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Ruby Conference Roundup: A Global Overview

2024-12-16

Ruby Video Talks is a website that aggregates information on Ruby developer conferences worldwide. From major events like RubyConf 2024 (70 talks) and Rails World 2024 (46 talks) to smaller regional meetups, the site provides a comprehensive calendar. It highlights key speakers like Matz and offers search functionality by date, location, and topic, making it easy to find relevant events. Upcoming conferences in 2025, such as Balkan Ruby and Friendly.rb, are also listed, promising even more opportunities for the Ruby community.

(www.rubyvideo.dev)

Development Ruby Conferences Developer Events Programming Language

Always Attend the Funeral: A Father's Lesson in Human Kindness

2024-12-16

The author recounts how her father instilled in her the importance of always attending funerals, a lesson she initially resisted. Through years and personal experience, she realizes it's not just about obligation, but about offering comfort and acknowledging life's inevitable losses. Her father's death solidified this belief, highlighting the profound impact of seemingly small acts of kindness in the face of grief, emphasizing the importance of showing up for others even when inconvenient.

(www.npr.org)

Misc life lessons family human kindness

Canada's First Pirate Site Blocking Order Expires

2024-12-16

Canada's first pirate site blocking order, targeting the IPTV service GoldTV, quietly expired this week. Rightsholders Bell and Rogers chose not to seek an extension, despite many targeted domains remaining online. The decision likely reflects cost considerations and shifting priorities. Initially approved in 2018 and upheld against appeals in 2021, the order had a significant impact on piracy. However, the rightsholders have now shifted focus to broader, more dynamic blocking efforts targeting live sports streams and other platforms.

(torrentfreak.com)

Tech piracy site blocking

CIA's Animal Spies: From Pigeons to Rats, Declassified Secrets of Nature's Arsenal

2024-12-13

The CIA's history of using animals in espionage is filled with creativity and challenges. From pigeons carrying miniature cameras, to the attempted use of a cat for eavesdropping in the 'Acoustikitty' program (ultimately failing due to the cat's independent nature), to robotic catfish 'Charlie' for underwater reconnaissance, and the dragonfly-mimicking miniature drone 'Insectothopter', the CIA showcased its imagination, leveraging animal characteristics for intelligence gathering. Additionally, they used animal remains as camouflaged dead drops, even employing rats soaked in cat repellent to deliver messages. These imaginative attempts highlight the CIA's innovative spirit in technology and intelligence, and also reflect the unique value of animals in special environments.

(www.cia.gov)

Misc animal spies CIA technological innovation

Framework Unveils New Expansion Bay Module and More

2024-12-17

Framework has released the first new module for the Framework Laptop 16's Expansion Bay system: the Dual M.2 Adapter, allowing users to add extra storage drives or other high-speed devices. They've also updated the Framework Laptop 16's CPU thermal solution, introduced 'Mystery Boxes' containing random parts to reduce e-waste, added 48GB DDR5 memory modules, new merchandise, and expanded shipping to more regions. These updates enhance both the product line and user experience.

(frame.work)

Hardware Expansion Bay Module Hardware Upgrades

Librebooting a ThinkPad T480: A Challenging Open-Source Journey

2024-12-13

This blog post details the author's experience librebooting a ThinkPad T480, a process fraught with challenges. From updating the BIOS and backing up the original firmware, to using a Raspberry Pi Pico W and SOIC-8 clip to read and write the BIOS chip, and finally compiling the Libreboot firmware (encountering numerous compilation errors and seeking help from the IRC community), the author documents the entire process. The post also shares post-libreboot experiences, including performance improvements, hardware compatibility issues, and troubleshooting tips, along with recommendations for screen, RAM, and storage upgrades.

(ezntek.com)

1

Hardware Open-Source Firmware

Modelica Association: Efficiently Modeling Complex Systems

2024-12-16

The Modelica Association promotes the Modelica language and its associated tools. Modelica is an object-oriented language for modeling and simulating complex cyber-physical systems, particularly adept at acausal modeling of reusable components governed by mathematical equations. The association provides language specifications, tools, libraries, and community support to enable users to efficiently model systems.

(modelica.org)

Development system modeling object-oriented

macOS 15.2 Update Breaks System Replication: Users Face Data Backup Nightmare

2024-12-14

A critical bug in macOS 15.2 has broken the system replication feature, causing data backups to fail with a 'Resource Busy' error, specifically when attempting to copy Preboot or Recovery partitions. Developer Dave Nanian explains that the problem stems from Apple's own code and currently has no easy fix. Users are forced to rely on third-party backup solutions, utilizing a 'Backup - all files' method with a Smart Update to restore their data after a clean system install. This issue is causing significant user frustration, particularly as the holiday season approaches.

(www.shirtpocket.com)

Development system failure data backup

Discourse Celebrates a Decade of Fostering Online Communities

2024-12-17

Discourse, the open-source forum software, celebrated its 10th anniversary on August 26th, 2024. Launched with a vision of raising the standard of online discourse, it has grown from a small team of four to over 100 employees across 25 countries. The platform boasts over 20,000 communities, 107 million topics, and nearly 1.65 billion posts. Continuous development has included the addition of 49 plugins, chat features, and AI-powered tools for moderation and user experience enhancement. This success is a testament to its open-source nature, commitment to user feedback, and the dedication of its team.

(blog.discourse.org)

Development Open-Source Forum Community Software AI Integration

Eating Spaghetti by the Fistful: A Neapolitan Street Spectacle

2024-12-17

In 19th-century Naples, eating spaghetti became a unique spectacle. People would grab handfuls of spaghetti and shove it into their mouths with surprising speed. This unusual custom attracted numerous tourists and became a Neapolitan specialty. The article traces the history of this practice, from the price drop of pasta in the 17th century, to its role as an important food source for the poor, and its eventual disappearance with societal changes.

(www.atlasobscura.com)

Misc spaghetti Naples street food

Taming the Chaos: Centralizing and Structuring Error Handling in Go

2024-12-18

This article details the author's journey in tackling escalating error handling issues in a growing Go project. Initially, the simple approach to error handling devolved into chaos with confusing logs and untraceable errors. To solve this, a new error handling framework was designed and implemented. This framework employs a centralized, structured system using namespace codes to make errors meaningful and traceable. The core is a centralized declaration of error codes; each service layer returns only its own namespace codes, enriched with context information. The article thoroughly explains the design decisions, implementation, lessons learned, and migration strategy, offering valuable practical experience.

(olivernguyen.io)

Development Error Handling Software Architecture

AI Revolutionizes Protein Design: New Tool Unveiled

2024-12-15

Scientists have developed a groundbreaking AI-powered tool, RoseTTAFold, for designing novel proteins. This tool predicts the amino acid sequence of a protein based on a user-specified target structure, generating stable and functional proteins. This breakthrough promises to accelerate advancements in drug discovery, materials science, and bioengineering, offering new possibilities for addressing various challenges facing humanity. The technology holds the potential to revolutionize biomedicine by creating proteins with specific functions for treating diseases or developing new materials.

(artexplorer.ai)

AI Protein Design Biomedicine

Microsoft Unveils Phi-4: A Small Language Model Excelling in Complex Reasoning

2024-12-15

Microsoft has introduced Phi-4, a new 14-billion parameter small language model (SLM) that outperforms larger models in complex reasoning tasks, particularly in mathematics, surpassing even Gemini Pro 1.5 on math competition problems. This achievement is attributed to high-quality synthetic and organic datasets and post-training innovations. Currently available on Azure AI Foundry under an MSRLA, Phi-4 will launch on Hugging Face next week. Microsoft emphasizes its commitment to responsible AI development, integrating robust safety features into Phi-4's design and deployment.

(techcommunity.microsoft.com)

AI small language model complex reasoning

Exploring Climate Classification Systems: Beyond Köppen-Geiger

2024-12-14

This article delves into climate classification systems for Earth and beyond. It begins by introducing the widely used Köppen-Geiger system and its limitations. The author then analyzes various modifications and alternatives, including Trewartha, FAO, and Holdridge systems, comparing their differences in parameter selection, seasonality representation, and applicability. Ultimately, the author highlights the Prentice et al. BIOME1 model as a superior option due to its parameter choices and predictive accuracy, offering valuable insights for building more versatile climate classification systems.

(worldbuildingpasta.blogspot.com)

Tech climate classification Köppen-Geiger BIOME1 model

MacOS GPU Optimization: Wasting Resources for Speed

2024-12-15

Anukari's developer encountered a bottleneck while optimizing GPU performance on MacOS. Due to limited system control over GPU performance, Apple's GPU performance regulation mechanism performed poorly in Anukari's use case, resulting in audio glitches. The developer implemented a workaround: dedicating a GPU threadgroup warp to useless computation to 'trick' the system into increasing GPU clock speed, significantly reducing audio latency and improving performance. While crude, this method proved effective in resolving MacOS performance issues. However, performance improvements varied significantly between different DAWs (Ableton and GarageBand), requiring further optimization.

(anukari.com)

Development GPU optimization performance bottleneck

School Smartphone Ban Improves Sleep and Mood

2024-12-15

A three-week school smartphone ban experiment at the University of York showed significant improvements in students' sleep and mood. Students fell asleep 20 minutes faster on average, gained an hour of sleep nightly, and reported 17% less depression and 18% less anxiety. While cognitive improvements were modest, researchers suggest longer-term bans may yield greater benefits, informing policy decisions regarding smartphone use among young people.

(www.york.ac.uk)

Misc smartphone ban sleep mood

OpenAI Whistleblower Found Dead in San Francisco Apartment

2024-12-13

Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. Balaji had previously accused OpenAI of copyright infringement in the development of ChatGPT, arguing their data practices were harmful to the internet ecosystem. His death comes as OpenAI faces numerous lawsuits over its use of copyrighted material to train its AI models. Balaji's testimony was considered crucial to these cases. While police found no signs of foul play, the cause of death remains under investigation, raising concerns about the ethical implications of AI development and data security.

(www.mercurynews.com)

AI AI ethics

Tig: A Text-Mode Interface for Git

2024-12-17

Tig is an ncurses-based text-mode interface for Git, primarily functioning as a Git repository browser. It also aids in staging changes for commit at the chunk level and acts as a pager for various Git command outputs. Installation instructions, release notes detailing new features and bug fixes, and resources like the homepage, manual, and Q&A section on Stack Overflow are readily available. Bug reports and feature requests can be submitted through the issue tracker or via email.

(jonas.github.io)

Development command-line interface version control

Meta to Pay $50 Million to Australian Users Affected by Cambridge Analytica

2024-12-17

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has reached a settlement with Meta, resulting in a $50 million payment program for Australian Facebook users affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The case involved the unauthorized disclosure of personal information to the 'This is Your Digital Life' app, posing risks of political profiling. The payment scheme offers a base payment for users experiencing general concern or embarrassment and higher payments for those demonstrating specific loss or damage. Applications are expected to open in the second quarter of 2025.

(www.oaic.gov.au)

Tech data breach

US Fighter Jets Depicted on Russian School Wall Spark Controversy

2024-12-14

A new school in the Russian border town of Pechenga sparked controversy after images of F-16 fighter jets were painted on its walls. The images were quickly removed and replaced with Russian Su-57 jets. The school explained that the original drawings were of Su-27s, but the ambiguity led to the change. The incident, near the border with NATO members Norway and Finland, highlights regional tensions. A similar incident occurred at a naval base in Gadzhievo, where a US Los Angeles-class submarine was painted on a building before being replaced by a Russian submarine.

(www.thebarentsobserver.com)

Misc Russia military United States

Go Protobuf's New Opaque API Improves Performance and Safety

2024-12-16

The Go team released a new Opaque API for Go Protobuf, coexisting with the existing Open Struct API. This new API decouples generated code from its underlying memory representation, leading to performance improvements, reduced memory allocations, and enabling optimizations like lazy decoding. By hiding struct fields and accessing them only through accessor methods, it prevents pointer-related bugs and accidental sharing. Migration involves enabling the Hybrid API, using the `open2opaque` tool, and then switching to the Opaque API. The existing Open Struct API remains supported.

(go.dev)

Development

PLATO: How a 1960s Educational Computer System Shaped the Future

2024-12-16

PLATO, a groundbreaking educational computer system from the 1960s, significantly impacted the development of modern computing. Preceding its time, it pioneered features like forums, instant messaging, and multiplayer games. Its innovative gas plasma display, the TUTOR authoring language, and its advanced networking capabilities for simultaneous users were revolutionary. While PLATO's home market success was limited, its influence on graphic displays, networking, and user interfaces remains undeniable. Its legacy continues through emulators and modern reimaginings, preserving a piece of computing history and its vision for the future of education and interactive technology.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech Educational Technology

Engineer Implements Reversible 1D Cellular Automata Using Bitwise Operations

2024-12-12

Richard Palethorpe, an engineer, created a demo using the GFXPrim library showcasing a one-dimensional binary cellular automaton and its reversible counterpart. The automaton evolves based on rules where each cell's state is determined by its own state and those of its left and right neighbors. The article details bitwise operation optimizations, such as parallel processing of multiple cells using 64-bit integers and bit rotation to simulate neighbor interaction. Reversible implementation is achieved by XORing with the previous state. The author explores compiler optimization and vectorization impacts on performance and ultimately implements an efficient rendering method.

(richiejp.com)

Development cellular automata bitwise operations reversible computing

Why Finding High-Quality Products Is So Difficult

2024-12-16

This article explores the pervasive challenge of finding high-quality products and services in the market. The author argues that markets aren't perfectly efficient, with inefficiencies in companies and products persisting for years. Consumers struggle to discern product quality, often swayed by marketing. Even expert advice proves unreliable. Businesses, prioritizing efficiency, outsource or buy off-the-shelf solutions, but these often lack quality and may have fundamental flaws. The author uses personal anecdotes and case studies to illustrate information asymmetry and trust deficits within and between companies, hindering the production and sale of high-quality goods. The conclusion highlights that building quality isn't easy, but reliable service often necessitates in-house development—a significant hurdle for smaller companies.

(danluu.com)

Tech product quality market efficiency information asymmetry

OCR Challenge: Digitizing Saint-Simon's Memoirs

2024-12-17

The author spent several weeks using OCR to digitize a late 19th-century edition of the 18th-century French memoirs, *Les Mémoires de Saint-Simon*. This 45-volume behemoth, containing over 3 million words, is available online as images, but is difficult to read. The goal was to create a readable, searchable, and copyable text version. Challenges included poor image quality and parsing different page zones (headers, main text, margin comments, footnotes, etc.). Google Vision API was used for OCR, with a Python program processing the results to identify and separate text from different areas. While LLMs failed to reliably handle footnote references, the author improved the program and incorporated manual review, resulting in the release of the first volume.

(blog.medusis.com)

Development Text Processing Digital Humanities

Drag and Drop Images into Bevy 0.15 on the Web

2024-12-15

This post demonstrates integrating web native APIs via WASM with Bevy 0.15 to enable drag-and-drop image functionality in a web browser. It details using wasm-bindgen, gloo, and bevy_channel_trigger to handle DOM events in Rust, extract file data, and pass it to the Bevy engine for image loading and rendering. The process mirrors JavaScript implementation but leverages Rust's capabilities, addressing error handling and event listener memory leaks. The result is a Bevy web application capable of loading and displaying dropped PNG images.

(rustunit.com)

Development Web Development

CenterClick NTP200 Series: Offline GPS Time Servers for Precise Synchronization

2024-12-15

CenterClick introduces the NTP200 series of GPS-based NTP servers, offering precise time synchronization without internet connectivity. The series includes models like NTP200, NTP250, NTP220, and NTP270, each with varying RAM and features such as PoE and alarm outputs. These appliances feature built-in GPS antennas, supporting multiple GNSS constellations, and offer various interfaces and protocols including HTTP, HTTPS, SNMP, and SSH. Management and configuration are handled via a web interface, CLI, or USB, with NTP client tracking capabilities. Suitable for a wide range of applications, from ISPs to hobbyists, the series offers optional accessories such as different antenna lengths and power supplies.

(centerclick.com)

Hardware GPS time server NTP server time synchronization

Guile-powered Emacs: A Bold Rewrite Project

2024-12-16

Emacs, renowned for its extensibility, faces performance and expressiveness limitations with its core language, Emacs Lisp (Elisp). To address this, the Guile-Emacs project aims to replace Elisp in Emacs with Guile Lisp. After years of development and dormancy, Guile-Emacs has been revived by developers Robin Templeton and Larry Valkama. The project aims to leverage Guile's compiler and performance advantages to improve Emacs' speed and extensibility while maintaining Elisp compatibility. The ultimate goal is to rewrite a significant portion of Emacs's C code in Lisp, significantly enhancing its customizability. While facing technical and political challenges, the project presents exciting possibilities for the future of Emacs.

(lwn.net)

Development

Minimalist NAS: frood, an Alpine initramfs System

2024-12-16

The author introduces frood, a NAS system built as a single, large initramfs image containing a complete Alpine Linux system. This design results in fast boot times and reduced wear on storage devices. Configuration is straightforward; files reside directly in the image, eliminating complex DSLs or configuration tools. The system state is tracked with Git, and each boot is effectively a fresh start, preventing configuration clutter. The article details the system's build process, including the use of the alpine-make-rootfs script, installation of essential packages, and writing startup scripts. QEMU testing and the system image update procedure are also described. In essence, frood is a lightweight, easily maintainable, and deployable NAS system whose simple design philosophy is worth emulating.

(words.filippo.io)

Development

Optimistic Computing: A Path Towards Better Software

2024-12-15

This essay explores the concept of "Optimistic Computing," not as blind optimism, but as a convergence of several powerful ideas: simplicity and ease of use ("boot to kill"), local-first principles, and user empowerment. The author argues that by limiting dependencies, simplifying workflows, creating a seamless "just works" experience, and giving users more control, we can build more reliable, secure, and long-lasting software. This philosophy applies to both individual users and enterprise software development, ultimately aiming for a digital world that respects user privacy and data ownership.

(www.deobald.ca)

Development optimistic computing local-first

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