Popular：
Virtualization DNS security formal verification reachability analysis compiler errors macro conflict web extension development framework Bitmap Graphics API inconsistencies All Tags

Go's Design: A Deliberate Trade-Off

2025-01-31

This article delves into the design philosophy of the Go programming language, exploring its strengths and weaknesses. Born at Google, Go aimed to simplify writing and maintaining large-scale concurrent server code. The author analyzes Go's features – its simplified filesystem API, lack of operator overloading, explicit error handling, and interoperability with other languages – to explain the trade-offs behind its design choices. While criticized for aspects like its former lack of generics and less-than-stellar Windows support, the author argues these are conscious compromises made to achieve its primary design goals, ultimately making Go an efficient and easy-to-use language for engineering large projects.

Read more
(mattjhall.co.uk)
Development programming language design

Control Your Sex Toys with LLMs: A First Look at buttplug-mcp

2025-05-30
Control Your Sex Toys with LLMs: A First Look at buttplug-mcp

buttplug-mcp is an MCP server allowing LLM programs like Claude Desktop to query and control your sex toys. Created as a quick, fun, educational project on April Fool's Day, it's currently unstable with connection handling issues, but demonstrates the ability to control vibration strength via LLM commands. The project is open-source, supports multiple platforms, and offers Homebrew installation. While imperfect, it's a fascinating experimental project showcasing the potential of LLM integration with IoT devices.

Read more
(github.com)
Misc sex toys

PostgreSQL 18 Beta: Asynchronous I/O Revolutionizes Performance

2025-05-07

PostgreSQL 18 Beta 1 introduces highly anticipated asynchronous I/O (AIO), marking a significant leap in I/O handling. AIO dramatically improves performance, especially in cloud environments with high latency, by allowing the database to issue multiple read requests concurrently. Currently limited to reads (writes may be added later), AIO utilizes a new `io_method` configuration parameter offering synchronous, I/O worker, and `io_uring` modes. `io_uring`, on compatible Linux kernels, delivers the best performance. Benchmarks on AWS show 2-3x read performance improvements for read-heavy workloads. However, AIO changes performance monitoring; `EXPLAIN ANALYZE` I/O timing may be less precise, requiring the new `pg_aios` view for detailed analysis.

Read more
(pganalyze.com)
Development

Meta's Executive Bonus Bonanza: Massive Raises After Layoffs Spark Outrage

2025-02-22
Meta's Executive Bonus Bonanza: Massive Raises After Layoffs Spark Outrage

Meta has significantly increased executive bonuses to 200% of base salary, following recent layoffs affecting 3,700 employees. While Meta justifies the move by claiming it aligns with industry compensation, the timing, shortly after reducing stock options for remaining staff, has fueled criticism. This comes as CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a massive $60 billion investment in AI infrastructure for 2025, potentially explaining the increased executive compensation but raising questions about its long-term success.

Read more
(www.theregister.com)
Tech Executive Bonuses

Essential Document Templates for High-Performing Teams

2025-05-09
Essential Document Templates for High-Performing Teams

This article presents a collection of essential document templates designed to foster effective teamwork. These templates cover decision documentation, retrospectives, strategic planning, project tracking, problem investigations, one-on-one reports, all-hands meeting slides, and role clarification. The goal is to improve team cohesion, refine processes, and clarify responsibilities, ultimately boosting team efficiency and collaboration. These templates are practical tools beneficial for teams of all sizes and project scopes.

Read more
(www.templatesbypaul.com)
Development document templates

Oracle Refuses to Surrender JavaScript Trademark, Deno Land Fights Back

2025-01-13
Oracle Refuses to Surrender JavaScript Trademark, Deno Land Fights Back

Deno Land has filed a lawsuit against Oracle over the ownership of the JavaScript trademark. Oracle acquired the trademark in 2009 with the purchase of Sun Microsystems. Deno Land argues that Oracle has abandoned the trademark and that its 2019 trademark renewal was fraudulent. Both sides will submit their responses before February 3rd, followed by evidence gathering. This legal battle is expected to last for quite some time.

Read more
(www.infoworld.com)
Development Trademark Dispute

Academic Websites Overwhelmed by AI Bot Traffic

2025-06-02
Academic Websites Overwhelmed by AI Bot Traffic

A surge in bot traffic is crippling academic websites. Sites like DiscoverLife, hosting millions of images, have experienced massive traffic spikes, rendering them unusable. The culprit? Bots scraping data, likely to train generative AI models. This isn't isolated; BMJ and Highwire Press report similar issues, with COAR finding over 90% of surveyed members affected, many experiencing service disruptions. While open access encourages reuse, the aggressive scraping is unsustainable. The release of DeepSeek, a less resource-intensive LLM, exacerbated the problem, fueling the bot explosion. Smaller organizations face extinction unless this issue is addressed.

Read more
(www.nature.com)
Tech bot traffic academic websites

Let's Encrypt Drops Automated Certificate Expiration Emails

2025-02-06
Let's Encrypt Drops Automated Certificate Expiration Emails

Let's Encrypt, the non-profit providing free wildcard SSL certificates, will cease sending automated expiration emails starting June 4, 2025. This change, however, is likely beneficial. Reasons cited include widespread automation of certificate renewal by users, the significant cost (tens of thousands of dollars annually) and infrastructure complexity of sending these emails, and importantly, enhanced user privacy by eliminating the need to store millions of email addresses. Let's Encrypt suggests using alternatives like Red Sift Certificates Lite for free certificate expiration monitoring.

Read more
(arstechnica.com)
Tech

Danish Metal Detecting Hobbyists Unearth Ancient Treasures, Rewriting History

2025-06-21
Danish Metal Detecting Hobbyists Unearth Ancient Treasures, Rewriting History

A Danish engineer's casual metal detecting hobby led to an extraordinary discovery: a hoard of 1,500-year-old gold artifacts, including an amulet inscribed with "He is Odin's man." This inscription, the oldest known written mention of Odin, pushes back the known history of his worship by 150 years. Denmark's unique approach to metal detecting, allowing hobbyists to search and turn over finds, has revolutionized archaeological research, resulting in a wealth of discoveries far exceeding those of neighboring countries.

Read more
(www.scientificamerican.com)
Tech metal detecting

Chrome 135 Introduces Device-Bound Session Credentials for Enhanced Web Security

2025-05-02
Chrome 135 Introduces Device-Bound Session Credentials for Enhanced Web Security

Chrome 135 introduces Device-Bound Session Credentials (DBSC), a new feature designed to bolster web application security. DBSC protects user sessions from cookie theft and hijacking by generating a key pair bound to the device. Even if cookies are stolen, attackers can't access accounts from other devices. Leveraging hardware-backed storage like TPM and regularly refreshing short-lived cookies, DBSC significantly enhances security without impacting user experience. Developers can integrate and test this feature via HTTP headers.

Read more
(developer.chrome.com)
Tech Device Binding

Revolutionary Digital Painting Software: True Pigment

2025-08-16
Revolutionary Digital Painting Software: True Pigment

True Pigment is an open-source digital painting software featuring a groundbreaking dual-component pigment canvas. This canvas stores the spectral reflectance and transmittance of pigments, enabling physically accurate color mixing, even for opaque and transparent colors. The software also offers flexible lighting controls, accurate color management (including sRGB, AdobeRGB 1998, and D65 P3 color spaces), and CMYK soft proofing. Developed by Wu Yiming, it's licensed under GNU GPL v3 or later for individual use.

Read more
(www.wellobserve.com)
Design color management

Bizarre PCIe Issue with 4TB Crucial T500 NVMe SSD

2024-12-28
Bizarre PCIe Issue with 4TB Crucial T500 NVMe SSD

A user encountered a strange problem with a 4TB Crucial T500 NVMe SSD on an MSI PRO X670-P WIFI motherboard: the SSD works flawlessly after each boot but becomes undetectable after shutdown, requiring a physical reseat. Investigations ruled out the SSD and CPU, pointing to a motherboard design flaw. Residual voltage remains after shutdown, causing the SSD controller to malfunction. Disconnecting the HDMI cable resolved the issue, suggesting a power delivery design or BIOS problem on the motherboard.

Read more
(forum.level1techs.com)
Hardware Motherboard Issue

The 21-Day Habit Myth Debunked

2025-04-22
The 21-Day Habit Myth Debunked

The popular belief that it takes 21 days to form a new habit is a misconception stemming from a misinterpreted observation, not scientific research. A study of 96 individuals revealed that habit formation averages 66 days, potentially extending to 8 months. The research also shows that occasional lapses don't significantly hinder the process. Ultimately, persistence, not a specific timeframe, is key to habit formation.

Read more
(thelogicaloptimist.com)
Misc habit formation

System Calls: The Hidden Cost of Performance

2025-09-20
System Calls: The Hidden Cost of Performance

This article delves into the performance overhead of Linux system calls, revealing that it's far more than just a simple kernel function call. System calls disrupt CPU microarchitectural optimizations like instruction pipelining and branch prediction, leading to performance losses far exceeding what's apparent in the source code. The article analyzes kernel code, explains the performance impact of various software and hardware mitigations, and offers optimization strategies such as using vDSO, caching values, optimizing I/O, batching operations, and pushing work into the kernel to reduce system call frequency and improve software performance.

Read more
(blog.codingconfessions.com)
Development

PhD Students: Don't Try to Reform Science Yet

2025-03-18
PhD Students: Don't Try to Reform Science Yet

This article distinguishes between 'Science 1,' the idealized pursuit of truth, and 'Science 2,' the actual social practice of science. Science 2 involves funding, collaboration, competition, and crucially, communication. The author uses the example of BERT to illustrate how even revolutionary contributions can face resistance due to cultural factors and communication styles. The advice for PhD students is to focus on navigating Science 2, building networks, and establishing influence before attempting to reform the system.

Read more
(maxwellforbes.com)
Development phd

DoppelBot: Your CEO, Now an LLM

2025-02-04
DoppelBot: Your CEO, Now an LLM

Modal has created DoppelBot, a Slack bot that can replace your CEO (sort of!). It fine-tunes an OpenLLaMa model on your team's Slack messages to mimic your CEO's communication style. Built on Modal's serverless platform, the entire process—scraping, fine-tuning, inference, and Slack event handling—is streamlined and efficient. The open-source code allows for easy deployment and customization within your workspace. Using LoRA for efficient fine-tuning and supporting multiple workspaces, DoppelBot offers a novel approach to team collaboration and productivity enhancement. The article details its functionality and deployment steps.

Read more
(modal.com)
Development Slack Bot

Nvidia's Desktop AI Ambitions: Bringing Billion-Parameter Models Home

2025-01-16
Nvidia's Desktop AI Ambitions: Bringing Billion-Parameter Models Home

At CES, Nvidia unveiled 'Project Digits,' a desktop AI supercomputer based on its Grace Blackwell architecture. Priced at around $3,000, it can run 200-billion parameter AI models locally. This is seen as Nvidia's attempt to replicate its gaming success in the desktop AI market. While initially targeting data scientists and AI researchers, its affordable price and ease of use (supporting Windows and Mac) suggest a potential expansion to a broader consumer market. Nvidia's mature GPU ecosystem and hardware partnerships will aid in building a similar AI product line, but the maturity of the software ecosystem will be crucial to its success.

Read more
(www.theangle.com)
Tech

MIT Study: AI Chatbots Reduce Brain Activity, Impair Fact Retention

2025-06-19
MIT Study: AI Chatbots Reduce Brain Activity, Impair Fact Retention

A new preprint study from MIT reveals that using AI chatbots to complete tasks actually reduces brain activity and may lead to poorer fact retention. Researchers had three groups of students write essays: one without assistance, one using a search engine, and one using GPT-4. The LLM group showed the weakest brain activity and worst knowledge retention, performing poorly on subsequent tests. The study suggests that early reliance on AI may lead to shallow encoding and impaired learning, recommending delaying AI integration until sufficient self-driven cognitive effort has occurred.

Read more
(www.theregister.com)
AI Brain Activity

Apple's Secret Smart Glasses Chip Poised to Challenge Meta

2025-05-08
Apple's Secret Smart Glasses Chip Poised to Challenge Meta

Bloomberg reports that Apple is developing a new chip for its potential smart glasses, aiming to compete with Meta's Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Based on Apple Watch technology but streamlined and optimized for multiple cameras, mass production is targeted for late 2026 or 2027, suggesting a similar timeframe for the glasses' release. Apple is also reportedly working on augmented reality glasses, mirroring Meta's efforts (though Meta's consumer-ready version is expected in 2027). Simultaneously, Apple is developing chips for camera-equipped Apple Watches and AirPods, alongside new M-series and dedicated AI server chips, all slated for around 2027.

Read more
(www.theverge.com)
Tech Smart Glasses

OpenFreeMap Hit by 3 Billion Requests in 24 Hours: A Collaborative Drawing Site's Unexpected Consequence

2025-08-09
OpenFreeMap Hit by 3 Billion Requests in 24 Hours: A Collaborative Drawing Site's Unexpected Consequence

OpenFreeMap, a free and open-source map tile service, faced a massive surge of 3 billion requests in just 24 hours, resulting in 215 TB of bandwidth usage. The culprit? A collaborative drawing website, Wplace.live, whose users bombarded the service with scripted requests. Despite OpenFreeMap's robust architecture and Cloudflare's bandwidth sponsorship, the incident highlighted the need for improved traffic control. The author contacted Wplace.live's developer and plans to implement Cloudflare rules to limit traffic and enhance server configuration to address missing tiles.

Read more
(blog.hyperknot.com)
Tech traffic surge

ICE's Social Media Surveillance Sparks Controversy

2025-02-14
ICE's Social Media Surveillance Sparks Controversy

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to monitor and locate "negative" social media discussions about the agency and its officials, using a new contract. This move has raised concerns about free speech and privacy. While ICE claims it's a response to increased threats against its personnel and facilities, critics argue it could sweep up constitutionally protected speech. The contract may involve digging into users' personal information, including social security numbers and addresses. This follows ICE's previous use of federal contractors for large-scale social media surveillance, fueling concerns about government overreach.

Read more
(theintercept.com)
Tech Social Media Surveillance

SUSE: From Four Students to a Public Company

2025-02-14
SUSE: From Four Students to a Public Company

In 1992, four German university students founded SUSE, initially focusing on localizing Slackware Linux into German. Fueled by passion and 100-hour workweeks, they sold CD-ROMs and floppies to fund the company, releasing their first SUSE Linux distribution in 1994. SUSE subsequently evolved, merging with Jurix, introducing the YaST installer and AutoBuild system, and partnering with IBM to enter the enterprise market. Navigating acquisitions, restructuring, and an IPO, SUSE ultimately became a globally recognized enterprise Linux powerhouse.

Read more
(www.abortretry.fail)
Tech

Supercharging Vector Search with ColBERT Reranking in PostgreSQL

2025-01-24
Supercharging Vector Search with ColBERT Reranking in PostgreSQL

Traditional vector search relies on sentence embeddings, potentially losing fine-grained details. ColBERT overcomes this by representing text as token-level multi-vectors, retaining nuanced information and improving accuracy. However, token-level interaction is computationally expensive. This blog post demonstrates combining sentence-level vector search with ColBERT token-level reranking using the PostgreSQL extensions VectorChord and pgvector. This approach performs a fast initial search using sentence embeddings, followed by reranking with ColBERT for improved results. Significant improvements were observed on several BEIR datasets.

Read more
(blog.vectorchord.ai)
Development vector search

The Paranoid Style in American Politics: A Recurring Phenomenon

2025-08-08
The Paranoid Style in American Politics: A Recurring Phenomenon

This essay examines the recurring "paranoid style" in American politics, characterized by heated exaggeration, suspicion, and conspiratorial fantasy. Tracing its manifestations from late 18th-century anxieties about the Bavarian Illuminati to anti-Masonry, anti-Catholicism, and McCarthyism, the author argues this style isn't limited to the extreme right but is linked to movements of discontent. The essay delves into the psychological and social roots of this style, highlighting how paranoid thinking interprets history as the result of individual will and projects both ideal and unacceptable aspects of the self onto the enemy.

Read more
(harpers.org)
Misc political psychology conspiracy theories

Installing AIX 1.3 on a 486: A Retro Computing Odyssey

2025-04-03

After contracting COVID-19, the author embarked on a nostalgic project: installing AIX 1.3 on their aging 486 computer. This Franken-486, a collection of parts accumulated over three decades, presented numerous hurdles. The installation process involved 94 floppy disk images, grappling with IDE interface issues, VGA compatibility problems, and corrupted installation disks. The author's troubleshooting journey included swapping graphics cards, hard drives, recreating installation disks, and even crafting a custom VGA cable, yet the installation ultimately failed. This anecdote reflects a passion for retro computing and perseverance in overcoming technical challenges, highlighting the quirks and complexities of older hardware.

Read more
(hardwarehacks.org)
Hardware hardware installation

Passkeys: Convenience vs. Control – A Growing Concern

2025-09-02
Passkeys: Convenience vs. Control – A Growing Concern

The shift towards passkeys as a replacement for usernames and passwords, while aiming for enhanced security, presents underlying issues. The attestation system allows websites to gather detailed device information, enabling governments to restrict users to specific hardware authenticators. Interoperability between password managers is limited, creating vendor lock-in. Sneaky auto-enrollment tactics by services subtly bind users to their ecosystems. The author expresses concern over increasing reliance on tech giants and complex systems, potentially leading to restricted data access, heightened authentication complexity, and ultimately, a loss of user agency.

Read more
(lucumr.pocoo.org)
Tech

FaunaDB Shuts Down, Going Open Source After $27M in Funding

2025-03-24
FaunaDB Shuts Down, Going Open Source After $27M in Funding

FaunaDB, a database startup that raised $27 million in funding, announced it will shut down its service at the end of May, transitioning to an open-source model. The company, boasting 25,000 developers using its serverless database which combined relational power and document flexibility, cited the capital-intensive nature of scaling a global database service and the current market environment as reasons for the shutdown. Existing customers will be transitioned off the service over the coming months. The open-source release will include the core database technology, supporting JSON documents with relational features like joins, foreign keys, and schema enforcement, along with its FQL query language. Some observers suggest that an open-source approach from the beginning might have led to greater success.

Read more
(www.theregister.com)
Development

Standard Model: The Universe's Winning Equation

2025-01-07
Standard Model: The Universe's Winning Equation

Quanta Magazine released a video explaining the Standard Model of particle physics—the most successful scientific theory ever. Cambridge physicist David Tong breaks down the equation piece by piece, showing how the fundamental building blocks of our universe interact. While incredibly successful in explaining experiments on Earth, the Standard Model fails to account for several features of the wider universe, including gravity at short distances and the presence of dark matter and dark energy. This pushes physicists towards more encompassing theories, while mathematicians need fresh perspectives on quantum field theory to solve physics' biggest mysteries.

Read more
(www.quantamagazine.org)
Tech Standard Model particle physics quantum field theory

Jules, the Gemini 2.5-Powered Code Assistant, Launches Publicly

2025-08-07
Jules, the Gemini 2.5-Powered Code Assistant, Launches Publicly

Google's code assistant, Jules, is officially out of beta and launching publicly, powered by Gemini 2.5. During beta testing, thousands of developers tackled tens of thousands of tasks, resulting in over 140,000 publicly shared code improvements. Based on developer feedback, Jules has seen UI improvements, hundreds of bug fixes, and new features like reusable setups for faster task execution, GitHub integration, and multimodal support. Now leveraging Gemini 2.5 Pro's advanced reasoning capabilities for code planning, Jules produces higher-quality code. New tiered access is also available, offering increased usage limits for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Read more
(blog.google)
Development Code Assistant
1 2 … 346 347 348 350 352 353 354 … 596 597