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Budget-Friendly 0.96-inch USB Display Dongle: WeAct Display FS Review

2025-09-20

Budget-Friendly 0.96-inch USB Display Dongle: WeAct Display FS Review

The WeAct Display FS is a cheap 0.96-inch USB display dongle designed to add an information display or a tiny secondary display to your computer or SBC. It features a full-color 160x80 resolution display and is customizable with WeAct Studio software, supporting text, images, weather, and more. While officially only supporting Windows, its open-source-based software theoretically works on macOS, Linux, and other systems with Python 3.9+. A Windows-only screen projection program is also included, allowing window projection to the small display, though practicality is limited by the resolution. Available on AliExpress for around $2, a larger 3.5-inch version is also offered.

(www.cnx-software.com)

Hardware USB display small display

Breakthrough: Lithium-Sulfur Battery Retains 80% Capacity After 25,000 Cycles

2025-02-21

Breakthrough: Lithium-Sulfur Battery Retains 80% Capacity After 25,000 Cycles

A Chinese research team has developed a revolutionary lithium-sulfur battery that retains 80% of its charge capacity after an astounding 25,000 charge-discharge cycles—significantly outperforming traditional lithium-ion batteries, which typically degrade after 1,000 cycles. This breakthrough utilizes a novel sulfur-based solid-state electrode composed of sulfur, boron, lithium, phosphorus, and iodine. The addition of iodine accelerates redox reactions, leading to faster charging and discharging. While promising, further research is needed to improve energy density and explore alternative lightweight materials.

(techxplore.com)

Tech lithium-sulfur battery solid-state battery battery technology

AI 'Street Photography' Isn't Photography: The Loss of Authentic Experience

2024-12-21

AI 'Street Photography' Isn't Photography: The Loss of Authentic Experience

This article argues that AI-generated 'street photography' is not true photography. While AI can create images resembling street photos, it lacks the essential elements of real photography: the capturing of actual light and moments, the engagement with strangers, and the inherent risks and rewards of real-world interaction. The author contrasts AI-generated images with their own experience in Brooklyn's Chinatown, highlighting the value of human connection, cultural exchange, and the discomfort and courage required for genuine street photography. The article ultimately warns against the collapse of meaning when simulated experiences replace authentic engagement with reality.

(simone.org)

AI AI photography street photography authentic experience

White House Reverses Course: Sweeping Rescission of Biden-Era Executive Orders

2025-01-22

White House Reverses Course: Sweeping Rescission of Biden-Era Executive Orders

In a dramatic shift, the new Presidential administration issued an executive order rescinding dozens of executive orders and memoranda enacted by the previous administration. These actions covered a wide range of policies, including racial equity, climate change, immigration, and healthcare. The new administration characterized the rescinded policies as "deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical," claiming they undermined American unity, fairness, safety, and prosperity. This move signals a significant departure from the previous administration's agenda, aiming to restore "common sense" governance and unleash the potential of American citizens.

(www.whitehouse.gov)

Misc politics executive orders policy reversal

What Exactly Is a Second?

2025-01-01

This article delves into the evolving definition of a second. Initially defined as 1/86400th of a day, the slowing rotation of the Earth rendered this definition imprecise. In 1967, the second was redefined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom. Cesium was chosen for its ease of isolation and purification, while the specific number of periods ensured backward compatibility with the length of the tropical year in 1900. Although the astronomical definition has been discarded, the cesium-based definition remains in use today.

(www.johndcook.com)

Tech Time Measurement Cesium Atomic Clock

King of the Grid: A Z80 Sandbox Bot Competition

2025-02-25

King of the Grid: A Z80 Sandbox Bot Competition

A Z80-based sandbox game where developers write bots to compete for dominance on a 32x32 grid. Two bots start in opposite corners, battling for survival by gathering food, moving, and cloning themselves. Written in Z80 assembly or C, bots can utilize shared memory for communication. The last bot standing wins! An online IDE and command-line build process are provided, along with game recording and sharing capabilities. This is an AI programming competition challenging algorithmic efficiency and strategic thinking.

(github.com)

Game

250 Years of Ice Cream Trucks: From Gang Wars to Electric Dreams

2025-09-02

250 Years of Ice Cream Trucks: From Gang Wars to Electric Dreams

This article chronicles the 250-year history of ice cream trucks in the UK, from humble beginnings to the eco-friendly electric vehicles of today. It explores the industry's ups and downs, including sanitation issues, gang wars, and the industry's efforts to adapt. Ultimately, the article highlights the unique charm and cultural significance of ice cream trucks and their transformation in modern society.

(longreads.com)

Misc ice cream trucks UK culture

Bullseye2D Premium Edition: Supercharging Your 2D Game Development

2025-07-02

The Bullseye2D team is hard at work on the Premium Edition, packed with advanced features to boost your game development workflow. Supporters and sponsors will get early access as a thank you for their support. Stable features may later be integrated into the core version. Planned features include easy scene management, a sprite animation system, a powerful state machine, fast 2D collision detection, custom shaders, Tiled map integration, a TexturePacker loader, complete game examples, a simple immediate mode GUI library, and native Windows, Mac, and Linux builds.

(bullseye2d.org)

Game 2D game engine

Crafting Compelling Software Release Announcements

2025-06-25

Crafting Compelling Software Release Announcements

This article unveils the secrets to writing engaging software release announcements. The author stresses focusing on improved user experience, not just a laundry list of features. Examples show how to translate technical details into user-perceived benefits – framing bug fixes as improvements to the user experience, not merely bug eliminations. The article advocates for clear screenshots, concise animated demos, and planning the announcement early in development to ensure it directly relates to user value, avoiding vague phrases like "various improvements and bug fixes."

(refactoringenglish.com)

Development

Microsoft Edge Launches Copilot Mode: AI-Powered Browsing Reimagined

2025-07-29

Microsoft Edge Launches Copilot Mode: AI-Powered Browsing Reimagined

Microsoft has released Copilot Mode for its Edge browser, an experimental feature leveraging AI to redefine web browsing. Copilot Mode integrates search, chat, and navigation into a single input box, understanding user intent for faster browsing. It analyzes context across open tabs, aiding in comparison, decision-making, and task completion. Copilot supports voice navigation and advanced actions (with user permission) accessing browser history and credentials for enhanced efficiency. Future improvements and features are planned, with the option to disable Copilot Mode in settings.

(blogs.windows.com)

Tech

YouTube Warns of AI-Generated Deepfake Phishing Scam Targeting Creators

2025-03-05

YouTube Warns of AI-Generated Deepfake Phishing Scam Targeting Creators

YouTube is warning creators about a new phishing scam using an AI-generated deepfake video of CEO Neal Mohan. The scam, spread via private videos, falsely claims YouTube is changing its monetization policy to steal user credentials. YouTube emphasizes that it would never contact users privately with such information. Similar scams have been reported on Reddit, often using emails from [email protected] and leading to malicious downloads or fake DocuSign sites. YouTube urges users to report any suspicious videos.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Nadar: Portraits of a Gilded Age

2025-05-19

Nadar: Portraits of a Gilded Age

In 1862, Japanese envoys first visited Europe, witnessing the marvels of the Industrial Age. Meanwhile, Parisian photographer Nadar captured the era's iconic figures through his lens: from the Japanese samurai to poet Baudelaire, from painter Manet to novelist Hugo. Nadar's portraits transcended mere likenesses, revealing the vibrant personalities and zeitgeist of their time. This article explores 19th-century Parisian culture and the impact of technological change through the lens of Nadar's famous subjects.

(worldhistory.substack.com)

Design 19th century

Beyond RAG: LLM Tool Calling Ushers in a New Era for Semantic Search

2025-05-22

Beyond RAG: LLM Tool Calling Ushers in a New Era for Semantic Search

This article explores methods for implementing semantic search, particularly using LLMs for vector embedding search. While directly embedding user search terms and documents sometimes yields suboptimal results, new techniques like Nomic Embed Text v2 improve embedding methods, bringing questions and answers closer together in vector space. Furthermore, LLMs can synthesize potential answers, then use those embeddings to search for relevant documents. The article also introduces LLM-based Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems, emphasizing that RAG doesn't rely on vector embeddings and can be combined with keyword search or hybrid search systems. The author argues that despite the emergence of long-context models, RAG won't disappear because the amount of data will always exceed model context capacity. The author favors the LLM tool-calling approach, exemplified by o3 and o4-mini, believing it's more effective than traditional RAG (single retrieval followed by direct answering).

(simonwillison.net)

AI

Mozilla Launches Thunderbird Pro: A Paid Upgrade for its Open-Source Email Client

2025-04-01

Mozilla Launches Thunderbird Pro: A Paid Upgrade for its Open-Source Email Client

Mozilla is launching Thunderbird Pro, a paid suite of services designed to enhance its open-source email client, Thunderbird. The suite includes Thundermail (a Gmail-like email service), Thunderbird Appointment (a scheduling tool), Thunderbird Send (a file-sharing service), and Thunderbird Assist (an experimental AI service). Initially, Thunderbird Pro will be free for active community contributors, but will eventually require payment for others. Mozilla may introduce limited free tiers later. This move aims to offer a fully open-source, freedom-respecting alternative to competitors like Gmail and Office 365.

(www.techspot.com)

Development Paid Services

Right to Repair Bills Filed in All 50 US States

2025-02-24

Right to Repair Bills Filed in All 50 US States

After eleven years of advocacy, the Right to Repair movement has achieved a major victory: legislation has been introduced in all 50 US states, granting consumers the right to repair their own electronics and appliances. This grassroots effort, supported by repair professionals, farmers, students, and lawmakers, has seen five states already pass Right to Repair laws, covering one-fifth of the US population. This success highlights growing consumer demand for repairable products and has even led major tech companies like Google and Apple to support some of the legislation.

(www.ifixit.com)

Tech

Issues with Object-Oriented Programming in Guile

2024-12-30

This article explores the discrepancies between Guile Scheme's object-oriented programming system, GOOPS, and Common Lisp's Object System (CLOS), highlighting GOOPS's shortcomings. GOOPS lacks the elegance and robustness of CLOS in several key areas: setter specialization doesn't compose with inheritance, it lacks before/after/around method qualifiers, method combination algorithms are not controllable, method argument specialization is limited, keyword arguments are unsupported, and documentation strings are absent. The author suggests improvements such as mimicking CLOS behavior, adding method qualifiers, and enhancing method argument specialization to improve code elegance and reduce bugs.

(dthompson.us)

Development

Global Variables: Not the Devil You Think They Are

2025-02-03

This article uses a simple counter example to demonstrate how avoiding global variables can unexpectedly lead to bugs. The author argues that the problem isn't global variables themselves, but the hidden nature of data access – "action at a distance". Different variable types are analyzed, and the article explores ways to use global variables appropriately in specific scenarios, such as encapsulating them into functions or using types that only allow append operations, thus preventing issues caused by "action at a distance".

(codestyleandtaste.com)

Development global variables programming bugs data access

AI Teammate: Field Experiment Shows Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise

2025-03-22

AI Teammate: Field Experiment Shows Generative AI Reshaping Teamwork and Expertise

A randomized controlled trial at Procter & Gamble reveals generative AI significantly boosts team productivity and solution quality. Individuals with AI performed as well as teams without, while AI-enabled teams excelled, significantly increasing the likelihood of top-tier solutions. AI not only improved efficiency but also enhanced positive emotions, bridged departmental silos, and enabled less experienced employees to reach the performance levels of experienced team members. This research suggests AI is not merely a productivity tool, but a 'teammate' capable of reshaping teamwork and organizational structures.

(www.oneusefulthing.org)

AI

Debugging Chez Scheme Programs: A Comprehensive Guide

2025-09-18

This guide by R. Kent Dybvig provides a comprehensive approach to debugging Chez Scheme programs. It starts with fundamental techniques like understanding error messages, simplifying code and input, and strategically placing print statements. The guide then progresses to advanced methods, including using Chez Scheme's tracing facilities and debugger to inspect program state and identify elusive bugs. Whether you're a beginner or experienced programmer, this guide offers valuable insights for efficient debugging.

(www.scheme.com)

Development

US Electricity Prices Soar: Wholesale Costs and Transmission Bottlenecks

2025-09-19

US Electricity Prices Soar: Wholesale Costs and Transmission Bottlenecks

Since 2020, US electricity prices have skyrocketed by 35%. This article delves into trends in wholesale electricity prices, finding that the increase is linked to both generation costs and transmission bottlenecks. Independent System Operators (ISOs)/Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) manage electricity markets using Location Marginal Pricing (LMP), composed of energy, congestion, and losses. Analyzing LMP data across various ISOs/RTOs reveals a significant surge in wholesale electricity prices since 2020, partly due to rising natural gas prices. However, transmission bottlenecks are increasingly significant, hindering the movement of inexpensive electricity from low-cost areas to high-demand regions, amplifying price volatility. California's solar power growth and natural gas supply shortages in certain areas exacerbate transmission congestion.

(www.construction-physics.com)

Tech transmission bottlenecks

Delta Air Lines Clarifies AI-Powered Pricing: No Personalized Pricing, They Say

2025-08-05

Delta Air Lines Clarifies AI-Powered Pricing: No Personalized Pricing, They Say

Delta Air Lines is clarifying its AI-assisted dynamic pricing model following scrutiny over recent comments. While a previous statement suggested AI would personalize pricing, Delta now insists it uses aggregated data to inform analysts, responding to competitor pricing and market trends to maximize overall revenue, not individual customer targeting. This clarification comes in response to concerns raised by lawmakers about potential price discrimination. The airline emphasizes it doesn't share personal data with its AI provider, Fetcherr, but the issue highlights growing ethical and regulatory questions around AI's role in pricing.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech AI pricing Delta Air Lines price discrimination

The American Dream: A Tech Founder's Urgent Plea

2025-01-09

The American Dream: A Tech Founder's Urgent Plea

Jeff Atwood, co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse, expresses deep concern about the fading American Dream. He cites soaring costs of housing, healthcare, and education, widening wealth inequality, and low voter turnout as threats to its survival. In response, he announces his family's commitment to donate a significant portion of their wealth: immediate aid to vulnerable groups and long-term investment in projects aiming for social equity and democratic reform. The article weaves together his personal journey, highlighting the challenges and hopes facing American society, and urges collective action to safeguard the ideal of the American Dream.

(blog.codinghorror.com)

Startup Wealth Inequality

Uranus: Not as Cold and Dead as We Thought

2025-08-17

Uranus: Not as Cold and Dead as We Thought

A new study reveals Uranus possesses internal heat, contradicting previous observations. Researchers found Uranus radiates more heat than it receives from the sun, indicating a slow release of residual heat from its formation. This discovery enhances our understanding of Uranus's origin and evolution, informing future exploration missions and potentially providing insights into Earth's climate and atmospheric processes. While Uranus's internal heat is weaker than other gas giants, its energy levels fluctuate with its lengthy 20-year seasons, likely due to its eccentric orbit and tilted spin. This research significantly supports NASA's planned Uranus mission and offers novel approaches to studying radiant energy in other planets, both within and beyond our solar system.

(www.sciencedaily.com)

Tech Uranus Internal Heat

Emulating a GPU on a CPU Using Finite Field Assembly

2025-01-17

Emulating a GPU on a CPU Using Finite Field Assembly

This article introduces Finite Field Assembly (FF-asm), a novel programming language enabling GPU emulation on CPUs. FF-asm uses a recursive computing paradigm, bypassing the need for SIMD vectorization or OpenMP parallelization. It achieves massive parallel computation on a CPU by creating a custom mathematical system based on finite field theory and congruences. The article provides step-by-step code examples demonstrating addition and multiplication in FF-asm, showcasing its potential for GPU emulation.

(leetarxiv.substack.com)

Development GPU emulation finite fields recursive computing

Meru Health: Revolutionizing Healthcare, Tackling Mental Health Challenges

2025-04-01

Meru Health: Revolutionizing Healthcare, Tackling Mental Health Challenges

Founded in 2016, Meru Health aims to help and empower individuals struggling with mental health issues. This diverse team of scientists, engineers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs is dedicated to making treatment for depression, anxiety, and burnout accessible, effective, and outcome-driven. Their mission is deeply personal; driven by founders' losses to depression, they strive to aid those suffering.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Startup

Valhalla: Java's Epic Refactor Nears Completion

2024-12-17

After a decade-long journey, Project Valhalla, Java's ambitious refactor, is nearing completion. Aiming to bridge the gap between classes and primitives, Valhalla introduces value classes that offer the coding convenience of classes with the performance of primitives, resulting in a flat and compact memory layout. At Devoxx 2024, Java Language Architect Brian Goetz provided a comprehensive update, highlighting key features such as value classes, null-restricted types, enhanced definite assignment analysis, and strict initialization.

(inside.java)

Development Value Classes

Luminal: A High-Performance Deep Learning Library with Search-Based Compilation

2025-08-20

Luminal: A High-Performance Deep Learning Library with Search-Based Compilation

Luminal is a deep learning library achieving high performance through search-based compilation. Its core is remarkably minimal, built upon just 12 primitive operations yet capable of supporting complex models like Transformers and convolutional networks. By aggressively fusing kernels and compiling shape-specific kernels at compile time, Luminal overcomes typical RISC limitations and automatically derives complex optimizations like Flash Attention. Its static compilation approach avoids runtime overhead, with Metal and CUDA support enabling fast execution on Macs and Nvidia GPUs. Significant performance gains have been demonstrated on models such as Llama 3 8B.

(github.com)

Development

Open-Source Watermark Segmentation Model from Diffusion Dynamics: Powering clear.photo

2025-04-14

Open-Source Watermark Segmentation Model from Diffusion Dynamics: Powering clear.photo

Diffusion Dynamics has open-sourced the core technology behind its watermark removal product, clear.photo: a watermark segmentation model. This deep learning model generates masks highlighting watermark regions, excelling at segmenting logo-based watermarks. The project provides a complete workflow for training and inference, including dataset generation, model training, and post-processing, and supports fine-tuning on Apple M-series chips. A key feature is its data augmentation strategy which randomizes watermark parameters, leading to robust performance. This aims to provide a clear, easily modifiable baseline for building more complex tools.

(github.com)

Development watermark removal image segmentation

Wormhole: A New Game in the Perplexity Comet Browser

2025-09-05

Wormhole: A New Game in the Perplexity Comet Browser

This post details the development journey of Wormhole, a game built for the Perplexity Comet browser. Starting as a simple Chrome Dino replacement, it evolved into a sophisticated procedurally generated space golf game. The author describes three prototype iterations, highlighting challenges and solutions in game mechanics, procedural generation, art, and sound design. The final result is a polished and engaging browser game.

(blog.gingerbeardman.com)

Game

DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT: The Open-Source Challenger

2025-01-29

DeepSeek, a free and open-source AI model developed in China, is challenging ChatGPT's dominance. Built on a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, DeepSeek excels in coding, scientific research, and education, boasting superior efficiency and accuracy in these areas. ChatGPT, conversely, shines in creative writing, conversational AI, and multilingual support. The article compares both, suggesting users choose based on their needs—or even utilize both for complementary strengths. DeepSeek's emergence has sparked concerns about AI competition, with even President Trump acknowledging the potential threat.

(www.sigmabrowser.com)

AI

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