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Apollo Mission: An Astronaut's Urgent Bathroom Break Before Launch

2025-03-06

During a countdown for an Apollo mission, a rocket malfunction required repairs, leading astronaut Shepard to request a quick bathroom break. After some discussion, ground control allowed Shepard to relieve himself after shutting down relevant circuits, preventing a launch delay. This anecdote led to Shepard being jokingly referred to as the "world's first wetback in space," adding a humorous footnote to space exploration history.

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(idlewords.com)
Misc Apollo Mission Space Anecdote Astronaut Story

Kansas TB Outbreak: Largest in US History

2025-01-27
Kansas TB Outbreak: Largest in US History

Kansas is experiencing the largest tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in US history. As of January 17th, 66 active cases and 79 latent infections have been reported, primarily in the Kansas City metro area. While the outbreak is ongoing, health officials stress the risk to the general public is low. Active measures are underway to control the spread, including collaboration with the CDC and treatment for patients. After 10 days of medication and three negative sputum tests, active cases are generally no longer contagious.

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(www.cjonline.com)
Tech Tuberculosis Outbreak Kansas

Google DeepMind Forms 'World Modeling' AI Team to Push for AGI

2025-01-07
Google DeepMind Forms 'World Modeling' AI Team to Push for AGI

Google DeepMind is assembling a new AI research team focused on developing "world models" capable of simulating physical environments. Led by former OpenAI Sora co-lead Tim Brooks, the team aims to leverage massive pre-training on video and multimodal data to advance AGI development. This initiative will power applications in gaming, robot training, and beyond, including visual reasoning and simulation, planning for embodied agents, and real-time interactive entertainment. This signifies Google's intensified push in the AGI race, competing with rivals like OpenAI.

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(www.theverge.com)
AI world models

C++ Initialization Gotcha: The Subtleties of `=default`

2025-05-15

This article delves into the perplexing world of C++ initialization. A simple example reveals the significant impact of the placement of `=default` on the initialization of struct members: struct members with `=default` in the declaration are zero-initialized (value 0), while those with `=default` in the definition have indeterminate values, leading to undefined behavior if read. The article thoroughly explains the differences between default, value, and zero initialization, and emphasizes the importance of explicitly initializing variables to avoid potential bugs and security risks.

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(blog.tartanllama.xyz)
Development Initialization

Seasoned Developer Seeking New Opportunities: Job Hunting & Consulting

2025-04-27
Seasoned Developer Seeking New Opportunities: Job Hunting & Consulting

After four years at Oracle, the author finds himself job hunting and exploring new avenues. He's a seasoned developer proficient in Ruby/JavaScript, product documentation, and developer relations, actively seeking employment while offering consulting services, particularly in Mac/Unix automation. He plans to relaunch blog sponsorships, leveraging his established readership and strong Google ranking to find a suitable role or consulting project.

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(brettterpstra.com)
Development consulting

Turn Docstrings into LLM Functions: Introducing the smartfunc Library

2025-04-10
Turn Docstrings into LLM Functions: Introducing the smartfunc Library

The smartfunc library ingeniously transforms docstrings into LLM functions, simplifying interaction with large language models. Using decorators and Jinja2 templating, it converts docstring text into prompts, interacting with various LLM providers (like OpenAI) via the underlying llm library. smartfunc supports Pydantic models for defining response structures, asynchronous functions, system prompts, and a debug mode for easy troubleshooting, significantly boosting development efficiency. While its functionality is relatively streamlined, its simplicity and ease of use make it ideal for rapid prototyping.

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(github.com)
Development

AccessOwl (YC-backed) Hiring Senior TypeScript Engineer

2025-01-09
AccessOwl (YC-backed) Hiring Senior TypeScript Engineer

YC-backed startup AccessOwl is seeking a Senior Software Engineer specializing in TypeScript. They're revolutionizing SaaS application management, offering a solution that leverages RPA and AI workflows to replace tools like Okta. The role requires 5+ years of professional web development experience, proficiency with Playwright or Puppeteer, and experience building browser extensions. Competitive salary, remote work, and flexible hours are offered.

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(www.ycombinator.com)
Development Remote

Evals Are Not Enough: The Limitations of LLM Evaluation

2025-03-03

This article critiques the prevalent practice of relying on evaluations to guarantee the performance of Large Language Model (LLM) software. While acknowledging the role of evals in comparing different base models and unit testing, the author highlights several critical flaws in their real-world application: difficulty in creating comprehensive test datasets; limitations of automated scoring methods; the inadequacy of evaluating only the base model without considering the entire system's performance; and the masking of severe errors by averaging evaluation results. The author argues that evals fail to address the inherent "long tail problem" of LLMs, where unexpected situations always arise in production. Ultimately, the article calls for a change in LLM development practices, advocating for a shift away from solely relying on evals and towards prioritizing user testing and more comprehensive system testing.

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(www.marble.onl)
AI AI Evaluation

Implausibly High Publication Rates Among Top Scientists Raise Red Flags

2025-02-18
Implausibly High Publication Rates Among Top Scientists Raise Red Flags

Researchers at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals have found that approximately 10% of the world's most influential scientists exhibit implausibly high publication and co-authorship rates. Many produce hundreds of papers annually and gain thousands of new collaborators yearly. Analyzing Stanford's 'Top 2%' researcher list, they discovered around 20,000 scientists with anomalously high metrics, suggesting efforts to inflate publication records. This includes roughly 1000 early-career researchers, highlighting systemic incentives to inflate metrics. The researchers suggest that excessive publication rates likely stem from 'paper pumping' and unethical co-authorship practices. They propose renormalizing research metrics to discourage quantity over quality and unethical practices.

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(www.chemistryworld.com)
Tech research evaluation publication metrics

The Idea of Waste: A Deep Dive into Humanity's Relationship with Trash

2025-05-23
The Idea of Waste: A Deep Dive into Humanity's Relationship with Trash

John Scanlan's 'The Idea of Waste: On the Limits of Human Life' isn't just about garbage; it's a sweeping historical and philosophical exploration of how humanity has dealt with waste throughout history. From ancient Rome's Cloaca Maxima to modern-day data centers, Scanlan traces how our methods of waste disposal reflect our values and shape our cities, societies, and cultural imaginations. He argues that 'waste' is more than just discarded objects—it's a concept that shapes our perception of the world. Through insightful historical analysis and cultural commentary, the book challenges readers to rethink our relationship with the discarded and the implications for the future.

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(thebaffler.com)
Misc Waste

Quiver: A Modern Commutative Diagram Editor for the Web

2024-12-27
Quiver: A Modern Commutative Diagram Editor for the Web

Quiver is a modern web-based editor for creating commutative diagrams. It allows for rapid creation of complex diagrams, rendering them in high quality for screen viewing and exporting to LaTeX via tikz-cd. Features include intuitive interface, support for pullbacks, pushouts, adjunctions, and higher cells, multiple selection, history, custom macros, and HTML embedding for easy sharing. Creating diagrams is significantly faster than writing equivalent LaTeX by hand.

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(github.com)
Development commutative diagram web editor

Deep Dive into GPU-Based Gradient Noise: From 1D to 3D and Derivative Calculation

2025-06-07

This article delves into the intricacies of implementing gradient noise on a GPU, starting with 1D noise and gradually progressing to higher dimensions. It covers hashing functions, pseudo-random value generation, gradient noise implementation in various dimensions, and derivative calculation. The article focuses on efficient GPU-based computation using WebGL2/GLSL, comparing numerical and analytical derivative approaches. Furthermore, it explores applications of Fractal Brownian Motion (fBm) and derivatives in texture generation, lighting calculations, and terrain simulation. The detailed content is ideal for readers interested in computer graphics and shader programming.

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(blog.pkh.me)
Development Gradient Noise

Optical Architecture for Simulated Annealing: A Novel Approach

2025-09-08
Optical Architecture for Simulated Annealing: A Novel Approach

Researchers have devised an optical architecture for simulated annealing, employing microLED arrays, liquid-crystal spatial light modulators, and photodetector arrays to perform matrix-vector multiplication. This system efficiently handles machine learning and optimization problems, leveraging a simulated tanh nonlinearity for efficient solving. Experiments demonstrate high-accuracy classification on MNIST and Fashion-MNIST datasets, and superior performance on various optimization problems, offering a novel hardware solution for large-scale simulated annealing computation.

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(www.nature.com)
AI simulated annealing

Rest of World Photo Contest: Tech's Global Impact

2025-01-26
Rest of World Photo Contest: Tech's Global Impact

Rest of World's photography contest received 227 entries from over 45 countries, showcasing how technology transforms lives globally. Winning photos depicted diverse scenarios: biometric scans of migrants at the US-Mexico border, online learning in rural India, and solar-powered communities in Mongolia. The images highlight technology's integration into daily life, revealing both opportunities and challenges across various cultures and contexts. They tell compelling stories of tech's impact on local communities.

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(restofworld.org)
Tech technology photography global tech humanitarian tech

Is America in Decline? Or is it an Information Warfare?

2025-01-07
Is America in Decline? Or is it an Information Warfare?

This article examines the paradox of America's seemingly prosperous economy juxtaposed against widespread public anxiety, distrust in government, and pessimism about the future. The author argues this isn't a genuine decline, but rather the result of information warfare waged by external forces, linked to Russia. These forces utilize disinformation campaigns, social media manipulation, and other tactics to sow discord and instability. The article highlights the role of 'anti-cult' organizations employing information terrorism, demonizing groups through media, fostering division, and even contributing to extreme events like school shootings. The ultimate goal, the author claims, is to incite civil war. The article calls for vigilance against disinformation, exposure of anti-cult organizations, and measures to safeguard American stability.

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(actfiles.org)
Misc Information Warfare Social Anxiety Anti-Cult Organizations

RTX 5090 Shows Early Promise in Llama.cpp AI Benchmarks

2025-03-10

Following CUDA, OpenCL, and OptiX benchmark testing of the RTX 5090, reader interest prompted an investigation into its AI performance, specifically with Llama.cpp. Initial benchmarks comparing the RTX 5090, RTX 40-series, and RTX 30-series cards using Llama.cpp (with Llama 3.1 and Mistral 7B models) show significant performance gains for the RTX 5090 in text generation and prompt processing. Further, more in-depth benchmarks will follow based on reader interest.

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(www.phoronix.com)
AI AI Performance

Browser Resource Loading: A Deep Dive into the Black Box

2025-02-20
Browser Resource Loading: A Deep Dive into the Black Box

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.

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(fosdem.org)
Development browser optimization resource loading

Razer Halts Blade 16 Preorders Amidst US Tariffs

2025-04-09
Razer Halts Blade 16 Preorders Amidst US Tariffs

Razer has pulled the Blade 16 and other laptops from its US website, halting preorders and purchases. This coincides with the recent announcement of US tariffs on countries including China and Taiwan, major sources of laptop components. While Razer hasn't publicly commented on the impact of tariffs, the Blade 16 configurator now returns a 404 error, and other products only offer a 'notify me' option. However, the Blade 16 remains available for preorder in other countries, suggesting US sales may have been paused due to the tariffs.

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(www.theverge.com)
Hardware

Sixth AI: Supercharge Your Coding Workflow with AI

2025-07-17
Sixth AI: Supercharge Your Coding Workflow with AI

Sixth AI is an AI-powered coding assistant for Visual Studio Code designed to boost developer productivity. It offers blazing-fast AI-powered code completion, a chat interface for generating, editing, and modifying multiple files simultaneously, codebase indexing for easy navigation, inline chat for direct code editing suggestions, terminal command generation, and smart code suggestions. Supporting a wide array of programming languages and frameworks, Sixth AI also features an active Discord community for support and feedback. Whether you're a beginner or an expert, Sixth AI promises to make your coding faster and smarter.

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(marketplace.visualstudio.com)
Development

Microsoft Edge Follows Google, Disabling Manifest V2 Extensions

2025-02-28
Microsoft Edge Follows Google, Disabling Manifest V2 Extensions

Microsoft Edge Canary is now disabling Manifest V2-based extensions, including the popular ad blocker uBlock Origin. This mirrors Google's policy shift, which began phasing out Manifest V2 extensions last year. While Edge's stable and Beta/Dev versions are currently unaffected, this change signals the eventual demise of MV2 extensions. Users can choose to switch to a browser that still supports MV2 extensions (like Firefox) or upgrade to Manifest V3-based extensions.

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(www.neowin.net)
Tech

Is *Atlas Shrugged* the New Vibe?

2025-01-18
Is *Atlas Shrugged* the New Vibe?

This podcast discussion delves into the surprising resurgence of Ayn Rand's *Atlas Shrugged*. Two guests analyze the novel's compelling plot, memorable characters, and insightful commentary on contemporary societal issues. They argue that *Atlas Shrugged* transcends its reputation as a political manifesto, offering a nuanced exploration of rationality, individual achievement, and social responsibility, making it relevant even today. The conversation highlights the novel's enduring appeal and its influence on prominent figures in the tech and political worlds.

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(www.commonreader.co.uk)
Misc Atlas Shrugged Novel Analysis

Scaling RL: Next-Token Prediction on the Web

2025-07-13
Scaling RL: Next-Token Prediction on the Web

The author argues that reinforcement learning (RL) is the next frontier for training AI models. Current approaches of scaling many environments simultaneously are messy. Instead, the author proposes training models to reason by using RL for next-token prediction on web-scale data. This leverages the vast amount of readily available web data, moving beyond the limitations of current RL training datasets focused on math and code problems. By unifying RL with next-token prediction, the approach promises to create significantly more powerful reasoning models.

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(blog.jxmo.io)
AI

Racket Library for Elegant HTML5 Generation

2025-01-12

The `html-printer` library for Racket provides an elegant way to generate well-formatted HTML5 code. Its core function, `xexpr->html5`, converts X-expressions to HTML5 strings with automatic indentation and line wrapping, allowing customization of column width. It's Unicode-aware, correctly handling character lengths, and optionally adds line breaks between tags for improved readability and maintainability. Ideal for creating semantically clean and structurally sound HTML5.

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(joeldueck.com)
Development

The Surprising Truth About EVs and Their Environmental Impact

2025-09-03
The Surprising Truth About EVs and Their Environmental Impact

A new study from the University of Michigan challenges common assumptions about the environmental friendliness of electric vehicles. The research reveals that even accounting for battery production and electricity generation, the environmental benefits of EVs vary significantly depending on vehicle type, location, and usage. For instance, in Pennsylvania, a pure electric compact sedan emits 63% less CO2 than a gasoline car, but in Arizona, that figure jumps to 79%. Even large electric SUVs and pickups still produce less lifetime CO2 than gasoline compact cars. The study includes a calculator allowing users to compare lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for various vehicles. The key takeaway: Any vehicle with only an internal combustion engine is more detrimental to the environment than any EV, and electrification offers greater potential for emission reduction than downsizing alone.

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(www.thedrive.com)
Tech Environment

Western Digital's Patent Infringement Damages Reduced to $1

2025-06-25
Western Digital's Patent Infringement Damages Reduced to $1

Western Digital has dramatically reduced its patent infringement payout to just $1. A California jury initially awarded SPEX Technologies $553 million for infringement related to Western Digital's self-encrypting hard drives. However, the judge overturned the damages due to SPEX shifting its damages theory during the trial and lacking sufficient evidence to support the original amount. While Western Digital lost on most other post-trial motions, its legal team considers this a significant victory.

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(www.theregister.com)
Tech patent infringement damages

Digital Divide: Progress vs. Exclusion in the Age of Technology

2025-02-09

While digital technologies offer numerous advantages, they also create a significant societal exclusion problem. This article highlights the substantial portion of the UK population lacking equal access to and use of digital services, including the elderly, low-income groups, and functionally illiterate individuals. This contradicts the inclusivity message often promoted by institutions like museums. The article advocates for a more inclusive approach alongside embracing digital technology, such as providing multiple access points to information, preventing the digital divide from exacerbating social inequality.

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(amuseumfornow.com)
Tech social exclusion inclusivity

The US PornHub 'Ban': A Culture War Masquerading as Child Protection?

2025-01-12
The US PornHub 'Ban': A Culture War Masquerading as Child Protection?

Nearly a third of US states, home to over 104 million people, can no longer access PornHub due to new laws requiring age verification on porn websites. While proponents claim these laws protect children from harmful content, operators argue they violate user privacy and are ineffective. The debate centers on the technical challenges of age verification without compromising privacy, and the underlying culture war surrounding the control and suppression of sexuality. Critics argue the laws are burdensome, ineffective, and a potential Trojan horse for broader censorship, rather than genuine child protection.

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(www.independent.co.uk)
Tech online censorship child protection culture war

Mozilla Launches Privacy-Focused AI Tool: Orbit

2024-12-31

Mozilla has released Orbit, a Firefox extension leveraging AI to summarize web content such as emails, documents, articles, and videos, while prioritizing user privacy. Orbit requires no account creation, doesn't store session data or personal information, and utilizes a Mistral 7B LLM model hosted by Mozilla. Users can easily summarize long documents and videos, quickly grasp the gist of emails and articles, and get specific information through questions.

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(orbitbymozilla.com)
Development Privacy Browser Extension

Global Exchanges Warn of Risks Posed by Tokenized Stocks

2025-08-26
Global Exchanges Warn of Risks Posed by Tokenized Stocks

The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), representing the world's largest stock exchanges, has warned regulators about the risks of so-called tokenized stocks. These blockchain-based tokens mimic equities but lack the same rights and safeguards, potentially harming market integrity. The WFE, in a letter to the SEC, ESMA, and IOSCO, highlighted platforms like Coinbase and Robinhood's foray into this nascent sector, emphasizing that these 'tokenized stocks' are not equivalent to actual shares. The WFE urged regulators to apply securities rules to these assets, clarify legal frameworks, and prevent misleading marketing, citing potential investor losses and reputational damage to issuing companies.

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(ca.news.yahoo.com)
Tech tokenized stocks
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