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Algospeak: How Social Media Is Reshaping Language

2025-07-28
Algospeak: How Social Media Is Reshaping Language

Adam Aleksic's new book, *Algospeak*, explores how social media algorithms are transforming language. Algorithms fuel the creation and spread of new words, slang, and grammatical rules, like "rizz," "aura," and "-pilled." While the author views this "algospeak" as showcasing human adaptability and ingenuity, he also highlights potential downsides, including power imbalances and cultural homogenization – such as the mainstreaming of online subculture slang and appropriation of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The review also touches on the algorithm's impact on the attention economy and culture, and the potential negative consequences for reading and literature.

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(lareviewofbooks.org)
Tech

Rust's `Any` Trait Finally Supports Upcasting

2025-03-30
Rust's `Any` Trait Finally Supports Upcasting

Rust 1.86 has finally fixed a long-standing issue with the `Any` trait: the inability to upcast `dyn Any`. This means developers can now use methods from the `Any` trait, such as `downcast_ref`, on traits inheriting from `Any`. This fix eliminates the need for hacks previously required to achieve this functionality, improving code readability and maintainability. This is welcome news for Rust developers who have relied on these workarounds for years.

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(lucumr.pocoo.org)
Development upcasting

Arctic Microalgae Defy Photosynthesis Limits

2025-02-06
Arctic Microalgae Defy Photosynthesis Limits

New research reveals Arctic microalgae can photosynthesize under extremely low light conditions, nearing the theoretical minimum. Researchers observed algae growth shortly after the polar night, indicating they maintain low-power operation during darkness and rapidly activate photosynthesis when light returns. This finding could reshape our understanding of Arctic ecosystems and deep-sea life, suggesting the productive ocean zone might extend deeper than previously thought.

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(www.quantamagazine.org)
Tech Arctic Microalgae Polar Night

Google Search: Quality Decline Sparks User Frustration

2024-12-18
Google Search: Quality Decline Sparks User Frustration

SEO expert Elie Berreby highlights a significant decline in Google Search quality, leading to widespread user dissatisfaction. Analyzing user feedback from non-official channels like YouTube comments, he reveals complaints about deteriorating search results, excessive advertising, and AI overviews stealing content. Google's strategy seems to prioritize monetization over user experience, potentially driving users towards alternative search engines. The article serves as a warning to Google, suggesting dire consequences if improvements aren't made.

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(semking.com)
1
AI Google Search Search Engine Quality AI Content Theft

Nepal Shuts Down Facebook, X, YouTube Over Registration Failure

2025-09-05
Nepal Shuts Down Facebook, X, YouTube Over Registration Failure

Nepal's government has blocked major social media platforms, including Facebook, X, and YouTube, for failing to meet registration requirements. The move, aimed at curbing online hate speech, rumors, and cybercrime, followed a deadline for companies to register with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. While the government claims sufficient time was given, companies like Meta and Alphabet did not comply, leading to the shutdown. Critics argue this action infringes on fundamental rights and that legal infrastructure should be established before such drastic measures are taken.

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(www.aljazeera.com)
Tech social media regulation

Remastering Old Demos with AI: Surprises and Shortcomings

2025-07-15

The author used Suno AI to reimagine their old demo songs, with surprisingly good results. The AI effectively captured song structure, lyrics, and instrumental parts, adapting them to chosen genres. While not a perfect recreation, the AI-generated versions retained the original mood and even improved on certain aspects, like the ending of "Hold on to the boy." However, the AI struggled with polyphonic melodies, resulting in muddy mixes, and the generated songs still require human refinement before release. Overall, Suno AI offers exciting possibilities for music creation but necessitates post-processing.

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(app.mindthis.io)
Game

git-down: Download Git Repo Directories Efficiently

2025-09-10
git-down: Download Git Repo Directories Efficiently

Tired of downloading single directories from Git repositories? git-down is here to save the day! This simple command-line tool lets you download one or more directories from a Git repo without cloning the entire thing. It supports GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab, and SourceForge, and offers shortcuts for easier use. Unlike the cumbersome process of downloading archives, shallow cloning, and moving files, git-down significantly boosts efficiency and saves time. While requiring self-compilation (Rust environment needed), its speed and convenience make it a must-have tool for Git users.

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(github.com)
Development

SearchMySite.net: A Search Engine for the IndieWeb

2025-03-25

SearchMySite.net is a niche search engine focusing on the 'indieweb' – personal and independent websites free from commercial content. Unlike mainstream search engines, it indexes only user-submitted and moderated sites, avoiding spam and clickbait. It's ad-free, prioritizing user privacy and a sustainable, non-advertising based operating model. Transparency is key; the entire platform is open-source. If you're looking for in-depth personal experiences or unique perspectives, bypassing the noise of commercial websites, SearchMySite.net offers a refreshing alternative.

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(searchmysite.net)
Tech

Running OCaml on a TI-84+ CE Calculator

2025-05-20

This post details the author's journey in compiling an OCaml program to run on a TI-84+ CE calculator. Leveraging Js_of_ocaml, a tool typically used to compile OCaml to JavaScript, the author cleverly repurposed it to generate C code instead. Due to the TI-84+ CE's resource constraints, a simple garbage collector was implemented, along with necessary C functions for interacting with the calculator's hardware. The author successfully ran a simple OCaml program, demonstrating the feasibility of their approach.

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(farlow.dev)
Development

Your Food Packaging Might Be Poisoning You With Microplastics

2025-06-24
Your Food Packaging Might Be Poisoning You With Microplastics

New research reveals that opening plastic-wrapped food, like meat and produce, or using plastic bottles and tea bags, contaminates food with micro- and nanoplastics. These tiny particles can even enter the bloodstream, posing potential health risks. The study highlights the need to reduce plastic use and implement stricter regulations to protect consumers.

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(www.cnn.com)
Tech

Offshore Companies and Nominee Shareholders: A High-Stakes Gamble

2025-09-07
Offshore Companies and Nominee Shareholders: A High-Stakes Gamble

The allure of offshore tax havens tempts many to use nominee shareholders, believing they can secretly control their companies. However, this is incredibly risky. Legally, control rests with the nominee, leaving the beneficial owner vulnerable. This article uses case studies to illustrate the potential legal pitfalls: nominees can dispose of company assets without restriction, leaving the true owner with little legal recourse. Unless you have absolute documentary control, you're betting your company's future on someone else's goodwill.

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(johnnydoe.is)
Startup offshore companies nominee shareholders

Geospatial Data Just Got a Major Upgrade: Iceberg and Parquet Add Native GEO Support

2025-02-15

The Apache Iceberg and Parquet communities have announced native support for geometry and geography data types, bridging the gap between geospatial data and the modern data ecosystem. This breakthrough addresses past challenges like fragmented formats and proprietary systems, enabling faster queries, lower storage costs, and increased interoperability. Organizations can now build more cost-effective and innovative geospatial solutions using cloud-native architectures. This opens up a new era of possibilities for geospatial data processing and analysis.

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(wherobots.com)
Tech geospatial data

Systemd to Boot Directly from HTTP-Downloaded Disk Images

2025-02-11

Systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering is adding the ability to boot directly from a disk image downloaded via HTTP within the initial RAM disk (initrd) during the Linux boot process. Building on recent systemd additions, this allows downloading the root disk image via HTTP, attaching it to a loopback device, and mounting it. The goal is to allow pointing UEFI to a URL to load the Unified Kernel Image (UKI) and boot the root filesystem. The immediate use case is simplifying physical device testing by easily booting new root filesystems over HTTP on each boot. The work-in-progress pull request includes the initial code for this; future extensions may include NVMe-over-TCP support.

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(www.phoronix.com)
Development boot

Post-Wildfire Home Loss File System: A Digital Resource

2025-01-14
Post-Wildfire Home Loss File System: A Digital Resource

This digital resource is a Home Loss File System created by California wildfire survivors to support those navigating the challenging process of disaster recovery. It provides essential resources, checklists, and organizational tools to efficiently manage insurance claims, document losses, and track expenses. The system includes multiple sheets covering everything from immediate post-fire steps to mental health resources and rebuilding information, along with summaries of California insurance claim rules and links to additional helpful resources.

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(docs.google.com)
Misc disaster recovery insurance claims property loss

eBPF, .NET 5, and the Mystery of IPv4 Disguised as IPv6

2025-05-09

This post details a debugging odyssey involving eBPF, .NET 5's DualMode sockets, and IPv4 masquerading as IPv6. The author used an eBPF program to redirect DNS requests on port 53, but encountered unexpected behavior with .NET 5 applications. .NET 5's SocketsHttpHandler uses DualMode sockets, sending IPv4 traffic over an IPv6 socket using IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses. This tricked the eBPF program into blocking the IPv4 traffic as IPv6. The solution involved checking `skb->protocol` instead of `skb->family` to differentiate between true IPv6 and IPv4-mapped IPv6 addresses.

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(blog.gripdev.xyz)
Development

Playing Games to Test Software: How One Company Conquered Metroid and Mario

2025-08-24
Playing Games to Test Software: How One Company Conquered Metroid and Mario

A company used playing Nintendo games, specifically Metroid and Super Mario Bros., to test its software platform, Antithesis. Initially, their AI testing system got stuck on a red door in Metroid because it prioritized eliminating enemies, depleting its missiles. This led them to develop a new 'swarm testing' technique that optimizes objectives while exploring the state space, such as prioritizing having more missiles. This not only solved the red door problem but enabled Antithesis to explore the game world more efficiently, uncover bugs, and even exploit game mechanics for speedruns. This technique isn't limited to game testing; it's applicable to various software testing scenarios, such as finding memory leaks or performance anomalies.

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(antithesis.com)
Development

Fraud, Arrogance, and the Failed Quest for an Alzheimer's Cure

2025-02-23
Fraud, Arrogance, and the Failed Quest for an Alzheimer's Cure

Charles Piller's 'Doctored' exposes decades of fraud and hype in Alzheimer's research. The book details how the dominant amyloid hypothesis, potentially based on fabricated data, led to the underwhelming results of Leqembi, a highly anticipated drug. Billions have been spent with little progress, due to the suppression of alternative research avenues. Piller's investigation calls for a reevaluation of Alzheimer's research and a renewed hope for a real cure.

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(www.sciencefriday.com)
Tech scientific fraud

GREASE: Open-Source Tool for Finding Bugs in Binaries

2025-03-20

GREASE is an open-source tool that leverages under-constrained symbolic execution to help reverse engineers find hard-to-spot bugs in binary code, improving system security. Supporting various architectures and formats, it integrates with Ghidra, functions as a standalone command-line tool, or a Haskell library. GREASE analyzes functions by running them with fully symbolic registers, iteratively refining symbolic preconditions using heuristics when errors occur. While limitations exist, such as potential false positives and negatives, GREASE significantly aids in enhancing software security, particularly when analyzing COTS software only available in binary form.

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(www.galois.com)
Development bug detection

ProofyBubble: Social Proof Boosts Course Launches and Business Growth

2025-05-03
ProofyBubble: Social Proof Boosts Course Launches and Business Growth

My partner and I built ProofyBubble for my Next.js course launch. We saw a significant revenue increase after adding ProofyBubble to showcase website traffic, waitlist signups, upcoming sales, and past sales. I've since used it across all my products – boosting newsletter subscribers, sales, and providing strong social proof for my course launch. I highly recommend ProofyBubble to indie creators and small businesses; it's affordably priced.

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(proofybubble.com)
Startup social proof course launch

OpenAI Uses Reddit's r/ChangeMyView to Benchmark AI Persuasion

2025-02-02
OpenAI Uses Reddit's r/ChangeMyView to Benchmark AI Persuasion

OpenAI leveraged Reddit's r/ChangeMyView subreddit to evaluate the persuasive abilities of its new reasoning model, o3-mini. The subreddit, where users post opinions and engage in debates, provided a unique dataset to assess how well the AI's generated responses could change minds. While o3-mini didn't significantly outperform previous models like o1 or GPT-4o, all demonstrated strong persuasive abilities, ranking in the top 80-90th percentile of human performance. OpenAI emphasizes that the goal isn't to create hyper-persuasive AI, but rather to mitigate the risks associated with excessively persuasive models. The benchmark highlights the ongoing challenge of securing high-quality datasets for AI model development.

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(techcrunch.com)
AI persuasion

Crystal Ball Challenge: Knowing the Future Isn't Enough to Guarantee Riches

2024-12-15
Crystal Ball Challenge: Knowing the Future Isn't Enough to Guarantee Riches

Elm Partners conducted an experiment called the "Crystal Ball Challenge," where 118 finance students traded stocks and bonds using the Wall Street Journal's front page from one day in the future (with price data blacked out) over 15 days. The results were surprising: despite having future information, most participants didn't profit, averaging a mere 3.2% gain. Experienced traders, however, performed exceptionally well, averaging a 130% gain. The experiment demonstrated that even with 'future' knowledge, successful investing requires sensible position sizing. This research highlights the importance of decision-making under uncertainty and position sizing, offering valuable lessons for financial education.

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(elmwealth.com)
Startup investment strategy risk management market prediction

TarFlow: Transformer-based Normalizing Flows Achieve SOTA Image Likelihood Estimation

2025-06-28
TarFlow: Transformer-based Normalizing Flows Achieve SOTA Image Likelihood Estimation

Researchers introduce TarFlow, a novel normalizing flow model leveraging Transformers and masked autoregressive flows. TarFlow efficiently estimates density and generates images by processing image patches with autoregressive Transformer blocks, alternating the autoregression direction between layers. Three key techniques boost sample quality: Gaussian noise augmentation during training, post-training denoising, and an effective guidance method for both class-conditional and unconditional generation. TarFlow achieves state-of-the-art results in image likelihood estimation, significantly outperforming previous methods and generating samples comparable in quality and diversity to diffusion models—a first for a standalone normalizing flow model.

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(machinelearning.apple.com)
AI

Robinhood's Secret Weapon: 50% AI-Generated Code

2025-07-18
Robinhood's Secret Weapon: 50% AI-Generated Code

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev revealed that nearly all of the company's engineers are essentially 'vibe coders,' relying heavily on AI code editors. He estimates that around 50% of Robinhood's new code is AI-generated, surpassing Microsoft and Google's previously reported 30%. The increasing sophistication of AI code editors makes distinguishing between human and AI-written code difficult. This AI adoption has significantly improved Robinhood's efficiency and cost control, impacting teams across the board, from software engineering to customer support. Robinhood's stock price is up over 177% this year, fueled by its expanding crypto ventures, new product launches, and active retail investor base.

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(www.businessinsider.com)
Tech

Noether's Theorem: The Symmetry Behind Conservation Laws

2025-02-09
Noether's Theorem: The Symmetry Behind Conservation Laws

Einstein's general relativity, introduced in 1915, challenged fundamental physics by implying energy could be created and destroyed. The shifting spacetime of relativity broke the classical energy conservation law. Hilbert and Klein, unable to resolve this, passed the problem to Emmy Noether. In 1918, Noether published two groundbreaking theorems. Her theorem, now famous, revealed a profound connection: every conservation law reflects an underlying symmetry of the system. This discovery, crucial for understanding quantum field theory symmetries, profoundly impacted the course of physics.

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(www.quantamagazine.org)
Tech Noether's Theorem General Relativity

The Simon-Ehrlich Bet: A Century of Resource Scarcity?

2025-01-12
The Simon-Ehrlich Bet: A Century of Resource Scarcity?

In 1980, economist Julian Simon bet biologist Paul Ehrlich on the future price of five metals. Ehrlich predicted rising prices due to resource depletion from population growth, while Simon believed human innovation would prevent this. Simon won the 10-year bet. However, analyzing data from 1900 to the present, this article reveals that both Simon and Ehrlich would have won in different decades. The long-term trend, though, shows that prices haven't dramatically increased despite vastly increased production, supporting Simon's view that human ingenuity mitigates resource scarcity.

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(ourworldindata.org)
Tech Resource Scarcity Price Prediction Human Ingenuity

AI-Powered Turtle Artist in ROS Sim

2025-05-31
AI-Powered Turtle Artist in ROS Sim

turtlesim_agent is an AI agent that transforms the classic ROS turtlesim simulator into a creative canvas driven by natural language. Leveraging LangChain, it interprets text instructions and translates them into visual drawings, turning the simulated turtle into a digital artist. Users describe shapes or drawing intentions in plain English; the AI reasons through the instructions and executes them using turtlesim's motion commands. This project explores how large language models interact with external environments to exhibit creative behavior.

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(github.com)
AI

Exploiting EOL Network Devices: A Junkyard Competition Win

2025-07-29
Exploiting EOL Network Devices: A Junkyard Competition Win

Researchers secured second place at DistrictCon's Junkyard competition by successfully exploiting two discontinued network devices: a Netgear WGR614v9 router and a BitDefender Box V1. Their exploit chains highlighted the persistent security risks of end-of-life (EOL) hardware, where unpatched vulnerabilities remain exploitable after manufacturer support ceases. The researchers detailed multiple vulnerabilities, including authentication bypasses, buffer overflows, and command injections, leading to remote root access on both devices. This research underscores the importance of considering manufacturer support lifecycles and community firmware options when selecting devices and highlights the ongoing security challenges posed by EOL IoT devices.

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(blog.trailofbits.com)
Tech

Hive Roaster: Revolutionizing Home Coffee Roasting

2025-02-26
Hive Roaster: Revolutionizing Home Coffee Roasting

The Hive Roaster Cascabel is a lightweight, durable home coffee roaster inspired by commercial designs. It allows for high-quality coffee bean roasting at home with ease. Its unique design combines convective and conductive heat for low-smoke, mess-free indoor roasting, and it's incredibly easy to learn. User reviews are overwhelmingly positive, praising its simplicity and professional-level results, even in small apartments. The Hive Roaster is available internationally, including Thailand, and has earned endorsements from professional coffee roasters.

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(hiveroaster.com)
Hardware coffee roasting home appliance
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