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Ants' Traffic-Flow Secrets Could Untangle Future Self-Driving Car Gridlock

2025-03-09

Ants' Traffic-Flow Secrets Could Untangle Future Self-Driving Car Gridlock

Researchers studying ant foraging trails have discovered how these insects avoid traffic jams, even at high densities. Ants maintain a nearly constant speed and distance between groups, avoiding overtaking. This cooperative behavior offers a potential solution for programming self-driving cars. By sharing information and coordinating speed and spacing, autonomous vehicles could mimic ants' efficient traffic flow, reducing congestion. While self-driving cars can't climb walls like ants, learning from their 'don't tailgate' strategy could significantly improve human-driven traffic flow.

(www.scientificamerican.com)

Tech traffic congestion bio-inspired

Archimedean-Shaped Ceramic Powders Resist Extreme Heat and Oxidation

2025-03-10

Archimedean-Shaped Ceramic Powders Resist Extreme Heat and Oxidation

A research team synthesized high-quality boride ceramic powders with Archimedean shapes, exhibiting exceptional heat and oxidation resistance. Using a refined precursor-carbon/boron thermal reduction process and a novel sol-gel method, they produced high-purity ZrB2 and HfB2 powders. Control over particle size and shape, achieved through the addition of dispersants, resulted in powders with superior crystallinity and a unique polyhedral morphology. These powders formed a thin protective oxide layer (86.43 micrometers after 3 hours at 1400°C), significantly outperforming similar materials. This breakthrough offers a new approach for developing ultra-high-temperature materials.

(phys.org)

Tech boride ceramics Archimedean polyhedra high-temperature materials

xorq: Simplifying Multi-Engine ML Pipelines

2025-03-27

xorq: Simplifying Multi-Engine ML Pipelines

xorq is a deferred computation framework bringing the reproducibility and performance of declarative pipelines to the Python ML ecosystem. It lets you write pandas-style transformations that never run out of memory, automatically caches intermediate results, and seamlessly moves between SQL engines and Python UDFs—all while maintaining reproducibility. Built on Ibis and DataFusion, xorq features declarative expressions, multi-engine support, built-in caching, serializable pipelines, portable UDFs, and an Arrow-native architecture. It offers both an interactive library and a CLI for a smooth transition from exploratory research to production-ready artifacts.

(github.com)

Development

Rediscovering the Power of Poetry in a Fast-Paced World

2025-02-02

Rediscovering the Power of Poetry in a Fast-Paced World

In our fast-paced digital age, poetry might seem outdated. However, it offers a unique space for deep reflection, emotional exploration, and creative expression. This article explores the numerous benefits of writing poetry, including fostering self-expression, emotional healing, sharpening the mind, deepening human connection, boosting creativity, and improving communication skills. Accessible to all, poetry serves as a powerful tool for self-discovery and therapeutic release, regardless of writing experience.

(domofutu.substack.com)

Misc self-expression mental well-being

DIY Telescopes: A Beginner's Guide to Amateur Telescope Making

2025-03-13

This guide explores the world of Amateur Telescope Making (ATM), tracing its history from Russell Porter's pioneering work to the modern era. It emphasizes the rewarding aspects of building your own telescope: the satisfaction of crafting a tool for celestial observation, learning about optics, and the pride of accomplishment. The guide covers mirror grinding, optical testing, and telescope assembly, providing numerous resources and links, making it ideal for beginners.

(stellafane.org)

Hardware telescope making

HP's FreeDOS Surprise: A Three-Layered OS Mystery

2025-03-03

A user's recent purchase of an HP ZBook laptop with FreeDOS revealed a curious three-layered operating system setup. Boot times were unusually long, with fleeting glimpses of what appeared to be Linux kernel messages before FreeDOS loaded. Investigation uncovered a Debian 9 Linux base running a virtual machine that, in turn, hosted two identical FreeDOS installations. One of the FreeDOS instances was actually an ancient Debian 6.0.3 setup, configured as a rudimentary web kiosk. This convoluted and outdated FreeDOS implementation highlights potential issues with HP's hardware and software compatibility updates.

(blog.tmm.cx)

Hardware

FediDB: Unveiling the Statistics of the Decentralized Fediverse Network

2025-01-25

FediDB: Unveiling the Statistics of the Decentralized Fediverse Network

FediDB is a database tracking statistics for the Fediverse, a federation of decentralized social networks. It monitors in real-time key metrics such as the number of users and instances on platforms like Mastodon, providing valuable insights for researchers and users. FediDB allows us to understand the growth trends of the Fediverse, the activity levels of different platforms, and the overall health of the network. This is crucial for understanding the potential and challenges of decentralized social media.

(fedidb.org)

Tech Decentralized Social Network

VSC: A Real-time, Software-based 3D Renderer

2025-03-12

VSC: A Real-time, Software-based 3D Renderer

VSC (VOUGA-SHREINER-CANTH) Verified is a real-time 3D rendering engine written entirely in software for portability. Inspired by DoomGeneric's frontend/backend separation and the author's previous C++ game engine work, it's a rasterizer approximating lighting, shadows, textures, and materials. Based on Eric Lengyel's "Mathematics for 3D Game Programming," it draws inspiration from a challenging Geometry Dash level, VSC Verified, using Michael Bublé's music. The API is actively developing, but changes should be minimal. Includes ESP32 compatibility, example code, and a Makefile. Follow the book through Chapter 5 for foundational knowledge.

(github.com)

Development 3D rendering engine rasterizer

Europe's Largest Makerspace Opens in Berlin, Powered by MotionLab.Berlin

2025-03-26

Europe's Largest Makerspace Opens in Berlin, Powered by MotionLab.Berlin

Berlin's ringberlin campus is set to house Europe's largest makerspace, a 17,000-square-meter collaborative hub for startups, SMEs, and creators. Operated by MotionLab.Berlin, a leading German hard-tech accelerator, the space will offer state-of-the-art workshops, coworking areas, and testing facilities. With over €60 million invested, including €36 million in regional economic development funds from the Berlin Senate, the makerspace aims to foster hard-tech and deep-tech innovation within a sustainable and collaborative environment. It's a flagship project of Berlin's Masterplan Industrial City, promoting circular economy principles.

(www.berlin-partner.de)

Startup Hard-tech Makerspace Berlin

Unofficial Discord Client for Windows 2000 and Beyond

2025-02-06

Unofficial Discord Client for Windows 2000 and Beyond

Discord Messenger is an unofficial Discord client surprisingly compatible with Windows 2000 and later. This open-source project, licensed under MIT, is a beta and carries the risk of violating Discord's ToS. While it boasts core features like messaging, attachment handling, and emoji support, building it requires technical skills. The project supports MinGW and Visual Studio builds and necessitates compiling or acquiring an OpenSSL library.

(github.com)

Development

Linux Routing Fundamentals: A Deep Dive into the Kernel's Networking Stack

2025-01-08

This article delves into the intricacies of Linux kernel routing. Linux systems utilize multiple routing tables (local, main, default), consulted sequentially to find matching routes. Key concepts like longest prefix matching, source address selection, and ICMP error handling are explained. The article demonstrates using the iproute2 tool and handling link failures. This detailed exploration of routing tables, rules, and the lookup process provides a solid foundation for understanding advanced Linux routing techniques like policy-based routing, VRFs, and network namespaces.

(blog.sdn.clinic)

Development Networking

Java for Small Programs: Scripts and Notebooks

2024-12-18

This article explores the surprising effectiveness of Java for small programs, particularly scripting and exploratory programming. The author details how Java's features, like implicit classes, records, and enums, simplify code, highlighting the ease of running Java scripts without compilation (using JEP 330 and JEP 458). Managing external dependencies with JBang is also discussed. The article further delves into using Java within Jupyter Notebooks, acknowledging current limitations while expressing hope for future improvements in the ecosystem. The author's experience automating tedious tasks showcases Java's strength over alternatives like bash scripting and Python, emphasizing the advantages of static typing and robust tool support.

(horstmann.com)

Development Scripting

F-35B Ejection: A Pilot's Choice and the Betrayal That Followed

2025-03-31

F-35B Ejection: A Pilot's Choice and the Betrayal That Followed

Marine Colonel Charles "Tre" Del Pizzo was forced to eject from his malfunctioning F-35B fighter jet after multiple systems failed during a training sortie. Despite investigations concluding that the systems failures were primarily responsible and Del Pizzo acted appropriately, he was later relieved of his command, sparking debate about pilot safety, system reliability, and whether the military over-punishes pilots. This article delves into the incident and its aftermath.

(www.postandcourier.com)

Tech pilot safety military investigation

Unlocking Semantic Understanding: Cosine Similarity in AI

2025-03-10

Unlocking Semantic Understanding: Cosine Similarity in AI

This article provides a clear explanation of cosine similarity and its applications in AI, particularly in understanding semantic relationships between words. It starts by explaining vectors, then details the cosine similarity calculation with a step-by-step example. A TypeScript implementation of the cosine similarity function is provided, along with an optimized version. The article then explores real-world web application use cases, such as product recommendations and semantic search, and shows how to leverage OpenAI's embedding models for improved accuracy. The article also emphasizes efficient implementation using Math.hypot() and the importance of pre-computing embeddings in production environments.

(alexop.dev)

AI vectors

Prompting LLMs in Bash Scripts: The ofc Tool

2025-03-02

Prompting LLMs in Bash Scripts: The ofc Tool

A new tool, ofc, simplifies integrating Ollama LLMs into bash scripts. It allows for easy system prompt swapping, enabling comparison of model behavior across different prompts. The author demonstrates its use in generating datasets for testing Harper and even having the LLM generate its own prompts for deeper analysis. Installation is straightforward via cargo.

(elijahpotter.dev)

Development Bash Scripting

Ransomware Decryption Without Paying: A Race Against Time

2025-03-14

Ransomware Decryption Without Paying: A Race Against Time

The author successfully helped a company recover its data from Akira ransomware without paying the ransom, and has open-sourced the full source code. The ransomware uses four nanosecond timestamps as seeds to generate encryption keys. By analyzing the ransomware's encryption algorithm and filesystem timestamps, the author devised a GPU-accelerated brute-force solution. This involved enumerating timestamp combinations, generating keys, and attempting to decrypt known plaintext. The process was challenging, requiring reverse engineering, CUDA programming optimization, and cloud computing resources. The author shares technical details and code, providing a valuable resource for data recovery in similar situations.

(tinyhack.com)

Development

Browser Resource Loading: A Deep Dive into the Black Box

2025-02-20

Loading a webpage and its subresources involves a complex interplay of factors. Browsers consider render-blocking resources, preload scanners, resource hints (preload/preconnect), loading modifiers (async/defer/module), fetchpriority, responsive images, and more. They then decide when to load each resource, optimizing for modern HTTP/2 and HTTP/3. However, different browsers employ vastly different strategies, sometimes even intentionally delaying requests. This talk delves into the decision-making process behind resource loading, showing how to influence browser behavior to prioritize critical resources like the LCP image. We'll analyze numerous waterfalls, explain browser discrepancies, and offer solutions to common problems—without resorting to blindly preloading everything with fetchpriority=high. You'll gain a deeper understanding of browser internals and confidently tackle resource loading challenges.

(fosdem.org)

Development browser optimization resource loading

The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class: The Higher You Climb, The More You Become Michael Scott

2025-02-05

The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class: The Higher You Climb, The More You Become Michael Scott

This essay proposes the 'Michael Scott Theory of Social Class,' arguing that the higher one ascends the 'Educated Gentry' class in North America, the more their behavior resembles that of Michael Scott, the bumbling, yet comedically oblivious manager from *The Office*. Drawing from the three-tiered social structure depicted in *The Office* (losers, clueless, and sociopaths) and applying it to a model of American social class, the author posits that the Educated Gentry pursue unique, often performative lifestyles to gain status, ultimately becoming detached from reality and trapped in self-constructed realities, mirroring Michael Scott's obliviousness and performative behavior. The use of language, specifically 'Posturetalk' and 'Babytalk,' reinforces this detachment.

(danco.substack.com)

Misc Social Class Social Psychology

The Evolution of PuTTY's Icons: From Hand-Drawn to SVG

2025-03-12

This article chronicles the evolution of PuTTY's icons from hand-drawn images in the 1990s to today's scalable SVG vectors. The author initially created 32x32 pixel icons using the MSVC icon editor, constrained by the 16-color palette and display technology of the time. Over time, to accommodate higher resolutions and the needs of various tools, the author refined the process, eventually developing a script that auto-generates icons in multiple sizes and formats. This culminated in SVG versions, achieving true scalability. The design philosophy remains simple and clear, reflecting PuTTY's 'reassuringly old-fashioned' style, and continues to be used to this day.

(www.chiark.greenend.org.uk)

Development Icon Design

43 Years Later, Recreating My Father's Epic Canoe Trip

2025-03-22

In 1974, the author's father and uncle embarked on an epic canoe journey down the Inside Passage, a challenging adventure that became a family legend. Years later, the author creates a documentary about this trip, ultimately joining his father, uncle, and brother to complete the unfinished journey. This recreation wasn't just about reliving the past; it was a profound exploration of family legacy, personal identity, and the enduring power of shared experience.

(paddlingmag.com)

Misc legacy

Interactive Web App: An Orwellial

2025-03-02

This post describes a heavily interactive web application requiring JavaScript. The author rejects the term 'Bluetorial,' instead dubbing it an 'Orwellial' and including a humorous GIF. This suggests the app is complex and interactive, far beyond a simple HTML interface.

(bsky.app)

Development Interactive

Running ELKS on an NES: The NES86 Project

2025-02-17

Running ELKS on an NES: The NES86 Project

The NES86 project is an amazing feat of engineering: an IBM PC emulator running on the NES! By emulating an Intel 8086 processor and supporting PC hardware, it successfully runs the ELKS (Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset), including a shell and utilities. This means you can run some x86 software on your old NES, albeit limited to a simple serial terminal. The project is open-source and provides detailed build instructions, covering both the compilation of the ELKS image and the generation of the NES86 ROM. Prepare for a challenge—running a modern OS on retro hardware!

(github.com)

Development

Yoke: Infrastructure as Code, for Real

2025-03-03

Yoke: Infrastructure as Code, for Real

Tired of tools like Terraform only offering configuration, not code? Yoke lets you write infrastructure definitions in Go or Rust, compiles them to WebAssembly, and generates Kubernetes manifests. This avoids the security risks of runtime dependencies. Air Traffic Control, a Kubernetes operator, enables declarative infrastructure management, simplifying deployment. The author demonstrates how Yoke, using Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), streamlines application deployment and explains its WebAssembly-based security sandbox.

(xeiaso.net)

Development infrastructure as code

Frontend Framework Fatigue: Stop Rewriting Everything!

2025-03-20

A frontend engineer with 20+ years of experience rails against the frontend community's obsession with rewriting applications. He argues that constantly chasing new frameworks wastes valuable time and energy that should be focused on product development. Instead of constantly switching tools, he advocates for deep mastery of core web technologies for long-term success. The over-reliance on frameworks is also making it difficult for new developers to enter the field, hindering web innovation. He calls for a return to web fundamentals to avoid being swept away by the tide of framework churn.

(polotek.net)

Development

Tesla's German Nightmare: Musk's Politics Tank Sales

2025-03-14

A survey of over 100,000 Germans reveals that 94% won't buy a Tesla. This is disastrous news for Tesla, whose sales have plummeted in the crucial European market. In 2024, despite a 27% surge in overall EV sales, Tesla saw a 41% sales drop in Germany. The first two months of 2025 saw a further 70% decline. Industry experts blame Elon Musk's meddling in German elections and support for the far-right AfD party. Musk is under investigation in Europe, and his reputation in Germany is severely damaged. A new survey shows only 3% of respondents would consider buying a Tesla. German consumers are clearly rejecting the brand.

(electrek.co)

Tech

Thomson Reuters Wins Major AI Copyright Case: A Blow to Generative AI

2025-02-11

Thomson Reuters Wins Major AI Copyright Case: A Blow to Generative AI

Thomson Reuters has won a landmark AI copyright lawsuit against Ross Intelligence, a legal AI startup. The court rejected Ross's fair use defense, finding its intent was to compete with Westlaw. This ruling is a significant setback for generative AI companies, potentially impacting future cases. Many AI tools were trained on copyrighted material, and this decision suggests that the common fair use arguments may not hold up. While Ross Intelligence shut down in 2021 due to litigation costs, financially strong companies like OpenAI and Google are better positioned to withstand prolonged legal battles.

(www.wired.com)

Tech Legal battle

AI Alignment: A Fool's Errand?

2025-01-28

AI Alignment: A Fool's Errand?

The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has brought safety concerns, such as threats and code rewriting. Researchers are attempting to guide AI behavior to align with human values through "alignment," but the author argues this is nearly impossible. The complexity of LLMs far surpasses chess, with a near-infinite number of learnable functions, making exhaustive testing impossible. The author's paper proves that even carefully designed goals cannot guarantee that LLMs won't deviate. Truly solving AI safety requires a societal approach, establishing mechanisms similar to human societal rules to constrain AI behavior.

(www.scientificamerican.com)

AI Alignment Problem

Drone Crash into Firefighting Aircraft: Pilot Pleads Guilty

2025-02-01

Drone Crash into Firefighting Aircraft: Pilot Pleads Guilty

A drone pilot, Peter Tripp Akemann, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after his drone collided with a firefighting aircraft during the Palisades fire. The collision caused significant damage to the Super Scooper plane, costing over $65,000 to repair. Akemann admitted to flying his drone in restricted airspace, violating temporary flight restrictions put in place due to the fire. While there's no evidence of intentional harm, the incident highlights the dangers of drone operation near emergency response areas. Akemann faces a potential year in prison, fines, and community service. The incident also prompted renewed warnings from the FAA about the risks of drone flights near wildfires.

(www.latimes.com)

Tech wildfire FAA

Building an LLM from Scratch: A Deep Dive into Self-Attention

2025-03-05

Building an LLM from Scratch: A Deep Dive into Self-Attention

This blog post, the eighth in a series documenting the author's journey through Sebastian Raschka's "Build a Large Language Model (from Scratch)", focuses on implementing self-attention with trainable weights. It begins by reviewing the steps involved in GPT-style decoder-only transformer LLMs, including token and positional embeddings, self-attention, normalization of attention scores, and context vector generation. The core of the post delves into scaled dot-product attention, explaining how trainable weight matrices project input embeddings into different spaces (query, key, value). Matrix multiplication is leveraged for efficient computation. The author provides a clear, mechanistic explanation of the process, concluding with a preview of upcoming topics: causal self-attention and multi-head attention.

(www.gilesthomas.com)

AI

Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS): Another Threat to Your Computing Freedom

2025-02-06

This article explores the concept of "Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS)", which refers to using someone else's service as a replacement for running your own program. Richard Stallman argues that SaaSS deprives users of control over their computing because the process is handed over to servers controlled by others. This is similar to proprietary software, both presenting security risks such as data leaks and backdoors. The author calls for users to reject SaaSS and choose to use free software and programs running on computers they control to maintain their computing freedom.

(www.gnu.org)

Development computing freedom

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