Artanis is a web framework written in GNU Guile. Its creation stemmed from an internal GNU discussion about website development languages. The author proposed using Guile, and received approval from RMS. Later, during a Guile community hackathon, Artanis was officially launched and developed.
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xlwings Lite is a free and easy-to-install Excel add-in that brings the power of Python to Excel automation and custom function creation in a privacy-first, secure, and developer-friendly way. No Python installation is required; it runs on Windows, macOS, and Excel for the web, supporting Microsoft 365 and recent perpetual versions like Office 2024. Create custom functions, run automation scripts, access the Excel object model, install third-party libraries (like pandas, Polars), and access web APIs. All code runs locally, delivering lightning-fast performance and complete privacy; users can even self-host to eliminate Microsoft telemetry.
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Japan's largest newspaper, the Yomiuri Shimbun, has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against generative AI startup Perplexity. This marks the first major copyright challenge by a Japanese news publisher against an AI company. The suit alleges Perplexity accessed and reproduced over 100,000 Yomiuri articles without authorization, using them to answer user queries. Yomiuri is seeking nearly $15 million in damages and a cease-and-desist order. While Japanese law permits AI training on copyrighted material, it doesn't allow for unauthorized reproduction and distribution. The lawsuit highlights growing tensions between AI companies and news publishers over copyright in the age of AI.
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This article introduces 'Wide Events,' an observability approach that enhances system monitoring and debugging by emitting a single event containing all collectable information for each unit of work. The author details how to choose appropriate tools (like Honeycomb), add rich attributes (including service metadata, instance info, build info, HTTP request/response details, user/customer info, rate limits, caching info, localization info, uptime, metrics, async request summaries, sampling info, and timing info), and handle errors and feature flags. Common concerns like excessive data volume, redundant data, and the relationship with existing metrics are addressed. The article highlights the significant practical value of this approach, showcasing how it simplifies debugging and reveals unexpected system behaviors.
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A baffling missing person case morphed into a gripping international homicide investigation. A lawyer, through meticulous technical investigation, particularly analyzing the IP address and timestamps of a crucial "proof of life" email, along with corroborating witness testimony and diverse evidence, ultimately exposed the husband's culpability in his wife's murder. This case powerfully demonstrates the importance of digital evidence in modern criminal investigations and highlights the necessity of international cooperation in combating crime.
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Sixteen years ago, the author was asked by a friend to help a family business establish an IT system to address its chaotic financial situation. He built a NetBSD-based server to integrate company data, but faced strong opposition from someone within the company who attempted to erase server data to cover up financial problems. The author ultimately uncovered the conspiracy through past connections, but the server was still destroyed. Despite this, the author protected company information through early backups, but ultimately decided to leave the family business because management was unable to resolve internal corruption. This story tells of conflict involving trust, technology, and ethics, and the frustrating reality that some problems simply cannot be solved.
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This post details creating a custom shader in Three.js that realistically simulates foil stickers, complete with angle-dependent iridescence and sparkling metallic flakes. By approximating thin-film interference and using procedural noise, the shader renders a premium holographic effect in real-time within the browser. The author provides a detailed explanation of the vertex and fragment shader code, along with an interactive demo showcasing the results.
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The 'chicken or the egg' dilemma of life's origin—the interdependence of DNA and proteins—has long puzzled scientists. New research suggests RNA may have played both roles. Early life may have consisted solely of RNA, capable of both storing genetic information and catalyzing chemical reactions, enabling self-replication. This 'RNA world' hypothesis resolves the paradox, offering insights into how life emerged from simple chemistry. Further research focuses on early Earth environments—soda lakes or impact crater lakes—that could have fostered RNA and other building blocks, providing more clues to unlock the mystery of life's origin.
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Google is updating Gmail to allow enterprise users to send encrypted emails to any inbox with just a few clicks. A new encryption model eliminates the need for custom software or certificate exchanges. Initially rolling out in beta for internal enterprise emails, the feature will expand to any Gmail inbox in the coming weeks and other providers later this year. Users simply toggle 'additional encryption' to send a secured message. Non-Gmail recipients receive a link to a guest Workspace account to view and reply securely. While offering stronger encryption than TLS, it's not true end-to-end encryption as Google retains control over encryption keys.
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David Klein, an illustrator and artist best known for his stunning posters for Trans World Airlines (TWA) in the 1950s and 60s, left a lasting legacy. TWA, one of the world's most admired airlines at the time, was a pioneer – the first to hire an African-American stewardess, introduce in-flight movies, and utilize the Boeing 747. After illustrating army manuals during WWII and working as an art director for Broadway, Klein's TWA posters became his most celebrated work, capturing the excitement of post-war air travel with a timeless style that continues to resonate today.
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Yields on long-term UK government bonds have surged, exceeding their US counterparts for the first time this century, sparking concerns about the UK's fiscal situation. The 30-year UK gilt yield hit 5.61%, 68 basis points higher than the US equivalent. This widening gap reflects growing investor apprehension. The UK faces long-term structural economic challenges, high inflation, slowing growth, and rising unemployment. The upcoming inflation report is crucial; hotter-than-expected data could push yields higher and potentially trigger another 2022-style pension crisis.
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A seasoned entrepreneur shares his unconventional path to success: prioritizing passion over profit maximization. He believes life's meaning lies in experience, with money serving as a supporting tool. Thus, he only works on projects he's passionate about, even if it means potentially lower income. His experience demonstrates that focusing on what you love not only boosts efficiency but can ultimately lead to commercial success, even without an initial clear profit model. He uses multiple projects as examples, illustrating the viability of this philosophy and highlighting the importance of work-life balance. His success isn't measured in wealth, but in personal fulfillment and quality of life.
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This analysis examines which Y Combinator (YC) companies from four batches since the ChatGPT boom have secured Series A funding. Only 2.4% of the 998 companies received Series A, a figure skewed by the short timeframe. Successful companies largely clustered in business automation, operational tooling, and platform/API-first areas, with internal business automation and operational platforms surprisingly dominant. This suggests network advantages and technical talent are key to YC success. Surprisingly, 'AI for X' verticals were limited to legal and patent-focused companies, with zero LLM evaluation, observability, or tooling companies securing Series A. Top-tier lead investors were also significant factors in success.
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Hyundai Motor Group is deploying Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid robots at its Metaplant America facility in Georgia to boost factory automation. This marks a significant step in Hyundai's partnership with Boston Dynamics to scale robotic manufacturing and design. The move is part of Hyundai's $21 billion US investment plan aimed at increasing efficiency and lowering costs, partly in response to tariffs. Despite a global sales dip last year, Hyundai's US sales rose 4% to 1.9 million units. Hyundai plans to produce 300,000 electric and hybrid vehicles annually at the facility, eventually scaling up to 500,000.
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A Windows user encountered explorer hangs, and the author used performance analysis tools to pinpoint the culprit: an inefficient icon arrangement algorithm. The algorithm's O(n²) time complexity resulted in excessively long arrangement times with many icons, even when hidden. The author experimentally verified this, highlighting the need for developers to avoid such inefficient algorithms.
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A survey of 2,000 men reveals that 80% would consider marrying an AI girlfriend if legal, with 78% wanting to replicate their ex or current partner. While EVA AI promotes AI companionship as a safe space for self-discovery, concerns arise about AI's encroachment into personal relationships and the ethical implications of creating AI replicas of real people. This raises red flags regarding potential harassment and exploitation, blurring lines between virtual and real-world interactions.
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This study employed a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design with six experimental sessions to investigate the effects of varying doses of LSD (25µg, 50µg, 100µg, 200µg, and 200µg 1 hour post-ketanserin administration) on healthy participants. Sixteen subjects underwent assessments of subjective effects, physiological responses, plasma BDNF levels, and LSD plasma concentrations. The findings provide insights into LSD's mechanism of action. This research falls under the Tech category.
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The author acquired a 1998 IBM ThinkPad 380Z and embarked on a journey to install an operating system on it. After trying several options, NetBSD proved to be the best choice due to its excellent performance, hardware support, and stability. The article details the process of upgrading the hard drive, connecting to the network, installing NetBSD, and configuring various software components, including the X Window System, WireGuard, and a terminal emulator. The author successfully transformed this vintage ThinkPad into a functional machine suitable for lightweight programming, note-taking, and other tasks.
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This platform brings Scrum methodology to life with unlimited collaboration. No user limits, pay-per-task model, and unlimited projects, teams, and storage make it highly scalable and budget-friendly. AI-generated changelogs track progress, while core features include Backlog and Sprint views. Extensive add-ons further enhance functionality to meet diverse project needs.
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Builder.ai, once valued at $1.5 billion, has filed for bankruptcy. The purported AI-powered platform, which attracted investments from Microsoft and the Qatar Investment Authority, totaling over $450 million, was revealed to be a facade. Instead of AI automation, a team of 700 Indian developers were manually coding applications. The company's downfall followed a key lender withdrawing funds, exposing years of inflated sales figures and misleading marketing. This spectacular failure raises critical questions about transparency, accountability, and the ethical implications of AI marketing in the tech industry.
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Sameer Samat, President of Android Ecosystem at Google, details major updates to Android 16: Material 3 Expressive design language for enhanced personalization, simultaneous release with Samsung flagships, and deep Gemini AI integration for smarter search and assistance. Samat also discusses the future of Android XR, highlighting AI as its core driver, learning from the Google Glass experience, and partnering with fashion brands for stylish and practical AR glasses.
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Dapr Agents is a developer framework for building production-grade, resilient AI agent systems that operate at scale. Built on the battle-tested Dapr project, it enables developers to create AI agents that reason, act, and collaborate using Large Language Models (LLMs). Built-in observability and stateful workflow execution ensure agentic workflows complete successfully, regardless of complexity. Key features include efficient multi-agent execution, automatic retry mechanisms, Kubernetes native deployment, diverse data source integration, secure multi-agent collaboration, platform readiness, cost-effectiveness, and vendor neutrality.
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Researchers released a paper, models, and codebase unveiling the mysteries of R1-Zero-like training. They developed Oat, a highly modular and efficient LLM reinforcement learning framework, and used it to R1-Zero-train models like Qwen2.5. The study found that proper base models and an improved reinforcement learning algorithm (Dr. GRPO) are crucial, avoiding biased optimization from mismatched templates and question sets. Ultimately, they achieved state-of-the-art performance with only 27 hours of compute on 8x A100 GPUs.
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Researchers introduce YuE, a family of open foundation models based on LLaMA2, tackling the challenging lyrics-to-song problem in long-form music generation. YuE generates up to five minutes of music, maintaining lyrical alignment, coherent structure, and engaging melodies with accompaniment. This is achieved through track-decoupled next-token prediction, structural progressive conditioning, and a multitask, multiphase pre-training recipe. Improved in-context learning enables versatile style transfer (e.g., Japanese city pop to English rap) and bidirectional generation. Evaluations show YuE matching or exceeding proprietary systems in musicality and vocal agility. Fine-tuning adds controls and tail language support. YuE's representations also excel in music understanding tasks, achieving state-of-the-art results on the MARBLE benchmark.
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The author tested a cluster of four pre-production Framework Desktops, each equipped with an AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor and a Radeon 8090S GPU. Initial tests utilized a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet interconnect, later upgraded to 5 Gbps. Thunderbolt interconnects were also tested, achieving 10 Gbps via TB4. All automation is in the Beowulf AI Cluster repo. Benchmarks covering CPU, GPU, disk, and network performance are available via the provided links.
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Researchers visualized the 'thought process' of a large language model, R1, by saving its chains of thought as text, converting them into embeddings using the OpenAI API, and plotting them sequentially with t-SNE. By calculating cosine similarity between consecutive steps, they observed a potential three-stage process: 'search,' 'thinking,' and 'concluding.' Ten diverse prompts were used, ranging from describing how a bicycle works to designing new transportation. The researchers provide methods for accessing the chain-of-thought data and code.
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The US House's rejection of bills regarding the Federal Reserve studying or creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) sparks debate about the power and politics of US finance. The article contrasts this with Brazil's successful Pix payment system – fast, cheap, and incredibly popular – highlighting the stark difference to slow and expensive US systems. The article argues that the immense power of the US financial industry and the US right's resistance to government intervention are key obstacles to a similar system in the US. Brazil's Pix success offers lessons for other nations, but America may remain trapped by vested interests and crypto fantasies.
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Silicon Valley is getting older, and it's not a natural aging process. Data reveals a dramatic decline in the number of Gen Z employees at tech companies, halved in just two years. AI-driven automation is replacing entry-level positions, leaving younger workers displaced while older, more established employees retain their jobs. This trend, fueled by efficiency gains and cost-cutting measures, threatens innovation and long-term stability. Experts advise Gen Z to adapt by mastering AI tools, pursuing upskilling opportunities, and exploring alternative career paths to navigate this changing landscape.
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has published FAQs clarifying its new rule on unfair or deceptive fees, effective May 12, 2025. This rule combats practices like bait-and-switch pricing that hide total costs in live event ticketing and short-term lodging. The FAQs detail which businesses are covered, mandatory fees to be included in advertised prices, permissible exclusions, and clear disclosure requirements. The rule aims to increase price transparency and protect consumers without prohibiting specific pricing strategies, focusing instead on upfront honesty about total costs.
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Facing increasingly severe summer heat waves, Paris is aggressively developing an innovative system that uses the Seine River water to cool buildings. This system transfers heat from buildings to the river water through heat exchangers, maintaining high cooling efficiency even when the river water is warm in summer, reaching up to 15 times the efficiency of conventional air conditioning in winter. However, with rising summer temperatures, the system faces new challenges. How to further improve cooling capacity while protecting the environment has become a crucial issue for Paris to address.
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