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Microsoft Flight Simulator: 40 Years of Taking Flight

2025-06-04
Microsoft Flight Simulator: 40 Years of Taking Flight

From humble beginnings on the Apple II in 1979 to today's globally detailed simulation, Microsoft Flight Simulator has soared for 40 years. This article chronicles the game's journey from its inception to its peak, subsequent decline, and triumphant return, showcasing the power of technological advancement, teamwork, and unwavering dedication to the dream of flight. From its origins at Sublogic, through Microsoft's acquisition and the efforts of Aces Studio, to Asobo Studio's AI-powered and Bing data-driven remake, each iteration reflects technological leaps and the developers' relentless pursuit of innovation.

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(spectrum.ieee.org)
Game

Atari ST and DOS PCs: A Forgotten Disk Compatibility Story

2025-01-06
Atari ST and DOS PCs: A Forgotten Disk Compatibility Story

In 1984, Atari faced a challenge in getting an operating system for the Atari ST. Due to time constraints, they partnered with Digital Research, opting for their nearly-complete GEM OS instead of the then-unfinished Windows. GEM would later be ported to PCs, but it didn't gain traction. However, Atari ST's use of GEMDOS, similar to PC-DOS, and the identical disk format, allowed for surprisingly easy file transfers between the Atari ST and PCs. Despite minor compatibility issues, this was revolutionary at the time and remains relevant today. The article also recounts an attempt to run DOS programs on an Atari ST using pc-ditto, a third-party emulator. While slow, the ability to run some DOS applications showcases the Atari ST's unique charm in the retro computing world.

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(www.goto10retro.com)
Tech

Faasta: Blazing Fast WebAssembly FaaS

2025-04-25
Faasta: Blazing Fast WebAssembly FaaS

Faasta is a cutting-edge Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) platform built on WebAssembly, boasting sub-1ms cold starts and under 1KB memory overhead. Leveraging WASI P2 and WASIHTTP, it offers high-performance HTTP request handling and secure function isolation. Faasta is self-hostable, allowing you to run your own instance anywhere. While currently experimental, a free hosted instance is available at faasta.xyz.

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(github.com)
Development

60k Lines of Lua Later: A Game Dev's Reflection

2025-04-18
60k Lines of Lua Later: A Game Dev's Reflection

Oleg from Luden.io interviews Ivan Trusov, lead programmer of the Lua-based game Craftomation 101 (~60,000 lines of code built with the Defold engine), about their experience. Ivan discusses Lua's pros and cons, such as the lack of increment operators and classes, and array indices starting from 1. Despite this, he appreciates Lua's simplicity and flexibility, particularly its powerful 'tables', but notes runtime errors can arise in large projects due to its dynamic typing. He compares Lua to Python and C++, and discusses the potential use of static analysis tools and potential Lua upgrades (like Luau). Ultimately, he finds Lua performs well within Defold, but for the next project, he might consider a more strongly typed language to catch errors at compile time.

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(blog.luden.io)
Development

Debugging a flaky test with BCC's `trace`

2025-04-13

While patching an open-source project, the author encountered intermittently failing tests. Using the `trace` utility from the BCC tools, kernel function calls of `touch_atime` were monitored. This revealed a background thread in the author's text editor, scanning project files and altering file access times, thus causing the erratic test failures. The case highlights the power of BCC tools for Linux kernel debugging and the value of deep system understanding.

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(alexdowad.github.io)
Development kernel debugging BCC tools

AI-Generated Literature: Prejudice and Fluency

2025-05-03
AI-Generated Literature: Prejudice and Fluency

This essay examines the prejudice against literary works generated by large language models (LLMs), a prejudice analogous to historical biases against women writers. The author argues that dismissing AI writing as inherently flawed simply because it's non-human is unwarranted. The piece delves into the relationship between linguistic fluency and thought, demonstrating that much human language is habitual and non-reflective, not fundamentally different from AI-generated text. Ultimately, the author advocates for an open-minded approach to reading AI-generated works, as they may reveal unexpected and innovative forms of linguistic expression.

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(thelampmagazine.com)
AI Creative Writing

GCC 15: Six Major Improvements to Compiler Diagnostics

2025-04-10
GCC 15: Six Major Improvements to Compiler Diagnostics

A Red Hat engineer details six significant improvements to compiler diagnostics in GCC 15, aimed at enhancing usability. These include: prettier visualizations of execution paths using ASCII art and warning emojis; improved presentation of C++ template errors with nested structures for better readability; simultaneous output of text and SARIF diagnostic formats; a smoother transition to C23 with improved error messages highlighting C23 compatibility issues; a revamped color scheme using color to highlight differences in the source code; and the introduction of libgdiagnostics, a shared library making GCC's diagnostic functionality accessible to other projects. These improvements promise a significant boost to the developer experience with GCC.

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(developers.redhat.com)
Development Diagnostics

OpenAI's New Models Hallucinate More: Bigger Isn't Always Better

2025-04-18
OpenAI's New Models Hallucinate More: Bigger Isn't Always Better

OpenAI's recently released o3 and o4-mini models, while state-of-the-art in many ways, exhibit a troubling increase in hallucinations compared to their predecessors. Internal tests reveal significantly higher hallucination rates than previous reasoning models (o1, o1-mini, o3-mini) and even traditional non-reasoning models like GPT-4o. OpenAI is unsure of the cause, posing a challenge for industries demanding accuracy. Third-party testing confirms this issue, with o3 fabricating steps in its reasoning process. While excelling in coding and math, the higher hallucination rate limits applicability. Addressing model hallucinations is a key area of AI research, with granting models web search capabilities emerging as a promising approach.

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(techcrunch.com)
AI hallucinations

Overwatch 2 Developers Unionize at Blizzard

2025-05-11
Overwatch 2 Developers Unionize at Blizzard

Nearly 200 developers at Blizzard Entertainment, working on Overwatch 2, have successfully unionized, joining the Communications Workers of America (CWA). This follows the World of Warcraft team's unionization last year, marking Blizzard's second company-wide union. The union, encompassing artists, testers, engineers, and designers, formed in response to Microsoft's 2024 layoffs and concerns over pay disparities, work-from-home restrictions, crunch, time off, and severance. The Overwatch Gamemakers Guild aims to improve working conditions and ultimately contribute to better game development, setting a potential precedent for other studios.

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(kotaku.com)
Game unionization

Darklang Goes Open Source: A Journey from Closed Source to Community Embrace

2025-06-16
Darklang Goes Open Source: A Journey from Closed Source to Community Embrace

Darklang, a programming language initially launched as a closed-source, hosted-only platform, has announced that it's open-sourcing all its repositories. This shift stems from product maturity, user feedback, and a change in technical direction. Initially, Darklang's closed-source approach aimed to ensure sustainability and deliver unique features like safe code migration and unified deployment. However, with product maturity, user requests for more openness, and the emergence of local-first development and new business models (e.g., paid team collaboration and AI tools), Darklang chose to embrace open source to foster community growth and the platform's long-term evolution. While some technical challenges remain, such as licensing implications in package management, the open-sourced Darklang will be more transparent and accessible.

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(blog.darklang.com)
Development

The Manicule: From Medieval Manuscripts to Mouse Cursors

2025-04-13
The Manicule: From Medieval Manuscripts to Mouse Cursors

Ever noticed those little pointing hands in old books? That's a manicule, and this article traces its fascinating journey from medieval manuscripts, where readers used them to highlight important passages, through the printing press era, and finally to the digital age where it lives on as the ubiquitous website pointer. It's a story of how a simple symbol adapted to new technologies, always serving the same purpose: guiding the reader's attention.

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(www.messynessychic.com)
Design Symbol

How Much Information Is Actually in Your DNA?

2025-05-10
How Much Information Is Actually in Your DNA?

This article delves into the question of how much information is contained within human DNA. A simple calculation suggests around 1.5GB, but this overlooks redundancy and compressibility. The author explores two definitions of information from information theory: storage space and Kolmogorov complexity, comparing their application to DNA. Ultimately, a new definition – phenotypic Kolmogorov complexity – is proposed as a better reflection of DNA's true information content, although its precise calculation remains elusive.

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(dynomight.substack.com)
AI Molecular Biology

14 Underrated Python Features to Level Up Your Skills

2025-04-23

This article explores 14 lesser-known yet powerful Python features. From type overloading and keyword-only arguments to structural pattern matching and metaclasses, it delves into advanced techniques that can significantly improve code efficiency and readability. Learn how to leverage features like generics for type safety, optimize performance with caching (@cache), and streamline conditional logic with pattern matching. Even seasoned Python developers will discover new tricks and insights to boost their coding prowess.

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(blog.edward-li.com)
Development Python tips advanced Python

Trump Family Crypto Venture Sparks Controversy: $2B Binance Investment Raises Eyebrows

2025-05-01
Trump Family Crypto Venture Sparks Controversy: $2B Binance Investment Raises Eyebrows

A stablecoin launched by Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial is being used for a $2 billion investment in Binance by an Abu Dhabi firm. This latest Trump family crypto venture, following a January 'meme coin' launch, has drawn criticism for potential conflicts of interest. The stablecoin, USD1, is issued on Binance's blockchain and has been integrated with Tron. While USD1's value has rapidly grown, the identity of its major holders remains unclear, raising concerns. Senator Elizabeth Warren strongly criticized the deal, calling it corruption. The White House and World Liberty Financial have not yet commented.

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(finance.yahoo.com)
Startup stablecoin Stablecoin

arXivLabs: Community Collaboration on New arXiv Features

2025-06-01
arXivLabs: Community Collaboration on New arXiv Features

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

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(arxiv.org)
Development

Noloco is Hiring a Senior Product Designer to Build its No-Code App Platform

2025-03-15
Noloco is Hiring a Senior Product Designer to Build its No-Code App Platform

Noloco, a fast-growing, remote-first company backed by Y Combinator, is hiring a Senior Product Designer. Your primary mission will be to establish a strong design foundation for Noloco, making its platform simple, powerful, and flexible for non-technical users. This includes defining the design system, redesigning the mobile experience, and helping to build new product features that enable businesses to build amazing software without writing code. This is a high-impact role where your work will directly influence Noloco's success, with opportunities for growth as the company scales.

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(www.ycombinator.com)
Development

A Nostalgic Look at MS-DOS Word

2025-04-27
A Nostalgic Look at MS-DOS Word

This retrospective dives into the history of Microsoft Word on MS-DOS, tracing its evolution from a non-WYSIWYG editor to the final Word 6.0. The author recounts their experiences using Word in the DOS environment, covering its interface, features, comparisons with competitors like WordPerfect, and file compatibility challenges. Ultimately, the review praises Word 5.5/6.0's practicality for DOS users needing a text editor and system file manager, showcasing a fondness for this classic piece of software.

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(shot97retro.blogspot.com)
Misc Word Processor

A Catalog of Novel Operating Systems: Reimagining the Future of Computing

2025-05-17
A Catalog of Novel Operating Systems: Reimagining the Future of Computing

Following the LLM hype, a wave of new operating system creations has emerged. This article catalogs several such projects, including the UXN/Varvara personal computing stack, the web-research oriented Nette.io OS, and Lisp-based systems like Interim and ChrysaLisp. These projects demonstrate innovative approaches to OS design, such as DesktopNeo's reimagining of the desktop interface and MercuryOS's intention-based OS. These efforts represent bold explorations into the future of computing, reigniting passion for OS innovation.

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(github.com)
Development

Rural Engineer Brings Back Payphones, For Free

2025-06-05
Rural Engineer Brings Back Payphones, For Free

Patrick Schlott, an electrical engineer, has taken up a unique hobby: restoring and installing free public payphones in rural Vermont. He argues that while most people have cell phones, they aren't always reliable in rural areas, and sometimes people just need a landline. His company, RandTel, currently operates three phones, one of which is even solar-powered. This nostalgic yet socially responsible project provides a valuable community service while showcasing a piece of American history.

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(www.core77.com)
Misc

VMware Lock-in: School Districts Face IT Nightmare

2025-09-25
VMware Lock-in: School Districts Face IT Nightmare

An Indiana school district's migration away from VMware has resulted in severe compatibility issues. Their Dell hardware, purchased in 2019 with a purported 10-year lifespan, is now unsupported without VMware. This $250,000 investment is now forcing the district to use unsupported hardware, causing project delays and necessitating a complete IT infrastructure re-planning for the next three to four years. An Idaho school district, using VMware since 2008, faces similar challenges with high upgrade costs. This highlights the problematic aspects of large tech companies' bundling software and hardware, impacting organizations like educational institutions with limited budgets.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech

Reverse Engineering a Children's Learning Device

2025-04-06
Reverse Engineering a Children's Learning Device

This blog post details the author's first reverse engineering project: a children's learning device (LeapFrog LeapStart/VTech MagiBook). The journey begins with acquiring the firmware from the VTech software's cache files. Key files identified include 'System' and 'FileSys'. 'FileSys' is a FAT32 filesystem image containing app, audio, and book data. 'System' appears to be an ARM binary, containing C++ information, logs, and kernel information (uC/OS-II). Future steps involve deeper analysis of these files, aiming to understand the dot-recognition and audio playback code, and potentially adding custom audio.

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(leloubil.prose.sh)
Development firmware analysis

Microsoft Teams to Block Meeting Screenshots for Enhanced Security

2025-05-10
Microsoft Teams to Block Meeting Screenshots for Enhanced Security

Microsoft is rolling out a new Teams feature in July 2025 to prevent users from capturing screenshots of sensitive information shared during meetings. This functionality will be available on Windows and Mac desktops, and iOS and Android mobile apps. Unsupported platforms will default to audio-only mode. While screenshots are blocked, users could still capture sensitive information by taking photos. This mirrors a recent similar feature introduced by Meta for WhatsApp. Microsoft also plans to release additional Teams features, including audio summaries of meeting transcripts.

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(www.bleepingcomputer.com)
Tech Screenshot Prevention

Trump's Economic Policies: Demolition or Renovation?

2025-04-09
Trump's Economic Policies: Demolition or Renovation?

This article uses a clever analogy, comparing Trump's economic policies to a group of construction workers who are demolishing a house instead of rebuilding it. The author argues that the Trump administration's protectionist trade policies, intended to revive American manufacturing, are actually harming the US economy. High tariffs have disrupted supply chains, increased business costs, and created market chaos, failing to stimulate American manufacturing. The article criticizes the chaotic and unplanned nature of Trump's policies and points out their potential threat to the stability of the US economy.

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(www.theatlantic.com)
Tech Trump's economic policies

AI-Powered Illustration Generator: Elevate Your Visuals

2025-03-14
AI-Powered Illustration Generator: Elevate Your Visuals

Need eye-catching illustrations for your app, website, or social media? This AI-powered tool creates custom graphics for everything from app interfaces and onboarding screens to website hero images and social media posts. Boost your visuals with consistent branding across user guides, tutorials, articles, online stores, and educational platforms. Make your content more engaging and your brand more memorable.

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(www.illustration.app)
Design AI illustration visual design illustration generator

Open-Sourcing DolphinGemma: A New Tool for Cetacean Research

2025-04-14
Open-Sourcing DolphinGemma: A New Tool for Cetacean Research

This summer, the Wild Dolphin Project, Georgia Tech, and Google are open-sourcing DolphinGemma, an acoustic model trained on Atlantic spotted dolphin sounds. Its potential extends to studying other cetaceans; researchers can fine-tune it for different species' vocalizations. By providing this tool, researchers can analyze their acoustic datasets, accelerating pattern discovery and deepening our understanding of these intelligent mammals. This collaboration combines field research, engineering expertise, and cutting-edge technology, opening exciting possibilities for bridging the communication gap between humans and dolphins.

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(blog.google)
AI

Locating RFI Sources Using Near-Field Corrections: A Study for 21cm Cosmology During the Epoch of Reionization

2025-02-27

Researchers have developed a novel method to locate radio frequency interference (RFI) sources, particularly those from near-field objects like airplanes, using near-field corrections. This method combines far-field phasing, near-field corrections, and beamforming to precisely pinpoint the 3D location of RFI emitters by maximizing the coherence of curved near-field signals. This is more efficient than traditional flagging, preserving more usable data and enhancing the chances of detecting the 21cm signal during the Epoch of Reionization. Results demonstrate effective altitude estimation of RFI emitters, revealing performance differences under varying observational conditions, laying the groundwork for more precise RFI removal in the future.

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(www.cambridge.org)
Tech Radio Frequency Interference 21cm Cosmology Epoch of Reionization

The Modern Guide to OAuth 2.0: Beyond the Specs

2025-06-09
The Modern Guide to OAuth 2.0: Beyond the Specs

This isn't just another OAuth 2.0 guide; it's a deep dive into real-world OAuth usage based on the experience of building FusionAuth, an OAuth server with over a million downloads. The guide details eight common OAuth modes, including local login, third-party login, enterprise login, service authorization, and machine-to-machine authentication, explaining each mode's workflow and security considerations. It also delves into the authorization code grant, PKCE, JWTs, token refresh, and user info retrieval, offering practical implementation advice.

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(fusionauth.io)
Development

Cloudflare CAPTCHA Breaks Open Source Browsers: A Month-Long Standoff

2025-03-16

Since January 31st, Cloudflare's CAPTCHA system has been intermittently failing, blocking access to websites for numerous non-mainstream browsers, including Pale Moon. Despite community reports, Cloudflare has offered little to no response, leading to accusations of discrimination against open-source projects. The issue, lasting nearly a month, significantly impacts user numbers and revenue for affected browsers, pushing developers towards considering legal action.

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(forum.palemoon.org)
Development Open Source Browsers

General Fusion Achieves Global First: Steam-Driven Plasma in Fusion Reactor

2025-03-16
General Fusion Achieves Global First: Steam-Driven Plasma in Fusion Reactor

General Fusion, a Canadian fusion energy company, has achieved a world-first: generating plasma in a reactor driven by steam. This milestone was reached in their Lawson Machine 26 (LM26) prototype reactor, using magnetized target fusion (MTF), a technology employing steam-powered pistons to compress plasma instead of lasers. After 23 years of dedicated research, this breakthrough represents a significant step, although commercial power generation remains a future goal. The achievement offers promising advancements in clean energy technology.

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(interestingengineering.com)
Tech
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