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Massive Supply Chain Attack Compromises Hundreds of E-commerce Stores

2025-05-11

Massive Supply Chain Attack Compromises Hundreds of E-commerce Stores

Hundreds of e-commerce stores, including a $40 billion multinational, are running backdoored versions of popular software. Security firm Sansec discovered that attackers have been actively exploiting these backdoors since at least April 20th. Affected packages are from vendors including Tigren, Magesolution (MGS), Meetanshi, and Weltpixel, released between 2019 and 2022. Attackers compromised vendor servers to inject backdoors, gaining access to all customer stores and their visitors. The backdoor disguises itself as a license check, located in License.php or LicenseApi.php. E-commerce stores using software from these vendors are urged to check their security immediately.

(sansec.io)

Tech e-commerce security backdoor vulnerability

The Unexpected Legacy of a Windows Screensaver: SereneScreen Marine Aquarium

2025-02-01

The Unexpected Legacy of a Windows Screensaver: SereneScreen Marine Aquarium

A recent video by retro tech YouTuber LGR explores the surprisingly enduring story of SereneScreen Marine Aquarium, a screensaver that's been captivating users for over two decades. Created by Jim Sachs, a former Air Force pilot turned programmer and digital artist, the screensaver began as a response to Microsoft's simplistic aquarium screensaver in Windows 95 and 98. Using hand-drawn 3D art and C++, Sachs released the first version in 2000. Its success led to a licensing deal with Microsoft for Windows XP, and it has since seen numerous updates and appearances in movies and TV shows. Available across various platforms, including Mac, iOS, Android, and Roku, SereneScreen Marine Aquarium shows the unexpected staying power of a seemingly simple screensaver in the age of smart TVs and streaming services.

(www.pcgamer.com)

Tech Retro Tech

Cloudflare's Open-Sourced OAuth Library: An Archaeological Record of Human-AI Collaboration

2025-06-07

Cloudflare's Open-Sourced OAuth Library: An Archaeological Record of Human-AI Collaboration

Cloudflare open-sourced an OAuth 2.1 library almost entirely generated by Claude, an AI model. The project's Git history meticulously documents every prompt, iteration, and human intervention, offering an archaeological record of human-AI collaboration. Initially skeptical, the lead engineer was amazed by Claude's ability to generate nearly all the code for a production-ready authentication library. The case study highlights the importance of clear prompts, iterative refinement, and timely human intervention for effective human-AI collaboration. The future may see prompts themselves becoming the code, directly driving application execution.

(www.maxemitchell.com)

Development human-AI collaboration

Flock Safety's Nationwide Surveillance Network: A Privacy Nightmare?

2025-09-04

Flock Safety's Nationwide Surveillance Network: A Privacy Nightmare?

Flock Safety is deploying automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras across the US, creating a massive surveillance network spanning thousands of cities. The system allows private users to create 'hotlists' and cross-references plates against police and FBI databases, raising serious privacy concerns. Its ability to track individuals' movements and widespread use by law enforcement, potentially for political persecution, is alarming. The article urges opposition to this mass surveillance, suggesting legislative action, public engagement, and limitations on data retention, sharing, and database usage to protect civil liberties.

(www.aclu.org)

Tech

Dissecting Space Invaders: A Deep Dive into the Code

2025-03-12

This article delves into the assembly code of the classic arcade game Space Invaders, revealing its ingenious hardware design and software implementation. It meticulously analyzes aspects like the display system, sound generation, collision detection, game object management, and a hidden Easter egg, highlighting interesting quirks and hidden bugs within the code. The author also explores design trade-offs such as memory usage and performance optimization.

(www.computerarcheology.com)

Game

The Future of Distributed Systems Programming: Beyond Existing Paradigms

2025-02-27

The Future of Distributed Systems Programming: Beyond Existing Paradigms

This article explores the limitations of existing distributed systems programming models, including external-distribution, static-location, and arbitrary-location architectures. The author argues that these models are merely improvements on existing sequential programming paradigms and fail to truly address inherent challenges in distributed systems like concurrency, fault tolerance, and version control. The article calls for a native distributed programming model that offers stronger safety and control, similar to Rust, while maintaining performance and scalability, and better cooperating with large language models.

(www.shadaj.me)

Development programming model

Battery-Free Energy-Harvesting Holiday Card Unveiled

2024-12-14

In 2024, Jeff Keacher, Sean Beever, and Sophie created a battery-free electronic holiday card. This ingenious card cleverly harvests ambient radio waves and light energy (not from a traditional solar panel) to power its LEDs and is remotely controllable via a 2.4 GHz WiFi network. Designed for maximum power efficiency, it averages just 400 nanowatts of power consumption and can even be powered by the RF energy leaked from a microwave oven.

(www.keacher.com)

Tech energy-harvesting battery-free wireless control

Citizen Scientists Unearth Thousands of New Eclipsing Binary Stars

2025-07-07

Citizen Scientists Unearth Thousands of New Eclipsing Binary Stars

NASA announced that citizen scientists, participating in the Eclipsing Binary Patrol project, have discovered thousands of previously unknown eclipsing binary star systems using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). These systems, consisting of two stars orbiting each other and periodically blocking each other's light, are crucial for studying star formation and evolution and may aid in the search for exoplanets orbiting them. The project, combining machine learning with human verification, demonstrates the immense potential of human-computer collaboration in astronomical research.

(www.spokesman.com)

Tech eclipsing binaries

Windows 11 Insider Build Gets Paint Copilot Button

2025-02-03

Windows 11 Insider Build Gets Paint Copilot Button

A new Windows 11 Insider build (26120.3073) introduces a Copilot button in Microsoft Paint, streamlining access to generative AI features like Cocreator, Image Creator, Generative Erase, and Remove Background. These features already existed, but the button improves workflow. The update also includes cloud photo search (Copilot+ PCs only) and bug fixes for the Taskbar, System Tray, and File Explorer. This is a preview for Insiders; availability for the stable Windows 11 release is unannounced.

(www.pcworld.com)

Development

Building a Self-Improving AI Code Factory

2025-07-02

Building a Self-Improving AI Code Factory

This article details the author's experience building a personal AI code factory using Claude, o3, and Sonnet AI models. The core principle is "fix inputs, not outputs": instead of directly patching generated code, the author adjusts plans, prompts, or agent combinations. The factory iteratively improves through planning (o3), execution (Sonnet), and verification (o3 and Sonnet), using Git worktrees for parallel development. The author shares scaling strategies, such as creating specialized agents and enforcing consistent code style. The ultimate goal is an AI system that autonomously generates, verifies, and improves its own code.

(www.john-rush.com)

Development

Paying Peer Reviewers: Faster Reviews, Same Quality?

2025-03-31

Paying Peer Reviewers: Faster Reviews, Same Quality?

Two recent studies suggest that paying peer reviewers around $250 can significantly speed up the review process without compromising quality. An experiment by *Critical Care Medicine* showed that offering payment increased acceptance rates and review speed. *Biology Open* conducted a similar experiment with higher payment amounts, yielding similar results. While the studies are small-scale, they provide initial data on paid peer review, sparking debate about this model and its potential impact on scientific publishing.

(www.nature.com)

Tech payment

Hyper: A Standards-First React Alternative (Developer Preview)

2025-05-09

Hyper: A Standards-First React Alternative (Developer Preview)

Hyper is a standards-first markup language for building UIs, offering a clean syntax for creating complex interfaces. Unlike React's monolithic architecture, Hyper prioritizes separating logic, structure, and styling, returning to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript standards. This results in simpler, more scalable, and maintainable UIs. The article compares Hyper and React in building simple and complex components, highlighting Hyper's decoupled design system. Future plans include full-stack applications and generative UIs, challenging React's dominance by focusing on simplicity and web standards.

(nuejs.org)

Development

Rust's Long War for the Linux Kernel

2025-02-09

Rust's Long War for the Linux Kernel

Rust is making inroads into the Linux kernel, but the transition will be a long and contentious one. While Rust offers significant advantages in memory safety and is backed by companies like Google, its adoption faces strong resistance within the kernel community. Concerns about its steep learning curve and integration challenges with existing C code have sparked heated debates, even described as a “religious war.” However, proponents argue that Rust improves kernel stability and security, attracting more developers. Ultimately, Rust's complete replacement of C depends on technological maturity and community consensus.

(thenewstack.io)

Development

Optimizing Embedded Systems Logic: Speeding Up Your Code with De Morgan's Law

2025-03-11

Two hackers, Bob and Alice, encountered a bug in their resource-constrained microcontroller: OR operations were five times slower than other operations. Facing a three-day deadline, they used logical equivalences, specifically De Morgan's Law, to rewrite their code, replacing OR operations with AND and NOT operations. This bypassed the performance bottleneck. The article further explores the universality of NAND operations and their application in optimizing cryptographic computations, such as significantly improving the efficiency of homomorphic encryption in the TFHE library.

(lagomor.ph)

Development logic optimization De Morgan's Law

macOS Tahoe's Utility App Icons: Dead Canaries

2025-08-26

macOS Tahoe's Utility App Icons: Dead Canaries

The new utility app icons in macOS 26 Tahoe Beta 7 are drawing heavy criticism. The author argues the new icons, all using a lazy wrench motif, are objectively terrible. Only a small portion of the icon represents the app's function, the rest being dominated by a poorly designed wrench and bolt. The design is criticized for its lack of detail and poor execution, exemplified by the Disk Utility icon being simply an Apple logo. This is seen as a canary in the coal mine, indicating deeper problems with Apple's design sensibilities.

(daringfireball.net)

Design icon design

AppHarvest's Rise and Fall: The Tech-Ag Bubble Bursts

2025-05-22

AppHarvest's Rise and Fall: The Tech-Ag Bubble Bursts

AppHarvest, a tech-focused indoor farming company, raised hundreds of millions promising high-tech greenhouses and Appalachian jobs. However, behind the hype, a grim reality unfolded: workers endured extreme heat, inadequate training, excessive overtime, and safety hazards. The company ultimately collapsed due to unsustainable operating costs and mismanagement. This story highlights the challenges of scaling tech-driven agriculture and the devastating consequences of neglecting worker rights and social responsibility.

(www.lpm.org)

Startup Tech Agriculture Labor Exploitation

Firefly Aerospace's Moon Landing Attempt: Blue Ghost's Rendezvous with the Lunar Surface

2025-03-01

Firefly Aerospace's Moon Landing Attempt: Blue Ghost's Rendezvous with the Lunar Surface

Firefly Aerospace, equipped with a suite of NASA science and technology, is targeting a lunar landing no earlier than 3:34 a.m. EST on Sunday, March 2nd. Their Blue Ghost lunar lander aims to touch down near Mare Crisium, on the near side of the Moon, as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and the Artemis program. Live coverage, jointly hosted by NASA and Firefly, begins at 2:20 a.m. EST on NASA+, approximately 75 minutes before the anticipated landing.

(plus.nasa.gov)

Tech Moon Landing

Infosec Roundup: Malvertising, Exploited Vulnerabilities, and Data Breaches

2025-03-10

Infosec Roundup: Malvertising, Exploited Vulnerabilities, and Data Breaches

Microsoft uncovered a malvertising campaign distributing malware via GitHub, impacting nearly a million devices. The campaign used pirated video streaming sites embedding malicious redirects, ultimately leading to malware hosted on GitHub that stole system information and browser credentials. Meanwhile, Red Hat becomes a CVE numbering authority of last resort, while several critical vulnerabilities are actively exploited, including an RCE vulnerability in Progress Software WhatsUp Gold and security flaws in Hitachi Vantara Pentaho Business Analytics Server. Cisco warns of the exploitation of CVE-2023-20118 and recommends hardware replacement. Popular phone cleaning apps are revealed to be sharing user data, and the US House passed a bill requiring federal contractors to implement vulnerability disclosure policies. Finally, scammers used AI-generated videos impersonating YouTube CEO Neal Mohan for phishing attacks, while Singapore considers caning for cybercriminals.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

AURA: A Machine-Readable Web Protocol

2025-08-07

AURA: A Machine-Readable Web Protocol

AURA (Agent-Usable Resource Assertion) revolutionizes AI-web interaction. Instead of relying on brittle screen scraping and DOM manipulation, AURA introduces a standardized `aura.json` manifest file, allowing websites to declare their capabilities (e.g., creating posts, logging in) as HTTP requests. This enables efficient, secure AI-website interaction and paves the way for smarter search engines indexing actions, not just content. The project includes a reference server and client, demonstrating its functionality.

(github.com)

AI Web Protocol Machine Readable

Denmark Revives Controversial Child Sexual Abuse Scanning Bill

2025-07-29

Denmark Revives Controversial Child Sexual Abuse Scanning Bill

On its first day as EU President, Denmark has reintroduced a controversial bill aimed at scanning messaging services for child sexual abuse material (CSAM), dubbed 'Chat Control'. This proposal, which mandates scanning even encrypted chats, has failed to garner sufficient support since May 2022, raising concerns about privacy and the undermining of encryption. Denmark, a strong supporter, aims for adoption by October 14th, but details of compromises remain undisclosed. This move could significantly impact user privacy and data security, facing strong opposition from tech experts and privacy advocates.

(www.techradar.com)

Tech Child Sexual Abuse Material

Michael Larabel: 20 Years of Deep Dives into Linux Hardware

2025-03-17

Michael Larabel, founder and principal author of Phoronix.com, has dedicated himself since 2004 to enriching the Linux hardware experience. He's written over 20,000 articles covering Linux hardware support, performance, graphics drivers, and more. He's also the lead developer behind the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software.

(www.phoronix.com)

Tech

Ditch PRDs, Embrace Demo-Driven Development

2025-05-03

Ditch PRDs, Embrace Demo-Driven Development

In the fast-paced world of software development, lengthy PRDs often hinder efficiency. Demo-driven development offers a more agile approach: prioritize building interactive demo prototypes to quickly gather feedback from users and stakeholders. Demos aren't the final product, but rather a way to visualize abstract concepts, making them accessible to non-technical individuals. By simplifying demo creation and access, and focusing feedback on core functionality, teams can iterate more efficiently, ultimately building products that better meet user needs. While documentation remains important, demo-driven development significantly boosts efficiency in the early stages, helping teams find direction faster.

(shubhanshu.com)

Development Demo-Driven Development User Feedback

Agora Protocol: Secure, Anonymous National Deliberation

2025-07-20

This paper proposes the Agora Protocol, a technological solution to the problem of societal division created by authoritarian regimes. Leveraging Telegram, the protocol establishes a secure, anonymous, multi-stage deliberation process allowing citizens to discuss and vote on national issues. A meritocratic filtering system ensures the most resonant ideas rise, culminating in a transparent national consensus visible to all participants. Remarkably efficient, it can distill the views of 100 million people into a core group of 100 within six weeks.

(simurgh-beau.github.io)

Tech Agora Protocol Anonymous Deliberation National Consensus

The Robot Dance: A Co-evolution of Technology and Art

2024-12-15

The Robot Dance: A Co-evolution of Technology and Art

This article explores the evolution of the robot dance in art and technology. Starting with Kraftwerk's song "We Are the Robots," the author traces the shift in dance styles from mechanical to organic, and the human fascination with the machinic aesthetic. The author points out that modern robots have transcended traditional robotic movements, exhibiting more fluid and lifelike motions. This shift reflects the co-evolution of technology and art, and humanity's perception of machinery has transformed from initial fear and alienation to closeness and acceptance.

(contraptions.venkateshrao.com)

AI robots art

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.

(avi.im)

Development

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-02-07

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

(arxiv.org)

Development

Generating Voronoi Diagrams with Fortune's Algorithm: An O(n log n) Headache

2025-02-08

This article dives deep into the complexities of generating Voronoi diagrams using Fortune's Algorithm in O(n log n) time. The author admits the implementation was far more challenging than anticipated and recommends using a simpler O(n²) approach or a library unless you need to process many large diagrams per second. The article thoroughly explains Voronoi diagrams, the principles of Fortune's Algorithm (including sweep line, beach line, event queue, parabolas, etc.), and the algorithm's data structures and event handling, such as site events, circle events, incomplete edges, half-edges, etc. Despite its complexity, the algorithm produces visually stunning Voronoi diagrams.

(redpenguin101.github.io)

Development Voronoi diagram Fortune's Algorithm Computational Geometry

California Ballot Initiative Inspired by Murder Seeks to Reform Healthcare Insurance

2025-03-31

California Ballot Initiative Inspired by Murder Seeks to Reform Healthcare Insurance

A proposed California ballot initiative, informally named after the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, aims to prevent insurers from delaying or denying doctor-recommended treatments. The initiative, filed by a retired attorney, is fueled by public anger over the healthcare insurance industry following the CEO's murder. The proposal would make it a felony for non-physicians to review physician-recommended treatments and requires physician review for any denial. The initiative is currently under review and requires significant public support to appear on the ballot.

(www.newsweek.com)

Tech california ballot initiative insurance regulation

IGNITE: The First All-IGS Art Pack Released!

2025-01-05

IGNITE: The First All-IGS Art Pack Released!

Mistigris art group and Break Into Chat have released IGNITE, the first-ever art pack entirely in the IGS (Instant Graphics and Sound) format. IGS is an obscure graphics protocol for BBSes, and IGNITE is a tribute to its creator, Larry Mears. The pack includes static images and animations on diverse themes and features a web-based IGS drawing tool, JoshDraw, created by the author. IGNITE supports Atari ST and is available in various compatible formats.

(breakintochat.com)

Game art pack

Rust Ecosystem Documentation Quality Review: Hits and Misses

2025-05-11

Rust Ecosystem Documentation Quality Review: Hits and Misses

This article provides an in-depth assessment of the documentation quality across numerous popular crates in the Rust ecosystem. It covers various domains, including random number generation, time handling, web frameworks, game engines, and error handling. The author evaluates each crate's documentation based on four quadrants (explanations, how-to guides, tutorials, reference) and highlights excellent examples (like `jiff`'s comprehensive documentation and design rationale) and areas for improvement (incomplete documentation or lack of practical guidance in some crates). This review offers valuable insights for Rust developers and points to directions for improving the Rust ecosystem's documentation.

(www.harudagondi.space)

Development

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