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The Canonization of James Joyce: A Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker

2025-06-18
The Canonization of James Joyce: A Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker

This article explores Richard Ellmann's monumental biography of James Joyce, examining its creation, impact, and enduring legacy. Ellmann's masterful blend of research, charm, and narrative skill resulted in a groundbreaking work that transcended academic circles. The article delves into Ellmann's meticulous research methods, his access to previously unpublished materials, and the challenges he faced in shaping the narrative of Joyce's complex life. It further considers the biography's impact on Joyce's reception, its place in the evolution of biographical writing, and how its approach contrasts with more recent theoretical frameworks in literary studies.

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(www.theatlantic.com)
Misc James Joyce Richard Ellmann

NYC High Schoolers Navigate a Week of the Smartphone Ban

2025-09-11

New York City high school students are adapting to a week-long statewide smartphone ban. Students are turning to retro alternatives like Polaroids, walkie-talkies, and card games, with reports of a resurgence in Uno and poker during class downtime. Vintage cameras are making a comeback, and some students are exploring the use of MP3 players. The ban has surprisingly increased face-to-face interaction and outdoor activities. While some students remain opposed to the ban due to concerns about college applications, many appreciate the increased reading and socialization. Schools are managing the ban using various strategies, including phone collection at the door or magnetic pouches. However, this has led to long lines at the end of the day. Despite challenges, the ban has improved the school atmosphere, prompting students to re-engage with their surroundings.

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(gothamist.com)
Misc teenagers

LibreOffice: 200 Million Users and the Endurance of Open-Source Office Suites

2025-03-28
LibreOffice: 200 Million Users and the Endurance of Open-Source Office Suites

While not tracking user data, LibreOffice advocates estimate around 200 million users. Gartner analyst Jason Wong notes continued interest in LibreOffice as a desktop alternative to paid office suites, particularly for clients aiming to maintain on-premises implementations given Microsoft and Google's cloud focus. While cost-effective, LibreOffice requires specialized resources and new skills for maintenance.

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(www.computerworld.com)
Development office suite

Google Maps Renames the Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America'

2025-02-11
Google Maps Renames the Gulf of Mexico to 'Gulf of America'

Google Maps has updated its maps in the US to reflect the Trump administration's renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the 'Gulf of America', showing the new name on both web and mobile platforms. Google states this follows the US Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). Mexican users still see 'Gulf of Mexico', while the rest of the world sees the original name with '(Gulf of America)' appended. Location is determined by mobile OS, SIM card, and network data. Desktop users see the changes based on search settings or device location. Apple Maps has yet to change, though redirects 'Gulf of America' searches to the Gulf of Mexico. Other map providers like MapQuest haven't updated either. Interestingly, Waze shows both names when searching 'Gulf of Mexico', but yields no results for 'Gulf of America'.

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(www.theverge.com)
Tech Name Change Gulf of Mexico

The Bizarre Venetian Doge Election Ritual: A 500-Year-Old Lottery

2025-05-04

For 500 years, the election of the Doge of Venice was a theatrical spectacle. An official would pray in St. Mark's Basilica, grab a random boy in the piazza, and use him to draw lots for the electoral college, initiating a tortuous and absurd process. From 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic, the process remained largely unchanged: lots determined 30 electors, then 9, who nominated 40 candidates, each needing at least 7 votes to proceed. This process of lotteries and eliminations continued until a final candidate, with the most endorsements, was chosen as Doge. The system, both ridiculous and profound, stands as a historical oddity.

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(www.theballotboy.com)
Misc Venice Doge Election

EU-Wide Mass Surveillance: Your Privacy is Under Attack

2025-08-11

The EU is planning mass surveillance of all 450 million citizens' communications, including photos, messages, and files, even encrypted ones. This violates fundamental privacy and data protection rights, leading to numerous false positives and putting ordinary people at risk. Weakening end-to-end encryption also makes sensitive data vulnerable to hackers and malicious actors. This sets a dangerous global precedent, enabling authoritarian regimes to justify their own intrusive surveillance and undermining privacy and free speech worldwide.

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(fightchatcontrol.eu)
Tech

Become a JJ VCS Master in 60 Minutes

2025-07-28
Become a JJ VCS Master in 60 Minutes

Tired of Git's complexities? This isn't another blog post praising JJ; it's a fast-paced workshop designed to get you up to speed with the JJ VCS quickly. Through a series of eight concise exercises, you'll master core workflows—from creating commits to resolving merge conflicts in stacked PRs—in just 1-2 hours. Created by Dr. Jimmy Koppel, this workshop offers simulated scenarios to provide hands-on experience and boost your version control productivity.

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(github.com)
Development Git Alternative

Microsoft Finally Fixes Security Update That Broke Dual-Booting

2025-05-18
Microsoft Finally Fixes Security Update That Broke Dual-Booting

Last August, a security update intended to address a GRUB bootloader vulnerability inadvertently broke dual-booting Windows and Linux on Secure Boot-enabled systems. This vulnerability allowed malicious actors to bypass Secure Boot's safety mechanisms. Nine months later, on May 13, 2025, Microsoft quietly released a patch (KB5058385) to fix the issue. The patch mitigates problems by refining how Secure Boot Advanced Targeting (SBAT) interacts with dual-boot systems, preventing legitimate Linux bootloaders from being blocked and avoiding "Security Policy Violation" errors. The fix applies to Windows 11 23H2, 22H2, 21H2; Windows 10 21H2; and Windows Enterprise 2015 LTSB, Windows Server 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012, 2012 R2. The patch is automatically applied via Windows Update.

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(news.itsfoss.com)
Development dual-booting

Starina: A Microkernel OS with a Hypervisor-as-a-Library Approach

2025-05-20
Starina: A Microkernel OS with a Hypervisor-as-a-Library Approach

This post introduces an innovative approach to Linux compatibility in the Starina operating system: integrating the virtual machine monitor (VMM) as a library within applications. Unlike traditional standalone VMMs, Starina's `starina_linux::Command` API lets developers run Linux programs similarly to `std::process::Command`, interacting with the VM via a virtual file system (virtio_fs). This design simplifies development and has the potential to achieve faster startup times than native Linux. Currently, basic file I/O is supported; future work includes adding networking, persistent storage, and enhanced containerization.

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(seiya.me)
Development microkernel

Robot Gender Impacts Customer Decisions in Hospitality

2025-05-09
Robot Gender Impacts Customer Decisions in Hospitality

Penn State research reveals that the gender characteristics of service robots influence customer decisions. For women with a low sense of power, robots with masculine features were more persuasive. However, 'cute' design elements (large eyes, raised cheeks) mitigated the effect of robot gender, leading to similar responses from male and female customers. The study suggests hospitality businesses can leverage these findings by tailoring robot gender to customer demographics to improve sales and service.

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(www.psu.edu)
Tech service robots gender bias

WinRAR 7.10 Released: Dark Mode and Enhanced Privacy

2025-02-21
WinRAR 7.10 Released: Dark Mode and Enhanced Privacy

WinRAR 7.10 has been released, boasting numerous improvements including larger memory pages for performance boosts, a much-requested dark mode, and a redesigned settings interface. A standout feature is its enhanced privacy controls. Users can now fine-tune how information from the Mark-of-the-Web (MoTW) is propagated, with a default setting that only retains the security zone value, stripping potentially revealing URLs and IP addresses from extracted files. While this might impact digital forensics, it's a welcome addition for privacy-conscious users.

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(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
Hardware

Finland Unveils World's Largest Sand Battery, a Cheap and Green Energy Solution

2025-06-17
Finland Unveils World's Largest Sand Battery, a Cheap and Green Energy Solution

The small Finnish town of Pornainen has switched on the world's largest sand battery, a thermal energy storage system using waste soapstone to store heat generated from renewable energy sources. This 2,000-metric-ton battery, housed in a 49-foot-wide silo, stores 1,000 megawatt-hours of heat for weeks, significantly reducing the town's reliance on oil for district heating and lowering carbon emissions. The low cost of materials and simple construction make this a compelling alternative to expensive lithium-ion batteries, showcasing a promising path for sustainable energy.

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(techcrunch.com)
Tech sand battery

Lua: An Underrated Programming Language

2024-12-26
Lua: An Underrated Programming Language

Lua, a concise and efficient embedded scripting language created in 1993, remains surprisingly underrated despite its strengths. This article highlights Lua's advantages: ease of learning and mastery, an excellent C API, multi-paradigm support, and exceptional embeddability. While widely used in games and embedded systems, the author also points out some unique aspects of Lua, such as its indexing conventions (starting at 1 but not mandatory), error handling, and nil-terminated arrays, which developers should be aware of. Overall, Lua is a powerful language deserving more recognition; its efficiency is evident in applications like Neovim plugins.

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(nflatrea.bearblog.dev)
Development scripting language embedded

ICE's Stingray Use Continues, While AI Surveillance System Falters

2025-09-09
ICE's Stingray Use Continues, While AI Surveillance System Falters

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to utilize Stingray technology to track undocumented immigrants, raising privacy concerns. A recently unsealed warrant reveals ICE's use of a cell-site simulator in Utah to locate a fugitive. Meanwhile, a $12 million AI surveillance system, Sherlock, intended to streamline police work, has reportedly shown slow progress and failed to deliver expected results. Further adding to surveillance concerns, ICE also signed a nearly $10 million contract with Clearview AI for facial recognition. These events highlight the reliance of law enforcement on surveillance technology and the resulting ethical and privacy implications.

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(www.forbes.com)
Tech

Going Solo: A Veteran Programmer's Rejection of Git Forges

2025-03-05

Veteran programmer Simon Tatham has long maintained his open-source projects using independent Git repositories, eschewing popular platforms like GitHub and GitLab. He details his reasoning: trust – preferring self-control over reliance on large corporations; efficiency – avoiding the overhead of complex forge systems; user experience – minimizing the burden of account creation; and workflow autonomy – prioritizing independent development processes over platform constraints. He favors email patch submissions, detailing preferred methods including a Git repository URL, incremental Git bundles, and other approaches, explaining his rationale for each. While acknowledging the lower transparency of his method, he remains unconvinced of the benefits of forges outweighing their drawbacks. He concludes by expressing openness to alternative systems which offer both transparency and lightweight management.

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(www.chiark.greenend.org.uk)
Development Code Hosting

Tmux-rs: A 100k LOC Journey from C to (Unsafe) Rust

2025-07-03

Over six months, the author painstakingly ported the ~67,000 lines of C code behind tmux, the terminal multiplexer, to Rust, resulting in a ~81,000 line codebase. Initial attempts using the C2Rust transpiler proved unwieldy, leading to a manual rewrite. The author details the build process, encountered bugs, and strategies for converting C idioms to Rust, including handling raw pointers, goto statements, and intrusive macros. The project culminates in a lalrpop-based reimplementation of the yacc parser, achieving a complete C-to-Rust migration and culminating in a 0.0.1 release. The journey showcases the challenges and rewards of large-scale code porting.

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(richardscollin.github.io)
Development C to Rust

NetBSD Server and Family Business Infighting: A Battle of Trust and Technology

2025-05-14
NetBSD Server and Family Business Infighting: A Battle of Trust and Technology

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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(it-notes.dragas.net)
Development ethical dilemma

Anthropic Implements Weekly Rate Limits for Claude AI Coding Tool

2025-07-29
Anthropic Implements Weekly Rate Limits for Claude AI Coding Tool

Anthropic, an AI company, announced new weekly usage limits for its Claude Pro and Max subscribers, effective August 28th. This move addresses issues with users running its Claude Code AI coding tool continuously and violating usage policies through account sharing and resale. While affecting less than 5% of users, the limits highlight the constraints AI model providers face regarding computational resources and the search for sustainable service models. Other AI coding tool providers have also made similar pricing adjustments.

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(techcrunch.com)
Development rate limits

TikTok Ban Fuels Mass Migration to Xiaohongshu

2025-01-19
TikTok Ban Fuels Mass Migration to Xiaohongshu

Facing a potential TikTok ban in the US, a wave of American users are migrating to the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu, creating an unusual surge in US-China online interaction. These self-proclaimed "TikTok refugees" are sharing their lives and engaging with Chinese users, fostering a unique cross-cultural exchange. Xiaohongshu's welcoming atmosphere and openness have provided fertile ground for this unexpected migration, creating new opportunities for understanding and communication between users from both countries.

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(abcnews.go.com)
Tech US-China cultural exchange

SQLite's WAL Mode Checksum Issue: Silent Data Loss

2025-07-25

This post delves into a flaw in SQLite's checksum mechanism within its Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) mode. When a checksum mismatch occurs in a WAL frame, SQLite silently discards the faulty frame and all subsequent frames, even if they are not corrupt. This design, while intentional, leads to potential data loss. The author analyzes the underlying reasons and proposes that SQLite should throw an error upon corruption detection instead of silently discarding data, thus improving data integrity. The discussion also touches upon the context of SQLite's usage in embedded systems and mobile devices, where corruption is more prevalent.

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(avi.im)
Development

Rubin Observatory's First Image Reveals Thousands of Previously Unknown Asteroids

2025-06-30
Rubin Observatory's First Image Reveals Thousands of Previously Unknown Asteroids

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile released its first image, revealing a staggering 2,104 previously unknown asteroids, including seven near-Earth objects. This surpasses five times the number of asteroids discovered in the last 200 years. Equipped with the world's largest digital camera, the observatory will capture massive high-resolution images of the southern sky every three nights. The ability to record asteroid movement as 'movies' is crucial for planetary defense, enabling better study of asteroid movements and timely detection of potential threats.

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(www.space.com)
Tech asteroid discovery

Samsung Locks Down Bootloaders in One UI 8, Stifling Customization

2025-07-29
Samsung Locks Down Bootloaders in One UI 8, Stifling Customization

The Android modding community is up in arms after discovering Samsung's One UI 8 update removes the bootloader unlock option on many devices. Previously available outside the US, this feature allowed users to install custom ROMs and kernels. Evidence shows this option is gone in One UI 8 beta builds for the Galaxy S25 and stable builds for the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7, affecting global users. While Samsung now offers seven years of OS updates, this move prevents users from extending device life or enhancing performance through custom ROMs, a significant blow to those who appreciate deep Android customization.

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(www.sammobile.com)
Development

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-07-07
arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

arXivLabs is a framework for collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved share arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv only partners with those who uphold these principles. Got an idea to improve the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

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(arxiv.org)
Tech

Turning Urine into Bone: A Biotech Breakthrough

2025-06-28
Turning Urine into Bone: A Biotech Breakthrough

Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UC Irvine, and UIUC have engineered yeast to convert human urine into hydroxyapatite, a valuable mineral used in bone and tooth repair. This cost-effective process not only provides a sustainable source of hydroxyapatite but also offers a solution for reducing wastewater treatment costs and creating fertilizer. The modified yeast, dubbed 'osteoyeast', efficiently extracts minerals from urine, mimicking the natural bone-building process. This 'pee-cycling' approach promises a significant environmental and economic impact.

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(newscenter.lbl.gov)
Tech

Sun Microsystems Employee #8: A Founding Story

2025-04-30
Sun Microsystems Employee #8: A Founding Story

This article recounts the author's experience joining Sun Microsystems, a tiny startup, 40 years ago. The author's journey from Amdahl, driven by interest in UNIX and the Motorola 68000, led to encounters with Sun's founding team. His background in UNIX and workstations, combined with his brothers' connections at Xerox, secured his position as an early core member. He contributed to the development of the Sun-1 and porting BSD UNIX, witnessing Sun's meteoric rise.

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(akapugs.blog)
Startup

Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A 32B Parameter MoE Language Model with Powerful Agentic Capabilities

2025-07-13
Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A 32B Parameter MoE Language Model with Powerful Agentic Capabilities

Moonshot AI has released Kimi K2, a state-of-the-art 32 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model boasting a total of 1 trillion parameters. Trained using the Muon optimizer, Kimi K2 excels in frontier knowledge, reasoning, and coding tasks, and is meticulously optimized for agentic capabilities. It comes in two versions: Kimi-K2-Base, a foundation model for researchers, and Kimi-K2-Instruct, a ready-to-use instruction-following model with robust tool-calling capabilities, autonomously deciding when and how to use tools. The model and its weights are open-sourced, and an API is available.

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(github.com)
AI Tool Calling

cURL 8.16.0's Catastrophic pthread_cancel and its Removal

2025-09-13

cURL 8.16.0 introduced the use of pthread_cancel to interrupt getaddrinfo(), aiming for performance improvements. However, this change caused serious memory leaks. This is because getaddrinfo() can be cancelled while reading /etc/gai.conf, leading to un-released allocated memory. Due to the difficulty in resolving this issue and the potential for serious stability problems, the cURL team decided to remove this functionality in #18540, recommending users utilize the c-ares library as an alternative, despite some functional limitations.

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(eissing.org)
Development memory leak

“Your” vs “My” in UI: A Subtle but Crucial Choice

2025-09-16
“Your” vs “My” in UI: A Subtle but Crucial Choice

The article explores the subtle but crucial decision of using "My account" vs. "Your account" in user interfaces. It argues that in most cases, prefixes are unnecessary; simply using "Account," "Orders," etc., is sufficient. However, complexities arise when dealing with content belonging to both the user and the system, such as a case management system containing both the user's and others' cases. While "My Cases" might seem fine in a menu, it feels unnatural in other contexts like onboarding flows or email notifications. The author recommends using "Your" when communicating to the user and "My" when the user is communicating to the system.

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(adamsilver.io)
Design Interaction Design

Louisiana Cancels $3 Billion Coastal Restoration Project

2025-07-18
Louisiana Cancels $3 Billion Coastal Restoration Project

Louisiana has canceled a $3 billion project to repair its eroding Gulf Coast, funded by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement. Governor Jeff Landry deemed the project a threat to the state's way of life, while conservationists viewed it as a crucial response to climate change. The cancellation could result in Louisiana losing over $1.5 billion in unspent funds and potentially repaying the $618 million already invested. The project, aimed at rebuilding wetlands by diverting sediment-laden Mississippi River water, was halted due to escalating costs and concerns about its impact on local fisheries. The state plans a smaller, cheaper alternative, but environmental groups strongly oppose this, arguing it's insufficient to address coastal erosion.

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(apnews.com)
Tech coastal restoration
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