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Apple Adds Energy Efficiency Labels to iPhones and iPads in EU

2025-06-21
Apple Adds Energy Efficiency Labels to iPhones and iPads in EU

To comply with a new regulation, Apple has added energy efficiency labels to its iPhone and iPad pages in EU countries, also including printed versions. The labels grade energy efficiency from A to G, but Apple, citing ambiguous testing methods, conservatively downgraded iPhone scores from A to B. Labels also detail battery life, repairability, durability, and more. Find details on Apple's website or the European Commission's database.

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(www.macrumors.com)
Tech EU Regulation

Bolt: A Blazing-Fast Embeddable Language

2025-08-11
Bolt: A Blazing-Fast Embeddable Language

Bolt is a lightweight, lightning-fast, type-safe embeddable language for real-time applications. It boasts exceptional performance, outpacing other languages in its class; a compact implementation minimizing build size; blazingly quick compilation (over 500kloc/thread/second); ease of embedding (just a few lines of code); a rich type system for catching errors before runtime; and an embed-first design prioritizing inter-language performance and agility. Currently, Bolt builds on x64 and has been tested on MSVC, GCC, and Clang compilers, but is still under active development and not yet stable.

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(github.com)
Development embeddable language real-time applications

Ancient DNA Cracks the Case of the Plague of Justinian

2025-09-14
Ancient DNA Cracks the Case of the Plague of Justinian

For the first time, researchers have found direct genomic evidence of *Yersinia pestis*, the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian—history's first recorded pandemic—in a mass grave at the ancient city of Jerash, Jordan. This discovery definitively links the pathogen to the devastating outbreak (AD 541–750), solving a long-standing historical mystery. Analysis of ancient DNA from eight teeth revealed nearly identical strains of *Y. pestis*, confirming its presence within the Byzantine Empire and suggesting a rapid, widespread outbreak. The research highlights the enduring threat of plague, which continues to circulate globally, underscoring the cyclical nature of pandemics and the importance of understanding their origins.

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(phys.org)
Tech Justinian Plague

Relive the 90s: Modernized Classic Windows Apps

2025-07-07
Relive the 90s: Modernized Classic Windows Apps

Heirloom File Manager and Heirloom Program Manager bring the classic Windows 95 experience to modern PCs. Heirloom File Manager, a modernized version of the original Windows File Manager, boasts high-DPI support, a recycle bin, bookmarks, drag-and-drop functionality, and zip archive creation/extraction. Heirloom Program Manager offers a classic Program Manager alternative to the Start Menu. Both apps are free and open-source, providing a nostalgic trip back to the golden age of Windows.

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(github.com)
Misc

What if Bytes Were 9 Bits?

2025-08-07

This article explores a fascinating counterfactual: what if computing systems had used 9-bit bytes instead of 8? The author argues this would have solved numerous problems plaguing modern computer science, such as IPv4 address exhaustion, the Y2038 problem, and Unicode limitations. While 9-bit bytes would present challenges, such as handling TCP sequence numbers, the author suggests these are surmountable, with benefits outweighing costs. The article is full of intriguing speculation on historical events and technological developments, making for a compelling read.

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(pavpanchekha.com)
Tech Counterfactual History

Visionary Artist Robert Wilson Dies at 83

2025-08-02
Visionary Artist Robert Wilson Dies at 83

Robert Wilson, a groundbreaking artist celebrated for his highly visual and stylized theatrical productions, passed away at 83. His death, following a brief illness, was announced by the Watermill Center, the arts organization he founded. Wilson's work, ranging from the iconic opera 'Einstein on the Beach' with Philip Glass to collaborations with Marina Abramović, defied traditional theatrical norms, blending music, dance, and visual art into epic, often lengthy performances. A prolific visual artist in his own right, Wilson's paintings, sculptures, and installations graced museums worldwide. His legacy extends beyond his artistic creations to the Watermill Center, a vital hub for the arts he established. Wilson's innovative approach to stagecraft and visual storytelling will continue to inspire future generations.

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(www.theartnewspaper.com)
Art Visual Arts

Stellantis Scraps Hydrogen Fuel Cell Van Production

2025-07-17
Stellantis Scraps Hydrogen Fuel Cell Van Production

Stellantis has halted its hydrogen fuel cell van production program in France and Poland. Citing low energy density, inefficient production, lack of infrastructure, high costs, and limited market demand, the company deemed the project economically unsustainable in the mid-term. Stellantis assures that no job losses will occur, with R&D staff reassigned to other projects.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech

Quantum Leap: Monolithic Integration of Photonic Quantum System on a Chip

2025-07-20
Quantum Leap: Monolithic Integration of Photonic Quantum System on a Chip

Scientists from Northwestern University, Boston University, and UC Berkeley have achieved a breakthrough: integrating a miniature photonic quantum system onto a conventional electronic chip. This 1mm² chip generates quantum light and incorporates a smart electronic system for stabilization, reliably producing photon pairs for light-based quantum communication, sensing, and processing. Fabricated by a commercial semiconductor foundry, the chip demonstrates scalability potential, representing a crucial step towards larger quantum photonic systems and opening doors for applications in computing, sensing, and communication.

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(news.northwestern.edu)
Tech chip integration

Schmidt's Space Data Center Ambitions: Investing in Relativity Space

2025-05-02
Schmidt's Space Data Center Ambitions: Investing in Relativity Space

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's investment in Relativity Space aims to leverage their Terran R rocket to launch massive data centers into space. This ambitious project seeks to address the growing energy demands and environmental concerns of AI data centers. While Terran R is still under development and faces challenges, its potential payload capacity makes it a compelling option. Schmidt is seeking additional partners to fund this project, which also needs to address concerns about orbital congestion, power generation, and heat dissipation.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech

Designing Delightful Apps for Kids: Lessons from Kidz Fun Art

2025-07-29
Designing Delightful Apps for Kids: Lessons from Kidz Fun Art

This article details the lessons learned over four years developing Kidz Fun Art, a tablet-optimized drawing app for children. The author highlights unique challenges and solutions for designing child-friendly apps, including minimizing text, co-locating tools with objects, simplifying interactions, easy error correction, knowing when to involve adults, reducing the need for fine motor skills, addressing palm rejection, and incorporating delightful design elements. The author also stresses ethical monetization strategies, privacy concerns, and preventing children from directly spending money.

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(shaneosullivan.wordpress.com)
Development Child App Design

Software Bugs Lead to One of Britain's Biggest Miscarriages of Justice

2025-01-09

Nearly 1,000 UK post office managers were wrongly convicted of theft between 1999 and 2015 due to flaws in Fujitsu's Horizon accounting software. Poor coding, inadequate testing, and expanding functionality led to bugs causing account discrepancies, resulting in imprisonment, financial ruin, and even suicides. The convictions were overturned in 2024, and a compensation scheme was launched. This case highlights the devastating societal impact of software failures and the critical need for rigorous software development practices.

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(cacm.acm.org)
Tech software bugs miscarriage of justice Horizon software

Calm Web Reader Artemis Launches

2024-12-20
Calm Web Reader Artemis Launches

Artemis is a web reader designed for a calm and peaceful reading experience. It updates once a day around 12 am in your timezone, allowing you to leisurely check your favorite websites. Artemis prioritizes a minimalist and slow design, promoting a relaxed browsing experience. It's free to use and offers information on data storage and accessibility, with contact details provided for tech support.

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(artemis.jamesg.blog)
Misc web reader daily updates

Revolutionary Cooling Tech: Eco-Friendly Refrigerators via Thermogalvanic Cells

2025-02-01
Revolutionary Cooling Tech: Eco-Friendly Refrigerators via Thermogalvanic Cells

Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China have developed a groundbreaking cooling technology poised to revolutionize refrigeration. Utilizing a thermogalvanic cell, the technology achieves a 1.42°C temperature drop by using electricity to drive a heat-absorbing chemical reaction – a significant improvement over previous attempts which only managed 0.1°C. While currently modest, the researchers believe this technology has immense scaling potential. Future work involves improving performance, developing refrigerator prototypes, and collaborating with companies to commercialize this eco-friendly innovation.

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(cosmosmagazine.com)
Tech thermogalvanic cell cooling technology

EQTY Lab, Intel, and NVIDIA Unveil Verifiable Compute AI Framework

2024-12-18
EQTY Lab, Intel, and NVIDIA Unveil Verifiable Compute AI Framework

EQTY Lab, in collaboration with Intel and NVIDIA, announced the release of Verifiable Compute, a hardware-based solution for governing and auditing AI workflows. This framework provides real-time certificates of authenticity and compliance for AI training, inference, and benchmarks, ensuring explainability, accountability, and security. Leveraging next-generation hardware from Intel and NVIDIA, Verifiable Compute addresses escalating risks in AI supply chains, such as AI poisoning and data breaches. It integrates with tools like ServiceNow, Databricks, and Palantir, enabling responsible AI innovation and compliance with regulations like the EU AI Act. The solution is already deployed across various sectors, including life sciences, public sector, finance, and media.

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(www.eqtylab.io)
AI Verifiable Compute AI Security Hardware Security

Pushing Linux File I/O Performance to the Limit with Zig and io_uring

2025-09-07

This post explores maximizing file I/O performance on Linux using Zig and io_uring. A custom Zig implementation is benchmarked against fio, achieving write speeds of 3.802 GB/s and read speeds of 6.996 GB/s—slightly slower than fio's 4.083 GB/s write and 7.33 GB/s read speeds but still within expected ranges. The author details crucial implementation techniques, including polled I/O, registered buffers, and the SQ_THREAD_POLL feature, all significantly impacting performance. While marginally slower than fio, the Zig code's performance is remarkably close, and its runtime almost exactly matches fio's, suggesting minor differences in bandwidth measurement.

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(steelcake.com)
Development File I/O Performance

Hong Kong Consumer Council: Shocking Sunscreen Efficacy Test Results!

2025-09-07
Hong Kong Consumer Council: Shocking Sunscreen Efficacy Test Results!

The Hong Kong Consumer Council tested 30 daily-use sunscreens, revealing alarming results! Over 80% performed below their labeled SPF, with some high-SPF sunscreens measuring below SPF15. Many also failed to meet labeled UVA protection levels and ingredient disclosure requirements. The Council urges manufacturers to improve production and labeling accuracy, providing clear instructions. Consumers are advised to choose carefully to avoid inadequate sun protection and potential skin damage.

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(www.consumer.org.hk)
Misc Sunscreen Product Testing

Building a Retro 3D Website Effect with Shaders: Dithering, Quantization, and Pixelation

2025-02-03
Building a Retro 3D Website Effect with Shaders: Dithering, Quantization, and Pixelation

The author spent months building their personal website, incorporating 3D work to showcase shader and WebGL skills. The article delves into the crucial role of post-processing in enhancing 3D scene visuals, focusing on creating retro effects. It covers various dithering techniques (white noise, ordered, and blue noise), explaining their implementation using shaders. Color quantization techniques are also detailed, allowing for custom palettes. The article culminates in a stunning retro 3D website effect combining pixelation and CRT monitor emulation.

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(blog.maximeheckel.com)
Development Shaders Post-processing

Plato: A Genius Whose Errors Shaped Western Thought

2025-06-10
Plato: A Genius Whose Errors Shaped Western Thought

This article examines Plato's profound influence on Western thought, highlighting how many of his compelling arguments led to enduring errors. His assertion of the immortality of the soul established a deeply entrenched mind-body dualism; his idealized definition of knowledge led to an overemphasis on absolute certainty, hindering intellectual progress; his rigid approach to definition ignored the inherent fuzziness of language; and his emphasis on idealized preconditions delayed practical advancement. Even his celebrated Socratic method, the article argues, is more destructive than constructive. Plato's genius lies in his profound insights, but his errors are equally profound and persistent, casting a long shadow on Western intellectual history.

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(www.prospectmagazine.co.uk)
Misc Western thought

A Tiny CSS Animation Caused 60% CPU and 25% GPU Usage on My M2 MacBook

2025-07-23
A Tiny CSS Animation Caused 60% CPU and 25% GPU Usage on My M2 MacBook

A seemingly insignificant CSS animation was mysteriously consuming 60% CPU and 25% GPU on my M2 MacBook. This post details the debugging process using Chrome DevTools' performance profiling tools to pinpoint the culprit: animating the `height` property. The author explains the browser's rendering pipeline and demonstrates how switching to the cheaper `transform` property (using a clever workaround to avoid visual artifacts) dramatically reduced resource consumption to under 6% CPU and 1% GPU.

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(www.granola.ai)
Development browser rendering

Apollo Mission: An Astronaut's Urgent Bathroom Break Before Launch

2025-03-06

During a countdown for an Apollo mission, a rocket malfunction required repairs, leading astronaut Shepard to request a quick bathroom break. After some discussion, ground control allowed Shepard to relieve himself after shutting down relevant circuits, preventing a launch delay. This anecdote led to Shepard being jokingly referred to as the "world's first wetback in space," adding a humorous footnote to space exploration history.

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(idlewords.com)
Misc Apollo Mission Space Anecdote Astronaut Story

rv: A Reproducible, Fast, and Declarative Way to Manage R Packages

2025-05-16
rv: A Reproducible, Fast, and Declarative Way to Manage R Packages

rv is a revolutionary R package manager that allows you to manage and install R packages in a reproducible, fast, and declarative way. By specifying the R version, repositories, and dependencies in a configuration file (rproject.toml), the `rv sync` command synchronizes the library, configuration file, and lock file, while `rv plan` provides a preview. It supports custom package and repository settings, allowing for the installation of specific packages and their suggested packages. rv is written in Rust and comes with detailed installation and usage documentation.

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(github.com)
Development R package management

Dopamine: The Brain's 'All-Clear' Signal for Fear Extinction

2025-05-01

MIT neuroscientists have discovered that the release of dopamine along a specific brain circuit acts as an "all-clear" signal, teaching the brain to extinguish fear. Their research in mice reveals that dopamine targets different neuron populations within the amygdala, encoding a memory of fear extinction. This mechanism, when functioning correctly, restores calm; when disrupted, it can contribute to anxiety or PTSD. The study pinpoints a potential therapeutic target for fear-related disorders, suggesting interventions could modulate dopamine receptors or specific neurons to influence fear memory formation and extinction.

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(picower.mit.edu)
AI fear extinction amygdala

PayPal Launches Revolutionary Peer-to-Peer Payment Links

2025-09-16
PayPal Launches Revolutionary Peer-to-Peer Payment Links

PayPal has unveiled PayPal links, a new feature allowing users to send and receive money via personalized, one-time-use links shareable across various platforms. This simplifies P2P payments, making it as easy as sending a text. Initially launched in the US, it's expanding to the UK, Italy, and other markets. Furthermore, PayPal will soon integrate cryptocurrencies directly into its P2P flow, enabling users to send Bitcoin, Ethereum, PYUSD, and more. This innovation aims to enhance user experience, attract new customers, and solidify PayPal's position in the global payment landscape.

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(newsroom.paypal-corp.com)
Tech P2P Payments Crypto Integration

Programmer's Revenge: The Tribulations of Running HelloWorld on z/OS

2024-12-29
Programmer's Revenge: The Tribulations of Running HelloWorld on z/OS

A programmer, once dismissive of operating system interaction in graduate school, found herself grappling with IBM's z/OS system years later for a blog post. z/OS, vastly different from modern software engineering environments, presented numerous challenges with its text-based interface, JCL scripts, and IBM's unique naming conventions. The article details her struggles in creating files (datasets), using the ISPF editor, allocating datasets, compiling, linking, loading, and handling output with SPOOL. It shares practical tips and lessons learned, a testament to the challenges of working with legacy systems.

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(medium.com)
Development

Unlocking On-Chain Data Potential with AI Agents and the SQD Data Lake

2025-02-23
Unlocking On-Chain Data Potential with AI Agents and the SQD Data Lake

Subsquid has released a new ElizaOS plugin that leverages the SQD data lake to provide on-chain data to AI agents. The plugin offers ERC20 transfers and Uniswap swap decoded events as both providers and actions. Agents can query data using natural language and export results in JSON, CSV, and Parquet formats. This post demonstrates a simplified version of a CLI tool called Cryo that uses the plugin to extract on-chain data and discusses potential future improvements such as multi-chain support and an improved query experience.

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(blog.sqd.dev)
Development Blockchain Data

Google Cloud's Massive API Outage: A Null Pointer Exception's Ripple Effect

2025-06-14

On June 12th, Google Cloud and Google Workspace products suffered a widespread outage due to a surge of 503 errors in external API requests. The root cause was a new feature in the Service Control system lacking proper error handling and feature flag protection, leading to a null pointer exception that triggered a cascading failure. A policy change containing invalid fields activated this flaw, resulting in a global service disruption. Google swiftly mitigated the issue, but some regions (like us-central-1) experienced prolonged recovery due to infrastructure overload. The incident highlighted issues in Google's error handling, feature flag usage, system architecture modularity, and monitoring and communication, prompting a commitment to implement comprehensive improvements to prevent recurrence.

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(status.cloud.google.com)
Tech API Outage Service Disruption

Samsung's Odyssey 3D: Glasses-Free 3D Gaming Monitor Unveiled

2025-01-03
Samsung's Odyssey 3D: Glasses-Free 3D Gaming Monitor Unveiled

Samsung is launching the Odyssey 3D monitor, a glasses-free 27-inch 4K display utilizing a lenticular lens and AI to convert 2D content into 3D. Eye-tracking technology enhances the experience by optimizing the 3D effect. This represents another attempt by Samsung to popularize 3D displays, building on previous prototypes. While a larger 37-inch version was teased, only the 27-inch model has been released so far, potentially due to cost and market demand considerations. The monitor will be further showcased at CES 2025.

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(arstechnica.com)
Hardware 3D display Samsung

Texas Law Mandates Data Center Curtailment to Ensure Grid Reliability

2025-08-18
Texas Law Mandates Data Center Curtailment to Ensure Grid Reliability

Facing a potential threat to grid reliability from the explosive growth of data centers in Texas, Governor Abbott signed SB 6 into law. The bill establishes mandatory and voluntary demand response programs, requiring large data centers (75 MW and above) to curtail electricity consumption during grid emergencies or switch to backup generation. New interconnection disclosure and cost-sharing rules, along with protocols for co-locating large loads with existing generators, are also included. This aims to balance data center growth with grid stability, preventing a repeat of the 2021 Winter Storm Uri crisis and providing regulatory certainty for independent power producers and data centers seeking colocation arrangements.

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(www.utilitydive.com)
Tech

American Wealth Doesn't Guarantee a Longer Life: Study Reveals Systemic Issues

2025-04-04
American Wealth Doesn't Guarantee a Longer Life: Study Reveals Systemic Issues

A study of over 73,000 adults in the US and Europe reveals a shocking disparity: the wealthiest Americans have lower life expectancies than their European counterparts. The survival rate gap between the richest and poorest in the US far exceeds that seen in European nations. Even the poorest Americans fare worse than the poorest in Europe. Beyond healthcare access and social safety nets, the researchers suggest systemic factors like diet, environment, behavior, and cultural differences contribute to this uniquely American phenomenon of shorter lifespans, even among the wealthy. This highlights the deep-seated systemic issues impacting health outcomes in the US.

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(arstechnica.com)
Misc health disparity life expectancy socioeconomic inequality
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