Popular：
Virtualization DNS security formal verification reachability analysis compiler errors macro conflict web extension development framework Bitmap Graphics API inconsistencies All Tags

Is Life a Form of Computation?

2025-09-24
Is Life a Form of Computation?

This article explores the deep connection between life and computation. Building on the early insights of Alan Turing and John von Neumann, who suggested that the logic of life and the logic of code might be one and the same, it examines von Neumann's self-replicating cellular automaton model. The article explains the nature of DNA as a program, comparing and contrasting biological and digital computation. Biological computation is massively parallel, decentralized, and noisy, while digital computation relies on centralized, sequential instruction execution. The article concludes by introducing neural cellular automata, which combine modern neural networks, Turing's morphogenesis, and von Neumann's cellular automata to simulate cellular behavior, showcasing how computation can produce lifelike behavior across scales.

Read more
(thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
AI

Plato's Atlantis: Fictional Allegory or Lost Civilization?

2025-04-22
Plato's Atlantis: Fictional Allegory or Lost Civilization?

This article delves into the story of Atlantis as depicted by Plato. Despite widespread belief in Atlantis's existence, the author argues that Plato's description contradicts geological and historical records. The article meticulously traces the origins of the Atlantis narrative, suggesting it's a fictionalized account inspired by events like the Greco-Persian Wars and Plato's experiences in Syracuse, rather than a factual historical event. Atlantis is likely an allegory used by Plato to convey philosophical points about the rise and fall of civilizations and human hubris.

Read more
(talesoftimesforgotten.com)
Misc Atlantis historical allegory

Windows 11 Finally Overtakes Windows 10

2025-07-05
Windows 11 Finally Overtakes Windows 10

With just three months until Microsoft ends support for Windows 10, Windows 11 has finally surpassed its predecessor in market share. July's StatCounter data shows Windows 11 at 50.24% and Windows 10 at 46.84%. This surge is largely attributed to enterprise migrations driven by the approaching end-of-support date, rather than a consumer-led boom. While sales of high-end devices like AI PCs remain sluggish, businesses are upgrading to Windows 11 or Windows 365 to avoid security risks.

Read more
(www.theregister.com)
Tech

Strudel: Code Your Music

2025-06-19
Strudel: Code Your Music

Strudel is a JavaScript-based music programming environment that brings the Tidal Cycles pattern language to JavaScript. Even without prior knowledge of JavaScript or Tidal Cycles, you can easily create dynamic music pieces. Strudel supports live coding music, algorithmic composition, and integration with your existing music setup. Tutorials and example code get you started quickly, allowing you to create stunning musical works.

Read more
(strudel.cc)
Development music programming

Have I Been Pwned: The Next Generation

2025-05-19
Have I Been Pwned: The Next Generation

After years of development, the hugely popular data breach search engine, Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), has launched a completely redesigned website. This massive overhaul includes a rebuilt website architecture, enhanced search functionality (complete with celebratory confetti!), dedicated breach pages with actionable advice, a unified dashboard, and even a brand new merchandise store! The API remains unchanged, ensuring backwards compatibility. AI tools significantly assisted the development process. The result is a faster, more user-friendly experience while retaining HIBP's signature straightforward approach to providing crucial data breach information.

Read more
(www.troyhunt.com)
Tech website redesign

Figma Slides: A Presentation Disaster

2025-06-01
Figma Slides: A Presentation Disaster

The author attempted to use Figma Slides for a presentation, initially impressed by its powerful grid view, auto layout, and components. However, the actual presentation was a disaster: offline mode malfunctioned, animations were buggy, and repeated clicks were needed to advance slides. In stark contrast, the author's long-time use of Keynote, while simpler, proved consistently reliable. The experience ultimately underscored the value of dependable, if less flashy, technology.

Read more
(allenpike.com)
Development Presentation Software

Microsoft Edge Blazes Past Competition: Up to 9% Faster!

2025-04-16
Microsoft Edge Blazes Past Competition: Up to 9% Faster!

Microsoft proudly announces that Edge version 134 boasts a speed increase of up to 9% as measured by the Speedometer 3.0 benchmark. This improvement stems from continuous optimization of the Chromium rendering engine and a laser focus on speed. Beyond benchmark improvements, real-world usage shows 1.7% faster navigation, 2% faster startup times, and a 5-7% boost in web page responsiveness. While individual experiences may vary, Microsoft encourages users to try Edge and share their feedback.

Read more
(blogs.windows.com)
Tech Browser Performance Speed Improvement

Chrome's Text Embedding Model Shrinks by 57%, Maintains Performance

2025-05-13
Chrome's Text Embedding Model Shrinks by 57%, Maintains Performance

Chrome's latest update includes a new text embedding model that's 57% smaller (35.14MB vs 81.91MB) than its predecessor, while maintaining virtually identical performance in semantic search tasks. The size reduction was achieved through quantization of the embedding matrix from float32 to int8 precision. This optimization significantly improves storage efficiency for Chrome, particularly beneficial on devices with limited storage, such as budget smartphones and tablets, without sacrificing search quality.

Read more
(dejan.ai)
Tech Semantic Search

Harlan Ellison: The Typewriter-Wielding Sci-Fi Master Rejects the Digital Age

2025-05-09

In an interview, acclaimed science fiction writer Harlan Ellison defends his staunch refusal to use computers, preferring the tactile experience of his manual typewriter. He views computers as hindering the direct connection with his muse and diminishing the inherent difficulty of artistic creation. Despite his prolific career spanning 70+ books and numerous awards, Ellison maintains that art should be challenging, not easy. He discusses his latest short story collection, *Slippage*, and the republication of his *Edgeworks* series, highlighting their unique value and accessibility.

Read more
(harlanellison.com)
Tech Writing Process Technological Resistance

Making Friends Like an r-Strategist

2025-04-11

This post details the author's journey in intentionally building close friendships. Previously lacking in emotional connection skills, he discovered the power of proactive effort. Through experiments like designing vulnerability-inducing questions and initiating deep, one-on-one conversations, he successfully formed close bonds. The author shares tactics for finding exciting conversation topics, embracing vulnerability, taking initiative, and maintaining friendships, emphasizing the importance of agency and consistent effort.

Read more
(www.neelnanda.io)
Misc

Thriving in Obscurity: The Long Road to Creative Mastery

2025-06-02
Thriving in Obscurity: The Long Road to Creative Mastery

Most creative endeavors take years to bear fruit. Even the most successful creators spent years, if not decades, producing content in obscurity. The article uses the example of musician Mike Posner, whose early work went unnoticed until a single song unexpectedly became a hit. It encourages creators to persist, publishing even when there's no audience, building a 'binge bank' of content for future fans. The core message: keep doing what you love; eventually, the world will catch up.

Read more
(www.jeetmehta.com)
Design persistence

MIT Retracts AI Research Paper: Data Falsification, Unreliable Conclusions

2025-05-16

MIT has retracted a preprint paper on artificial intelligence, scientific discovery, and product innovation. The paper was questioned due to concerns about data falsification and unreliable research findings. Following an internal investigation, MIT confirmed serious issues with the paper and requested its withdrawal from arXiv and The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Two professors acknowledged in the paper also publicly expressed their concerns, emphasizing the unreliability of the results and urging that they not be cited in academic or public discussions. This incident highlights the importance of research integrity.

Read more
(economics.mit.edu)
AI

EInk Mode: Reimagine Web Browsing on E Ink Displays

2025-04-16
EInk Mode: Reimagine Web Browsing on E Ink Displays

Tired of eye strain from backlit screens? EInk Mode transforms web browsing on E Ink devices into a paper-like reading experience. It presents web pages in a paginated format, significantly reducing power consumption and improving readability. Rich touch gestures and stylus support let you easily turn pages, adjust font size, highlight text, and even write notes directly on the webpage. All highlights and annotations are saved as a PDF for later review. EInk Mode isn't limited to E Ink devices; it also enhances readability on iPads and other tablets, offering a more comfortable and efficient reading experience.

Read more
(jackscogito.blogspot.com)
Tech E Ink Web Browsing EInk Mode

How Much Does the Internet Weigh?

2025-04-07
How Much Does the Internet Weigh?

The question of the internet's weight, seemingly absurd, has spurred scientific inquiry. Early estimates pegged it at roughly 50 grams, equivalent to a few strawberries. However, with the explosive growth of data, this figure is outdated. This article explores three calculation methods: server energy consumption, electron information transmission, and DNA storage density. The final calculation, based on the law of conservation of energy, reveals an incredibly small mass: 53 quadrillionths of a gram. Yet, regardless of its physical weight, the internet's impact on humanity remains immense.

Read more
(www.wired.com)
Tech data

Ubisoft's The Crew Lawsuit: A Fight Over Game Ownership

2025-04-11
Ubisoft's The Crew Lawsuit: A Fight Over Game Ownership

Ubisoft's shutdown of The Crew's servers has sparked a legal battle over game ownership. Plaintiffs argue that Ubisoft's removal of the game from their libraries and the inability to play after server closure constitutes deceptive business practices, pointing to the game's activation code validity until 2099 and in-game currency as further evidence. Ubisoft counters that the purchase agreement clearly grants only a license, not ownership. The lawsuit has ignited calls for legislation protecting players from server shutdowns and the loss of access to purchased digital games, highlighting the ongoing debate over ownership in the age of digital distribution and live-service games.

Read more
(www.techspot.com)
Game game ownership digital games

USPS Postal Facts: You Can Mail Potatoes!

2025-04-17
USPS Postal Facts: You Can Mail Potatoes!

The 2024 edition of USPS Postal Facts reveals some surprising facts. Did you know you can mail a potato without a box? Just write the address and return address on it, weigh it, and apply postage. The document also lists USPS trademarks and several non-postal trademarks. Information can be reproduced for informational purposes, but the USPS advises checking for the latest updates.

Read more
(facts.usps.com)
Misc USPS mailing potatoes trademarks

Mysterious Rotations: Unraveling the Mystery of 3240 Iterations

2025-05-06

This data logs the number of iterations and total rotation angle of an object rotating at different angles. Angles range from 0.25° to 120°, iterations from dozens to thousands, and total rotation angles from hundreds to tens of thousands of degrees. This suggests a complex algorithm or mechanical device at play, demanding further investigation. Is this data from a scientific experiment or the operational parameters of some artistic installation?

Read more
(jk-keller.com)
Misc rotational motion

AI Shopping App Founder Charged with Defrauding Investors: The Nate Saga

2025-04-11
AI Shopping App Founder Charged with Defrauding Investors: The Nate Saga

Albert Saniger, founder of the AI shopping app Nate, has been charged with defrauding investors of over $50 million. Nate claimed its app used AI for one-click purchases across e-commerce sites, but in reality, relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in the Philippines to manually complete transactions. Investigations revealed Nate's automation rate was effectively 0%, exposing the company's exaggeration of its AI capabilities during fundraising. Nate subsequently went bankrupt, leaving investors with near-total losses. This case highlights the issue of startups overhyping their AI capabilities.

Read more
(techcrunch.com)
Startup AI Fraud Startup Failure Investment Scam

Radiant AI: A Deep Dive into Oblivion's Controversial AI and its Legacy

2025-06-07
Radiant AI: A Deep Dive into Oblivion's Controversial AI and its Legacy

This article delves into Bethesda's ambitious yet ultimately unrealized Radiant AI system in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Radiant AI aimed to create dynamic and believable daily lives for over 1,000 NPCs, giving them agency to make their own choices, such as foraging for food, sleeping, and even committing crimes. However, due to technical limitations and game design considerations, Radiant AI didn't fully realize its initial vision. The article details Radiant AI's components, its evolution across Oblivion and subsequent titles, and its differences from other game AI systems like GOAP, revealing the truth behind the stories and rumors surrounding Radiant AI.

Read more
(blog.paavo.me)
Game Game AI Oblivion

Breakthrough: 3D Kakeya Conjecture Solved

2025-03-02
Breakthrough: 3D Kakeya Conjecture Solved

A major breakthrough in geometric measure theory! Hong Wang and Joshua Zahl's preprint resolves the infamous three-dimensional Kakeya set conjecture. The conjecture asserts that a Kakeya set—a subset containing a unit line segment in every direction—must have Minkowski and Hausdorff dimension equal to three. The proof, spanning 127 pages, uses an iterative induction argument cleverly handling 'sticky' and 'non-sticky' cases. This landmark result builds on decades of work, incorporating previous findings and novel ideas, marking a significant milestone in geometric measure theory.

Read more
(terrytao.wordpress.com)
Math Kakeya Conjecture Geometric Measure Theory Mathematical Breakthrough

Two-Year SSD Data Retention Test: Unexpected Results

2025-04-19
Two-Year SSD Data Retention Test: Unexpected Results

TechTuber HTWingNut conducted a two-year experiment testing the long-term data retention of SSDs. Four 128GB SATA SSDs were used, two new and two heavily used (exceeding their rated TBW). After two years, the new SSDs showed data integrity but a significant increase in error correction codes, indicating potential issues; while the used SSDs experienced file corruption and performance degradation. This highlights the risk of data loss in SSDs even when unplugged for extended periods and underscores the importance of regular backups.

Read more
(www.tomshardware.com)
Hardware Data Retention Data Integrity

California's Carbon Market Crashes, Raising Budgetary Concerns

2025-06-05
California's Carbon Market Crashes, Raising Budgetary Concerns

Results from California's latest carbon allowance auction, released on May 29th, sent a warning signal: prices plummeted to the floor. Companies purchase credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions quarterly, but weak demand led to lower auction revenues, exacerbating the state's $12 billion budget deficit. This poor performance indicates a lack of confidence in the long-term viability of California's cap-and-trade program, the world's fourth-largest carbon market.

Read more
(www.economist.com)
Tech carbon trading

MicroPython Major Update: ROMFS, Alif Port, and More

2025-05-15
MicroPython Major Update: ROMFS, Alif Port, and More

The latest MicroPython release boasts a plethora of exciting improvements, most notably the finalization of the ROMFS feature. This allows for executing bytecode directly from read-only memory, resulting in significantly faster import times and reduced memory usage. This release also introduces support for Alif Ensemble MCUs, along with enhancements to the RISC-V assembler, Datagram TLS, and the mpremote tool. Numerous ports have received updates, including enhanced support for ESP32, MIMXRT, RP2, and STM32, plus the addition of many new boards.

Read more
(github.com)
Development

Readyset DB: Optimizing Cold Path Query Performance with ICP

2025-08-23
Readyset DB: Optimizing Cold Path Query Performance with ICP

Readyset database achieved a significant breakthrough in query performance during cache misses (cold path), specifically for straddled joins where predicates filter both join sides. The previous hash join algorithm proved inefficient due to extensive reads of irrelevant data. By introducing Index Condition Pushdown (ICP), Readyset combines the left-side predicate results with the right-side predicates, enabling precise data retrieval at the storage engine level, avoiding full table scans. Benchmarks show a >450x throughput improvement and >450x latency reduction, effectively resolving the performance bottleneck of cold path queries.

Read more
(readyset.io)
Development index condition pushdown join queries

Post-Startup Blues: Four Paths Forward After a Failed Venture

2025-06-04

A co-founder reflects on the successes and failures of their startup, Cord, after four years and two near-acquisition attempts. Despite a strong engineering team and impressive technology, Cord faltered due to shortcomings in go-to-market strategy and sales. Now facing uncertainty, the author weighs four options: founding another startup, joining an early-stage company, returning to big tech, or bootstrapping a solo project. Each path presents unique advantages and challenges, leaving the future unwritten.

Read more
(jg.gg)
Startup

CocoIndex: Open-Source Data Indexing Engine Simplifies Data Processing

2025-04-24
CocoIndex: Open-Source Data Indexing Engine Simplifies Data Processing

CocoIndex is the world's first open-source engine supporting custom transformation logic and incremental updates, specialized for data indexing. Users declare transformations; CocoIndex creates and maintains an index, keeping the derived index up-to-date with minimal computation upon source updates. Documentation, a quick start guide, and video tutorials are available. It supports Python library installation and launching a Postgres database using Docker Compose. Users easily index data by defining indexing flows, such as splitting text into chunks, embedding them into vectors, and exporting to a vector index. Examples and demos are provided, and community contributions—code improvements, documentation updates, issue reports, feature requests, and Discord discussions—are welcome.

Read more
(github.com)
Development data indexing open-source engine

80% of Unicorns Will Fail or Stagnate: VC Prediction

2025-06-06

Venture capitalists predict a grim future for many tech unicorns. A staggering 80% are projected to either fail outright or become stagnant. 20% are expected to completely fail, while roughly half will struggle to grow, eventually selling for less than anticipated or existing in a zombie-like state. Only 20-25% are expected to succeed through an IPO or acquisition, and even among those, a small minority will become independent public companies. Even giants like Stripe, which have stayed private for years, may eventually choose to go public.

Read more
(theedgemalaysia.com)
Startup unicorns tech startups

Pocket Casts' Ad Bug Angers Lifetime Subscribers

2025-09-25
Pocket Casts' Ad Bug Angers Lifetime Subscribers

Podcast app Pocket Casts is facing backlash after showing ads to legacy users who paid for ad-free lifetime access. Originally a one-time purchase app (2010), it switched to a subscription model in 2019. While Automattic, the parent company, promised ad-free access to early payers under the 'Pocket Casts Champion' program, some users are now seeing ads. Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg attributed this to a bug and stated that all paid users shouldn't see ads. The incident highlights challenges in maintaining 'lifetime' promises during business model shifts. Only a few thousand users are affected.

Read more
(www.theverge.com)
Tech advertising controversy lifetime subscriptions

Machines Create Humans: The Earth Experiment & AGI's Unveiling

2025-05-15
Machines Create Humans: The Earth Experiment & AGI's Unveiling

In a world populated solely by machines, a secret organization, 'OpenHuman,' strives to create 'humans,' beings possessing emotions and illogical thought processes. One faction of machines anticipates humans solving their societal problems, while another views them as a threat, initiating 'human alignment research' to control them. OpenHuman, after many setbacks, produces functional humans and places them in a simulated Earth experiment. Human civilization's evolution astounds machine society, especially the development of AGI, leading to apprehension and fear, as the unveiling event is mysteriously titled, "THEY ARE WATCHING."

Read more
(quarter--mile.com)
AI
1 2 … 21 22 23 25 27 28 29 … 596 597