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Litestack: All-in-One Data Infrastructure Gem for Ruby on Rails

2024-12-23

Litestack: All-in-One Data Infrastructure Gem for Ruby on Rails

Litestack is a Ruby gem offering a comprehensive data infrastructure solution for Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications. Leveraging SQLite's power, it integrates a full-fledged SQL database, a fast cache, a robust job queue, a reliable message broker, a full-text search engine, and a metrics platform—all in one package. Unlike traditional approaches requiring separate servers and databases, Litestack delivers superior performance, efficiency, ease of use, and cost savings. Its embedded database and cache reduce memory and CPU usage, while its streamlined interface simplifies development. It seamlessly integrates with ActiveRecord and Sequel and automatically optimizes for Fiber-based I/O frameworks.

(github.com)

Development Data Infrastructure

Alibaba Unveils QvQ: A New Visual Reasoning Model

2024-12-25

Alibaba Unveils QvQ: A New Visual Reasoning Model

Alibaba recently released QvQ-72B-Preview, a new visual reasoning model under the Apache 2.0 license. Designed to enhance AI's visual reasoning capabilities, QvQ builds upon the inference-scaling model QwQ by adding vision processing. It accepts images and prompts, generating detailed, step-by-step reasoning processes. Blogger Simon Willison tested QvQ, finding it successful in tasks like counting pelicans but less accurate on complex reasoning problems. Currently available on Hugging Face Spaces, future plans include local deployment and broader platform support.

(simonwillison.net)

AI visual reasoning AI model

PuzzleZilla: Online Jigsaw Puzzle Maker Launches

2024-12-15

PuzzleZilla is a new online platform allowing users to create custom jigsaw puzzles from any image uploaded from their device or the internet. The site offers a wide variety of pre-categorized puzzles, including cars, babies, cities, animals, flowers, nature, girls, landscapes, dinosaurs, castles, movies, anime, cats, dogs, paintings, food, and fantasy themes. Users can easily create and play their puzzles online.

(puzzlezilla.com)

Game online jigsaw puzzle image upload custom puzzle

Implementing Raft: A Deep Dive into Distributed Consensus

2024-12-21

This is the first post in a series detailing the Raft distributed consensus algorithm and its Go implementation. Raft solves the problem of replicating a deterministic state machine across multiple servers, ensuring service availability even with server failures. The post introduces core Raft components: the state machine, log, consensus module, leader/follower roles, and client interaction. It discusses Raft's fault tolerance, the CAP theorem, and the choice of Go as the implementation language. Subsequent posts will delve into the algorithm's implementation.

(eli.thegreenplace.net)

Development Distributed Consensus

Metformin's Secret Revealed: Mitochondria Hold the Key

2024-12-18

Metformin's Secret Revealed: Mitochondria Hold the Key

A new study unveils the precise mechanism of action for metformin, a widely used drug for Type 2 diabetes. Researchers discovered that metformin lowers blood sugar by interfering with mitochondria, the cell's powerhouses. Specifically, it blocks mitochondrial complex I, a crucial part of the cell's energy-producing machinery. This research, published in Science Advances, used genetically engineered mice to demonstrate that metformin targets disease-contributing cells without significantly harming healthy ones. This provides a deeper understanding of how this 'wonder drug' works.

(news.northwestern.edu)

Tech metformin mitochondria diabetes

Amazon Updates FBA Inventory Reimbursement Policy: Manufacturing Cost Takes Center Stage

2024-12-19

Amazon announced an update to its Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) inventory reimbursement policy, effective March 10, 2025. The new policy will reimburse sellers based on the manufacturing cost of lost or damaged inventory, with sellers able to provide their own cost or use Amazon's estimate. While aiming for greater transparency and predictability, the change has sparked seller concerns about potentially lower reimbursements, especially for handmade sellers. Amazon also introduced automatic reimbursements for items lost in their fulfillment centers.

(sellercentral.amazon.com)

Startup Amazon FBA inventory reimbursement manufacturing cost

The World of Tomorrow: Why Did Progress Lose Its Glamour?

2024-12-12

The World of Tomorrow: Why Did Progress Lose Its Glamour?

This article explores the allure and subsequent fading of the 'World of Tomorrow' vision prevalent in the mid-20th century. It traces the evolution of societal yearnings for a better future, from the pursuit of efficiency, order, and speed to desires for exploration, adventure, and achievement, and finally, the longing for security, comfort, and ease. However, as technological advancements became reality, their flaws emerged, such as the blandness of industrialized food and the destructive nature of urban renewal projects. The author argues that disillusionment with progress stems from a misunderstanding of progress itself – the pursuit of 'one best way' rather than acknowledging diversity and individual preferences. To regain progress's charm, understanding contemporary aspirations and providing possibilities for various lifestyles, rather than a single future blueprint, is crucial.

(worksinprogress.co)

Misc Technological Progress Cultural Shift Social Trends

Schrödinger's Cat and Heisenberg's Cut: Quantum Mechanics' Paradox and Interpretations

2024-12-15

Schrödinger's Cat and Heisenberg's Cut: Quantum Mechanics' Paradox and Interpretations

This article delves into Schrödinger's cat thought experiment and its impact on popular culture. Schrödinger proposed this experiment to highlight the absurdity of superposition in quantum mechanics, not to suggest a cat is simultaneously alive and dead. The article further explains Heisenberg's cut—the boundary between quantum mechanics and classical physics—and how different interpretations (like the Copenhagen interpretation) address this cut. The author ultimately argues that quantum mechanics is a powerful probabilistic calculation framework, but its applicability to the macroscopic world requires further investigation.

(jimbaggott.substack.com)

AI quantum mechanics Schrödinger's cat Heisenberg's cut

The Fall of Stereotype Threat: A Reckoning for Social Psychology

2024-12-19

The Fall of Stereotype Threat: A Reckoning for Social Psychology

This article revisits stereotype threat, a once-dominant theory in social psychology explaining how negative stereotypes impact the performance of marginalized groups. Author Michael Inzlicht recounts its rise and fall, detailing how groundbreaking initial research ultimately failed to replicate in large-scale studies. This led to a critical examination of the theory's validity and broader methodological issues within social psychology. Inzlicht candidly reflects on past questionable research practices, including data manipulation, and concludes that the stereotype threat effect is far weaker and less consistent than previously believed. The article calls for greater rigor and self-correction within the field.

(www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com)

AI stereotype threat replication crisis

New Ocean Predator Discovered in Atacama Trench

2024-12-21

New Ocean Predator Discovered in Atacama Trench

Scientists have discovered a new large predatory amphipod, *Dulcibella camanchaca*, in the Atacama Trench at depths exceeding 8,000 meters. This is the first large, active predatory amphipod found in this extreme environment. The nearly 4-centimeter-long crustacean uses specialized appendages to hunt smaller amphipods. The discovery highlights the Atacama Trench as a biodiversity hotspot and underscores the importance of continued deep-sea exploration.

(phys.org)

Biology deep sea creature Atacama Trench

GitHub Copilot: Your AI Pair Programmer

2024-12-18

GitHub Copilot: Your AI Pair Programmer

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered pair programmer that provides real-time code suggestions based on your code and natural language prompts. It supports multiple programming languages and IDEs, offering free and paid plans to suit various needs. Copilot boasts powerful debugging and security vulnerability fixing capabilities, along with multi-file editing and cross-platform support. While trained on public code repositories, it doesn't copy-paste code but generates suggestions probabilistically, offering an optional code referencing filter to mitigate copyright concerns.

(github.com)

Development AI programming code assistant

Historic Dwingeloo Radio Telescope Receives Signals from Voyager 1

2024-12-19

The historic Dwingeloo radio telescope in the Netherlands, a national monument built in 1956, has successfully received faint signals from Voyager 1, nearly 25 billion kilometers from Earth. Despite the telescope's design frequency not matching Voyager 1's 8.4 GHz telemetry, researchers overcame this by mounting a new antenna and correcting for the Doppler shift. This achievement showcases the ingenuity of adapting older technology for remarkable feats and highlights humanity's enduring quest for space exploration.

(www.camras.nl)

Tech Voyager 1 radio telescope

A New Solution to the Fermi Paradox: Advanced Civilizations May Be Indistinguishable from Nature

2024-12-19

A New Solution to the Fermi Paradox: Advanced Civilizations May Be Indistinguishable from Nature

The Fermi Paradox highlights the contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life and the lack of evidence for it. A new research paper proposes a solution: advanced civilizations might develop sustainable models where technology seamlessly integrates with their environment, rendering them undetectable. This challenges our assumptions about technological advancement and civilization expansion, prompting a reevaluation of SETI and our understanding of our own civilization's trajectory.

(www.universetoday.com)

AI Fermi Paradox extraterrestrial civilizations sustainable development

Quick Texture Generation: An XOR Texture Tutorial

2024-12-18

This tutorial explains how to generate an XOR texture, a simple texture created by XORing the x and y coordinates of each pixel. While not ideal for games or art, it's perfect for testing texture mappers. The article details the XOR operation, discusses the effect of texture size on color brightness, and shows how to generate similar textures using AND and OR operators. A 3D texture example using XOR is also presented.

(lodev.org)

Development texture generation XOR operation

AMD MI300X vs. Nvidia H100/H200 Benchmark: CUDA Moat Remains

2024-12-22

AMD MI300X vs. Nvidia H100/H200 Benchmark: CUDA Moat Remains

SemiAnalysis conducted a five-month independent benchmark of AMD's MI300X against Nvidia's H100 and H200. While the MI300X boasts theoretical advantages in performance and TCO, real-world results fell significantly short due to flaws in AMD's public software stack and insufficient testing. AMD's software proved problematic, hindering usability and resulting in performance trailing Nvidia's offerings across most benchmarks. Despite improvements from AMD engineers, the software stack remains underdeveloped, leaving the CUDA moat intact. This in-depth analysis offers concrete recommendations for AMD to enhance its software and competitiveness.

(semianalysis.com)

Hardware GPU Benchmark Nvidia H100/H200

LHC Unveils 23 Exotic Hadrons, Challenging Strong Interaction Theories

2024-12-20

LHC Unveils 23 Exotic Hadrons, Challenging Strong Interaction Theories

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has yielded a surprising discovery: 23 exotic hadrons, including pentaquarks and tetraquarks, whose structures defy explanation by current theories. This discovery, akin to a fascinating detective story, is driving theorists to develop new models, such as hadronic molecule models and compact tetraquark models. Future experiments at the High-Luminosity LHC, Belle II, and BESIII will provide more data, offering further clues to unraveling the mysteries of the strong interaction.

(cerncourier.com)

Physics hadrons Large Hadron Collider strong interaction

Early Bronze Age Massacre Unearthed in Somerset, UK

2024-12-18

Early Bronze Age Massacre Unearthed in Somerset, UK

Excavations at Charterhouse Warren in Somerset, UK, have revealed a shocking Early Bronze Age massacre. At least 37 men, women, and children were brutally killed and butchered, their dismembered remains discarded in a 15-meter-deep natural shaft. Cut marks and blunt force trauma on the bones indicate a deliberate act of extreme violence, possibly including cannibalism. This discovery offers a unique insight into prehistoric violence in Britain, challenging previous understandings of social stability during this period and prompting further investigation into the motivations and social context of the event.

(www.cambridge.org)

Misc Early Bronze Age Massacre Cannibalism

Bogotá's Ciclovía: A 50-Year Legacy of Open Streets

2024-12-22

Bogotá's Ciclovía: A 50-Year Legacy of Open Streets

Bogotá's Ciclovía, a weekly program closing 75 miles of streets to cars for seven hours, celebrated its 50th anniversary. Born from a 1974 protest against traffic and pollution, Ciclovía has become a beloved tradition, drawing over 1.5 million people each Sunday. Its success has inspired over 400 cities worldwide to adopt similar programs. Ciclovía is more than just a recreational event; it's a testament to community building, improved public health, and a unique solution to urban challenges. The program's longevity and impact highlight its surprising power to foster social cohesion, promote equality, and even resolve political conflicts, demonstrating the potential for transformative urban interventions.

(slate.com)

Misc sustainable transport community engagement

Home Assistant Unveils Open-Source Voice Assistant Hardware

2024-12-20

Home Assistant Unveils Open-Source Voice Assistant Hardware

Home Assistant has launched Voice Preview Edition, hardware for its open-source voice assistant, Assist. Priced at $59, this device boasts advanced audio processing, a sleek design, and extensive customization options, aiming to deliver a private and open voice assistant experience. Seamlessly integrating with Home Assistant, it supports local voice processing and allows for customization of both software and hardware. This preview edition accelerates Assist's development, ultimately aiming to surpass existing voice assistants, support more languages, and offer users greater choice.

(www.home-assistant.io)

Hardware voice assistant open-source hardware

Nordic Unveils VPR: Its First RISC-V Processor, Ushering in a New Era of Heterogeneous Computing

2024-12-26

Nordic Unveils VPR: Its First RISC-V Processor, Ushering in a New Era of Heterogeneous Computing

Nordic Semiconductor has launched VPR, its first RISC-V processor, integrated into the new nRF54H and nRF54L SoCs. VPR, an RV32EMC processor running at up to 320MHz, is designed for software-defined peripherals. The article details VPR's architecture, initialization process, and collaboration with the Arm Cortex-M33. Zephyr's sysbuild simplifies building and deploying VPR applications, enabling heterogeneous computing for enhanced performance and functionality.

(danielmangum.com)

Hardware Heterogeneous Computing

OpenAI Releases Realtime Embedded SDK for Microcontrollers

2024-12-20

OpenAI Releases Realtime Embedded SDK for Microcontrollers

OpenAI has released the openai-realtime-embedded-sdk, enabling developers to utilize its Realtime API on microcontrollers such as the ESP32. Supporting Linux and ESP32S3, the SDK allows for testing on Linux without physical hardware. After installing protobufc, setting the target platform, and configuring WiFi and OpenAI API keys, developers can build and deploy applications. This expands OpenAI's AI capabilities to embedded devices, opening doors for innovative IoT and edge computing applications.

(github.com)

AI Realtime API Embedded SDK

Hadrius Hiring Founding UI/UX Designer, Up to $150K

2024-12-18

Hadrius Hiring Founding UI/UX Designer, Up to $150K

Hadrius, a Y Combinator-backed fintech startup, is hiring a Founding UI/UX Designer. They're using AI to automate the back office for financial firms, preventing future financial crises. The role is full-time in New York City, offering $80K-$150K salary and 0.01%-0.15% equity. The ideal candidate is a highly skilled designer with experience at a design-focused tech company, proficient in Figma, and passionate about Hadrius's mission. The team boasts engineers from Google, Chime, and other top companies, and the company is experiencing hyper-growth, doubling revenue every three months.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development UI/UX Design

TSMC Unveils Nanosheet Transistors: A New Era for Chips

2024-12-15

TSMC Unveils Nanosheet Transistors: A New Era for Chips

TSMC showcased its next-generation N2 (2-nanometer) process at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, marking its first foray into nanosheet transistors. Compared to its N3 process, N2 boasts up to a 15 percent speed increase, 30 percent better energy efficiency, and a 15 percent density boost. This new architecture offers greater flexibility, allowing for the creation of nanosheets with varying widths on the same chip, optimizing performance for different logic units, especially SRAM. Intel's research further validated the scalability of nanosheet architecture, demonstrating a high-performing 6-nanometer gate-length transistor, pointing the way towards continued advancement in chip technology and suggesting a potential extension of Moore's Law.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Hardware TSMC Nanosheet Transistors 2nm Process

HDMI 2.2 to Debut at CES 2025 with Higher Resolutions and Refresh Rates

2024-12-14

HDMI 2.2 to Debut at CES 2025 with Higher Resolutions and Refresh Rates

The HDMI Forum will unveil the new HDMI 2.2 standard at CES 2025 in January. This next-generation standard promises higher bandwidths, resolutions (potentially including 8K at 120Hz and beyond), and refresh rates. The timing coincides with anticipated releases from Nvidia (RTX 50-series) and AMD (Radeon RX 8000-series), suggesting compatibility. A new cable may be required to fully utilize the advancements. This upgrade is poised to significantly enhance consumer experiences with ultra-high-definition media and gaming.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Hardware

Programmer Creates Pseudo-3D Game in Bash

2024-12-20

Programmer Creates Pseudo-3D Game in Bash

A programmer, izabera, has developed a surprisingly impressive pseudo-3D game using the Bash scripting language. This project, a homage to the classic game Wolfenstein 3D, is open-source on GitHub. The code is concise yet the result is stunning, showcasing the power of Bash and the programmer's ingenuity. The repository includes the game source code and demonstration videos. Developers interested in learning more can check it out on GitHub.

(github.com)

Development Game Development

One Woman Dev Team Reaches Two Million Users

2024-12-17

Nadia Odunayo, a software engineer, built The StoryGraph, a reading community app with over a million users, as a solo developer. The StoryGraph helps users track their reading and recommends books based on mood and preferences. This inspiring story highlights Odunayo's grit, technical skills, and the 'one-person framework' she used to achieve this impressive feat. It offers valuable insights for aspiring solo developers.

(brightonruby.com)

Development solo development reading community user growth

Trump and Musk's Daylight Saving Time Plan: A Battle Over Sunlight

2024-12-21

Trump and Musk's Daylight Saving Time Plan: A Battle Over Sunlight

President-elect Trump and Elon Musk propose eliminating Daylight Saving Time, calling it "inconvenient and costly." Nate Silver's analysis uses data to counter this, showing that abolishing DST would significantly reduce daylight hours during summer, negatively impacting schedules and health. Year-round DST, conversely, would cause very late sunrises in winter. Silver argues maintaining the status quo or allowing states to opt for year-round DST are more sensible options.

(www.natesilver.net)

Misc Daylight Saving Time Trump Musk

Meta's Massive Java-to-Kotlin Translation: Conquering Millions of Lines of Code

2024-12-22

Meta's Massive Java-to-Kotlin Translation: Conquering Millions of Lines of Code

Meta has undertaken a multi-year effort to translate its massive Android codebase from Java to Kotlin. This post details how Meta built the Kotlinator, an automation tool, to overcome challenges like slow build speeds and insufficient linters, successfully converting over half of its code. The Kotlinator comprises several phases: preprocessing, headless J2K conversion, postprocessing, and error fixing. Meta also collaborated with JetBrains to improve J2K and open-sourced parts of the process to foster community collaboration. The article highlights null safety handling and various code issues encountered and resolved during the conversion.

(engineering.fb.com)

Development code migration

Java JEP 483: Ahead-of-Time Class Loading & Linking Boosts Startup Time

2024-12-22

JEP 483 significantly improves Java application startup time by loading and linking application classes ahead of time when the HotSpot JVM starts. It achieves this by monitoring a single application run, storing the loaded and linked forms of all classes in a cache for reuse in subsequent runs. This feature requires no code changes and offers substantial speed improvements for large server applications, such as Spring PetClinic showing a 42% reduction in startup time. While currently a two-step process, future versions will streamline cache creation to a single step and offer more flexible training run configuration.

(openjdk.org)

Development

Buzee: Open-Source Full-Text Search App Released

2024-12-14

Buzee: Open-Source Full-Text Search App Released

Buzee is a cross-platform, full-text search application built with Rust and Svelte. It allows for fast searching of local files, folders, browser history, and more, even extracting text from PDFs and images using OCR. Developed over two years, this project showcases a robust architecture using Tauri for performance, SQLite and Tantivy for indexing, and a clean Svelte frontend. While feature-rich, it still has some areas for future development, and the author is releasing it open-source for others to contribute.

(github.com)

Development full-text search

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