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Thousands of Apps Hijacked to Spy on Your Location

2025-01-10

Thousands of Apps Hijacked to Spy on Your Location

A hack of location data company Gravy Analytics reveals thousands of popular apps, including Candy Crush, Tinder, and MyFitnessPal, are being used to harvest sensitive location data at a massive scale. This data collection, largely occurring through the real-time bidding (RTB) advertising ecosystem, likely happens without users' or developers' knowledge. Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel have previously sold global location data to US law enforcement, raising serious privacy concerns.

(www.wired.com)

Tech location tracking advertising ecosystem

Bill Gates's Confessions: Drugs, Code, and Life

2025-02-09

Bill Gates's Confessions: Drugs, Code, and Life

In his new memoir, 'Source Code,' Bill Gates reveals his teenage experimentation with cannabis and LSD. He admits trying these mind-altering substances but eventually quit because they impaired his logical thinking. He also recounts a humorous exchange with Steve Jobs about drugs and shares two LSD experiences: one leading to a nightmarish dentist visit, and another where he and Paul Allen, after watching Kung Fu, etched the existential symbol ∃ on a dewy car. Gates ultimately quit due to fears of memory damage and expresses intrigue about the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelics.

(www.independent.co.uk)

Misc Bill Gates Memoir Psychedelics

LLM Agents: The New DX Standard for API Development

2025-05-20

LLM Agents: The New DX Standard for API Development

LLM-powered agents are becoming tireless junior developers. They read API docs, issue requests, parse errors, and retry until success. However, API developer experience (DX) is crucial. If an agent stalls due to poor documentation or unclear error messages, human developers will likely hit the same roadblocks. Improving API documentation, providing clear and detailed error messages, and ensuring consistency significantly enhances DX and makes agents more efficient. This benefits human developers and allows agents to act as automated testers, catching issues early.

(stytch.com)

Development API Development

Large Reasoning Models: Collapse and Counterintuitive Scaling

2025-06-08

Large Reasoning Models: Collapse and Counterintuitive Scaling

Recent Large Language Models (LLMs) have spawned Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), generating detailed reasoning traces before providing answers. While showing improvement on reasoning benchmarks, their fundamental capabilities remain poorly understood. This work investigates LRMs using controllable puzzle environments, revealing a complete accuracy collapse beyond a certain complexity threshold. Surprisingly, reasoning effort increases with complexity, then declines despite sufficient token budget. Compared to standard LLMs, three regimes emerged: (1) low-complexity tasks where standard LLMs outperform LRMs, (2) medium-complexity tasks where LRMs show an advantage, and (3) high-complexity tasks where both fail. LRMs exhibit limitations in exact computation, failing to use explicit algorithms and reasoning inconsistently. This study highlights the strengths, limitations, and crucial questions surrounding the true reasoning capabilities of LRMs.

(machinelearning.apple.com)

AI

Resurrecting a SparcStation 1+: A Years-Long Battle with Hardware Gremlins

2025-08-09

Resurrecting a SparcStation 1+: A Years-Long Battle with Hardware Gremlins

The author's journey to revive a SparcStation 1+ workstation began in 2018 and culminated in a breakthrough in 2025. The repair involved overcoming numerous hardware hurdles: a failing hard drive, a malfunctioning floppy drive, SCSI bus issues, and power supply problems. Through replacing a blown SCSI fuse, employing a SCSI emulator, and persistent troubleshooting, SunOS was finally booted. The tale highlights the complexities and challenges of hardware repair, and the author's dedication and perseverance.

(www.leadedsolder.com)

Hardware Sun workstation

DuckDB npm Packages Compromised with Malware

2025-09-09

DuckDB npm Packages Compromised with Malware

DuckDB's Node.js npm packages were compromised by a sophisticated phishing attack. Malicious versions of four packages were published, containing code designed to interfere with cryptocurrency transactions. Fortunately, these malicious versions appear not to have been downloaded before being identified and deprecated by the DuckDB team. The team swiftly responded by deprecating the malicious versions and releasing updated, safe versions. The attack involved a convincing fake npm website that tricked a maintainer into resetting their 2FA, granting the attackers the ability to publish the malicious packages. This incident underscores the importance of robust security practices, even for experienced developers.

(github.com)

Development

“Just JavaScript?”: It's More Complicated Than You Think

2025-06-02

In the programming world, "Just JavaScript" is a phrase often misused. This article explores the complexities of JavaScript, pointing out that many seemingly simple .js files actually rely on browser APIs, Node.js environment variables, JSX compilation, preprocessors, TypeScript type annotations, and more. The choice of runtime environment and toolchain greatly affects the executability of the code. The author uses a series of examples to illustrate that only "vanilla" JavaScript code, detached from specific runtime environments and toolchains, can truly be called "Just JavaScript."

(blog.jim-nielsen.com)

Development Back-end Development

RFC 9839: Navigating the Perils of Problematic Unicode Characters

2025-08-23

RFC 9839: Navigating the Perils of Problematic Unicode Characters

This Tech article discusses the dangers lurking within the Unicode character set, focusing on RFC 9839. This RFC identifies problematic Unicode characters that can cause issues in software and network protocols, proposing three safer subsets. A JSON username example illustrates the potential problems these characters create. The author compares RFC 9839 to the more comprehensive PRECIS standard and recommends a Go library for validation.

(www.tbray.org)

Development Character Safety

ELK is Outdated? GreptimeDB: The Next-Gen Cloud-Native Log Storage Solution

2025-04-28

ELK is Outdated? GreptimeDB: The Next-Gen Cloud-Native Log Storage Solution

With the explosive growth of log data, the traditional ELK architecture reveals problems such as high storage costs, severe resource waste, and complex maintenance. This article introduces GreptimeDB, a cloud-native database that uses a storage-compute separation architecture, offering advantages such as high compression rates, lightweight design, and easy maintenance. It demonstrates the complete process of log collection, storage, parsing, and querying by combining it with Vector, providing a more modern solution for real-time log monitoring and data analysis.

(greptime.com)

Development log storage

Tesla's Exclusive Tariff Exemption: A Major US Auto Policy Shift

2025-04-29

Tesla's Exclusive Tariff Exemption: A Major US Auto Policy Shift

The US Commerce Department announced that vehicles with 85% or more domestic content will be fully exempt from new auto tariffs. Currently, only Tesla qualifies, with some Model 3 and Model Y variants receiving a complete tariff exemption. This move has sparked controversy, with accusations of favoritism towards Tesla. While domestic content rules appear neutral on paper, the real-world effect creates a significant advantage for Tesla. This policy shift may be linked to Elon Musk's recent frequent interactions with the White House. Other automakers, such as Ford and Honda, while having some high domestic content vehicles, fall short of the exemption threshold and will face higher tariffs.

(fuelarc.com)

Tech Auto Tariffs US Policy

Prioritize Relationships in High-Stress Work Environments

2025-05-13

Prioritize Relationships in High-Stress Work Environments

In a high-stress work environment where you feel like snapping or quitting any minute, remember everyone's stressed. Quitting impulsively is unwise; you'll need references for your next job. The negative memory of 'that guy' who stormed out will linger. Therefore, prioritize relationships. Even under pressure, empathize with colleagues; don't let the professional environment corrupt human connections.

(wqtz.bearblog.dev)

Misc workplace stress

Digital Echoes: The Unseen Costs of Constant Connectivity

2025-03-28

Digital Echoes: The Unseen Costs of Constant Connectivity

This essay explores the hidden psychological toll of our hyper-connected digital lives, focusing on the concept of "digital echoes." The author argues that the constant data collection by smart devices creates a pervasive sense of being monitored, transforming us into performers rather than participants in our own lives. Using smartphones and smart cars as contrasting examples, the piece highlights the difference in data generation and privacy implications. It advocates for a more mindful approach to technology, emphasizing single-function devices and analog alternatives to mitigate the negative effects of constant surveillance. The author concludes that future technological advancements should prioritize user privacy and focused experiences over ubiquitous connectivity and multitasking.

(www.chrbutler.com)

Tech

Microlightning: A New Hypothesis for the Origin of Life

2025-03-15

Microlightning: A New Hypothesis for the Origin of Life

Challenging the established Miller-Urey experiment, Stanford University research suggests that 'microlightning' discharges between water droplets from splashing waves or waterfalls on early Earth, rather than large lightning strikes, may have been the key to life's origin. The study found that the small electrical charges produced by water spray were sufficient to trigger chemical reactions in a mixture of gases—nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, and ammonia—thought to be present on early Earth, resulting in the formation of organic molecules including uracil, a building block of life. This offers a new perspective on abiogenesis, addressing criticisms of the Miller-Urey hypothesis concerning the infrequency of large lightning strikes and the vastness of the ocean.

(phys.org)

Tech microlightning Miller-Urey experiment

Running x86_64 Apps on an AArch64 Desktop: A FEX-Emu Experiment

2025-08-07

Running x86_64 Apps on an AArch64 Desktop: A FEX-Emu Experiment

This post details an experiment running x86-64 applications on an Ampere Altra-based AArch64 desktop system using FEX-emu. While Steam and Factorio ran, performance was poor, scoring a measly 459 and 4110 on Geekbench 6's single and multi-core tests respectively. Optimizations to FEX-emu's configuration and replacing the x86_64 version of the Ninja build tool with an aarch64 version yielded some performance improvements. Ultimately, the author concludes that x86_64 emulation on this AArch64 system is limited in practicality, primarily useful for running older games.

(marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl)

Development x86_64 emulation

Material 3 Expressive: 4x Faster UI Element Discovery

2025-05-16

Material 3 Expressive: 4x Faster UI Element Discovery

Google's research demonstrates that Material 3 Expressive design significantly improves user experience through strategic use of color, size, shape, and layout. Eye-tracking studies show users locate key UI elements up to four times faster in Expressive designs, with key action tap times reduced by seconds. For example, in a redesigned email app, the 'Send' button is larger, better positioned, and uses a secondary color for better visibility, resulting in significantly faster user interaction. This highlights the effectiveness of Expressive design principles in guiding user attention and improving efficiency.

(design.google)

Design

My 2.5-Year-Old Laptop Now Codes Space Invaders with GLM-4.5 Air

2025-07-30

My 2.5-Year-Old Laptop Now Codes Space Invaders with GLM-4.5 Air

Using a 2.5-year-old 64GB MacBook Pro M2, the author successfully ran the 106-billion parameter GLM-4.5 Air model (44GB 3-bit quantized version). With a single prompt, it generated a complete Space Invaders game in HTML and JavaScript. This showcases the remarkable advancements in code generation capabilities of large language models, achieving impressive results even on older hardware. The author also tested its SVG image generation capabilities, with equally impressive results.

(simonwillison.net)

AI

Google Tightens Android Sideloading, Sparking Debate on Privacy vs. Freedom

2025-06-05

Google Tightens Android Sideloading, Sparking Debate on Privacy vs. Freedom

Google has implemented new restrictions on sideloading Android apps in Singapore, citing security concerns. This blocks the installation of apps requesting sensitive permissions if downloaded outside the Play Store. While aimed at preventing fraud and malware, critics argue it strengthens Google's app distribution monopoly, limiting user freedom and innovation. In contrast, Purism offers Librem phones running PureOS, a privacy-focused OS emphasizing user autonomy and data sovereignty, providing an alternative to Big Tech's surveillance capitalism.

(puri.sm)

Tech Android sideloading Google monopoly

The Long-Term Repercussions of Remote Work: Why Big Tech Is Calling Employees Back

2025-04-06

In early 2025, tech giants like Dell, Amazon, and JPMorgan Chase are reversing remote work policies, mandating full-time office attendance. This has spurred significant employee backlash, but research reveals challenges with long-term remote work, including decreased collaboration, reduced sense of belonging, and increased mental health concerns. However, remote-first companies like GitLab and Automattic demonstrate that remote work can thrive with radical transparency and asynchronous workflows, emphasizing clear processes and shared goals. The future of work may lie in well-designed hybrid models balancing flexibility and collaboration.

(timestripe.com)

Tech

Kill the "User": A disillusioned technologist's reflections

2025-02-07

A technologist reflects on the current state of tech companies treating users as commodities to be manipulated. The article critiques how 'user experience' design, under the guise of user-centricity, actually maximizes corporate profits by minimizing interfaces and exploiting user data, leading to poor user experiences and digital burnout. The author proposes 'killing the user' – a shift towards more human-centered technology development, exemplified by personal computing, dignity design, folk software, and small software, ultimately aiming for a harmonious coexistence between humans and technology.

(www.pastagang.cc)

Tech

ChatGPT's New "Study Together" Mode: AI Tutor or Cheating Enabler?

2025-07-08

ChatGPT's New

Some ChatGPT Plus subscribers are reporting a new feature called "Study Together." Instead of directly answering prompts, this mode reportedly asks questions, prompting users to engage actively, much like an AI tutor. Speculation abounds about whether it will evolve into a multi-user study group feature and how effective it will be in deterring academic dishonesty. OpenAI hasn't commented, and ChatGPT itself remains vague about the feature's wider rollout. This new mode highlights ChatGPT's dual role in education: it can aid learning but also facilitate cheating; "Study Together" may be OpenAI's attempt to steer usage towards positive applications.

(techcrunch.com)

AI Study Mode

EA Origin Shutdown: Secure Your Games!

2025-01-25

EA Origin Shutdown: Secure Your Games!

EA is shutting down its Origin platform on April 17, 2025. All Origin users must migrate to the EA app to keep playing and preserve their game data. While the transition is relatively straightforward, it requires a 64-bit system, potentially necessitating an upgrade for some users. Alternatively, players can add their games to their Steam library to avoid using the EA app entirely.

(www.pcworld.com)

Game

Global Plastics Treaty Talks Collapse: Is Consensus Dead?

2025-08-16

Global Plastics Treaty Talks Collapse: Is Consensus Dead?

Nine days of talks in Geneva on a global plastics treaty ended without an agreement. Major disagreements arose over the final draft, particularly with oil-producing nations opposing legally binding obligations and controls on plastic production. Negotiations stalled as countries reiterated previous positions, ultimately failing to reach a deal. While all parties expressed interest in continued negotiations, the future remains uncertain unless the decision-making process changes. Environmental groups are disappointed but praise nations for prioritizing a strong treaty over a weak one.

(e360.yale.edu)

Tech international treaty

Exploiting a Use-After-Free in SerenityOS's Ladybird Browser Engine

2025-05-01

A Use-After-Free (UAF) vulnerability has been discovered in the LibJS JavaScript engine of Ladybird, a browser engine from the SerenityOS project. This vulnerability stems from improper management of the interpreter's argument buffer, allowing attackers to trigger it with a maliciously crafted proxy function object and a `[[Get]]` handler. Exploiting this UAF grants arbitrary read/write primitives, culminating in code execution—demonstrated by executing `/calc`. The vulnerability was found using the Fuzzilli fuzzer and exploited through a series of steps involving memory leaking and object faking.

(jessie.cafe)

Development

A Wild West of Italian Game Piracy: The 80s and 90s

2025-01-09

A Wild West of Italian Game Piracy: The 80s and 90s

This article details the rampant game piracy in Italy from the 1980s to the early 1990s. Legal loopholes and market conditions allowed pirated games to flourish, sold openly in kiosks and even legitimate stores. Companies openly published pirated games, creating a massive industry. The article profiles major players like Armati, the Neapolitan 'Napoletane', and SIPE/Edigamma, detailing their unique operations and impact. EU intervention and legal reforms eventually ended this era.

(genesistemple.com)

Game game piracy Italian gaming history 80s gaming

I Reverse-Engineered Waffle House's Website During a Hurricane

2025-05-28

I Reverse-Engineered Waffle House's Website During a Hurricane

During Hurricane Helene in late September 2024, while my university was closed and people were boarding up their homes, I reverse-engineered Waffle House's website. Using hidden JSON data within their Next.js site, I built a live map tracking Waffle House closures to help gauge the hurricane's impact. The site unexpectedly went viral, attracting attention from Waffle House itself and even Frank Luntz. Ultimately, trademark issues forced me to take it down, but the experience was a fun and unexpected adventure.

(www.jack.bio)

Development

Rediscovering Programming: Rendering a PETSCII Image on the Commodore 64

2025-03-09

Rediscovering Programming: Rendering a PETSCII Image on the Commodore 64

A seasoned CTO with 23 years in IT, facing unexpected unemployment, decided to challenge himself by delving into retro computer programming. His goal: render a PETSCII image on a Commodore 64. He meticulously documented the entire process, from using an online editor to create the image, to converting data with a Perl script, and finally displaying it on the Commodore 64 using C64 BASIC and the VICE emulator. This story highlights his enthusiasm for learning new technologies and his passion for retro computing, offering valuable insights for anyone interested in retro computer programming.

(medium.com)

Development

Sweden's Cashless Society Leaves Vulnerable Behind

2025-01-14

Sweden's Cashless Society Leaves Vulnerable Behind

Sweden is nearing a cashless society, driven by the widespread adoption of the mobile payment app Swish. However, this transition has created significant challenges for vulnerable groups lacking access to digital technology. These individuals struggle to pay bills, access public services, and face social stigma. Research highlights the difficulties faced by elderly people, the homeless, and low-income individuals, trapped in 'cash bubbles' and excluded from mainstream society. This isn't just a technological issue, but a matter of social equity and human connection.

(theconversation.com)

Misc digital divide cashless society social inequality

VR Headsets for Mice Advance Brain Research

2024-12-31

VR Headsets for Mice Advance Brain Research

Researchers have developed MouseGoggles, a virtual reality headset for lab mice, enabling immersive studies of brain activity. Using affordable smartwatch displays and tiny lenses, these goggles overcome limitations of previous bulky projector systems. Mice exhibited realistic responses to virtual threats, with brain scans confirming the effectiveness of the virtual environment. This technology promises breakthroughs in understanding mammalian brain function and could aid in researching diseases like Alzheimer's.

(phys.org)

Tech mouse research

700 Marines Deployed to LA Amidst Protests: Unprecedented Escalation

2025-06-10

700 Marines Deployed to LA Amidst Protests: Unprecedented Escalation

Over 700 Marines from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in California have been mobilized to respond to protests in Los Angeles. This deployment, authorized by President Trump without the consent of California's governor or LA's mayor, significantly escalates the use of the military against protesters. While their specific tasks remain unclear, they are prohibited from law enforcement activities unless the Insurrection Act is invoked. The Marines will augment the National Guard presence, but their mobilization within the US is unprecedented since the 1992 LA riots. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the deployment "unwarranted" and "unprecedented." Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell emphasized the need for communication between agencies to ensure a coordinated response.

(www.cnn.com)

Misc

One-Minute Videos from Text Storyboards using Test-Time Training Transformers

2025-04-08

Current Transformer models struggle with generating one-minute videos due to the inefficiency of self-attention layers for long contexts. This paper explores Test-Time Training (TTT) layers, whose hidden states are themselves neural networks, offering greater expressiveness. Adding TTT layers to a pre-trained Transformer allows for the generation of one-minute videos from text storyboards. Experiments using a Tom and Jerry cartoon dataset show that TTT layers significantly improve video coherence and storytelling compared to baselines like Mamba 2 and Gated DeltaNet, achieving a 34 Elo point advantage in human evaluation. While artifacts remain, likely due to limitations of the 5B parameter model, this work demonstrates a promising approach scalable to longer videos and more complex narratives.

(test-time-training.github.io)

AI Test-Time Training

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