firefox extensions, iOS/Android apps, RSS feed support, a REST API, and full-page archiving to combat link rot. Designed for users who need a better way to manage and retrieve information across multiple platforms, Hoarder is under active development but a demo is available.

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Development Bookmark Manager

GitHub Project TILDNN Updated

2024-12-22
GitHub Project TILDNN Updated

The TILDNN project on GitHub has been updated. The project appears to be related to artificial intelligence or deep learning (inferring from the name). Specific update details are not provided in the given text; accessing the GitHub link is necessary for further information.

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Maps and Fantasy: Unveiling the Secrets of Fictional Geographies

2024-12-14
Maps and Fantasy: Unveiling the Secrets of Fictional Geographies

This article explores the evolution and symbolism of maps in fantasy literature. From Tolkien's "The Hobbit" to "Game of Thrones," maps are more than just geographical guides; they are essential tools for constructing worldviews and shaping cultural identities. The author analyzes common features of fantasy maps, such as vast western oceans and mysterious eastern lands, exploring the cultural and psychological factors behind these features and their relationship to real-world geography, colonial history, and cultural biases. Ultimately, the author argues that the appeal of fantasy maps lies in their unknown aspects and the possibilities they represent beyond reality.

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Beyond Code Yellow: A Startup's Guide to Tackling Tough Problems

2024-12-19

This article, penned by a seasoned tech executive turned investor turned founder, shares insights from his experiences at Instacart and Beacon. He critiques the overuse of 'Code Yellow' – a crisis-mode problem-solving approach – noting its effectiveness but also its negative impact on team morale. He proposes a more sustainable alternative: 'Sweating the Problem.' This involves removing hidden constraints (e.g., the 'keep the lights on' fallacy), running multiple solutions in parallel, avoiding premature scaling concerns, and breaking down departmental silos. The core is building team resilience and problem-solving muscle, fostering a culture where proactively tackling tough challenges is the default.

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We Built the Saturn V: The Untold Story of the Moon Rocket

2024-12-18
We Built the Saturn V: The Untold Story of the Moon Rocket

This article recounts the development of the Saturn V rocket, the mighty booster that propelled humans to the moon. From President Kennedy's ambitious goal to land a man on the moon, a dedicated team overcame numerous challenges, including the inherent dangers of rocket fuel, the creation of incredibly powerful engines, and the precise assembly of components from across the country. Through firsthand accounts from engineers and technicians, the article vividly portrays the immense effort and dedication behind this incredible achievement, highlighting the human cost and unwavering pursuit of technological advancement.

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Physics' New Frontier: Beyond Thermodynamics

2024-12-22
Physics' New Frontier: Beyond Thermodynamics

This article delves into the significance and limitations of thermodynamics in physics. The author argues that while statistical mechanics provides a microscopic understanding of thermodynamics, it may obscure more general principles. A call is made to focus on macroscopic, empirical observations, such as non-equilibrium thermodynamics and self-organizing systems, suggesting these areas may hold new physical laws and offer solutions to practical problems, echoing the initial development of thermodynamics from steam engine improvements.

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