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Raycast is Hiring a Full-Stack Software Engineer to Build the Future of Multi-Platform Productivity

2025-01-13

Raycast is Hiring a Full-Stack Software Engineer to Build the Future of Multi-Platform Productivity

Raycast, the Mac app company focused on building simple and efficient tools, is hiring a Full-Stack Software Engineer. You'll maintain and enhance their web and backend infrastructure, laying the foundation for their next-generation cross-platform product. This is a challenging and rewarding role requiring expertise in TypeScript, familiarity with Ruby on Rails or similar backend frameworks, and experience building high-performance web applications. You'll be involved in the entire process, from ideation to maintenance, working closely with a small, talented team to shape the product roadmap. If you're passionate about user experience, value code quality, and want to make a significant impact at a fast-growing company, this is your ideal opportunity.

(www.raycast.com)

Development

Debugging Bible: Nine Indispensable Rules

2025-01-13

David J. Agans's "Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems" is hailed as a classic for software and hardware developers. This book focuses not on specific technologies, but on fundamental methods for finding and fixing bugs. Through nine rules, illustrated with numerous engaging examples, the author explains how to understand the system, make it fail, get data, divide and conquer, change one thing at a time, keep an audit trail, check assumptions, seek help, and verify fixes. Even experienced programmers will find helpful reminders, while novices will find it an invaluable resource.

(dwheeler.com)

Development

Irish Rewilding: The Exotic Gardens of Rossdohan Island

2024-12-21

Irish Rewilding: The Exotic Gardens of Rossdohan Island

Rossdohan Island in Ireland tells a captivating story of an exotic garden created by a 19th-century surgeon returning from India. The island boasts a unique microclimate, thanks to plantings of Southern Hemisphere species. Despite house fires and changing ownership, these exotic plants persist, forming a unique ecosystem alongside native flora. Today, rewilding efforts face the challenge of preserving this historical legacy while restoring native biodiversity, requiring legislation, policy changes, and public participation.

(worldsensorium.com)

Misc rewilding exotic species

70s Extreme Sports: Evel Knievel and the Reckless Childhoods We Miss

2025-08-15

70s Extreme Sports: Evel Knievel and the Reckless Childhoods We Miss

The 1970s saw a level of childhood freedom unseen today. This piece uses the iconic Evel Knievel, a daredevil motorcyclist who jumped 13 double-decker buses and more, to illustrate the era's adventurous spirit. Knievel's death-defying stunts not only captivated audiences but paved the way for future extreme sports. Modern athletes like Danny Way acknowledge Knievel's profound influence. The article prompts reflection on differing safety standards and celebrates the courage of pursuing dreams.

(flashbak.com)

Misc 1970s culture

CERN's Absurd Mouse Ban: A Cybersecurity Prank?

2025-09-18

In an attempt to improve cybersecurity awareness and prevent users from clicking malicious links, CERN issued a seemingly absurd instruction: all users must disconnect their computer mice from CERN computers and bring them to the CERN 'Computer Mouse Shelter'. This news, with its ironic humor, highlights the importance of cybersecurity education and the persistent lack of awareness among users.

(computer-animal-shelter.web.cern.ch)

Misc irony

olduse.net: A Continuously Updated Delayed Usenet Archive

2025-03-02

olduse.net is a unique Usenet archive project that adds a new port each year, with a one-year delay. The post details the project's history from 2011 to 2021 and how Adam Sjøgren took over and continues to maintain it. Now, users can access Usenet article archives with varying delays through multiple ports, experiencing the charm of Usenet's past. This isn't just a technical project; it's a continuation of an interactive art piece.

(olduse.net)

Misc Archive Interactive Art

Bhutan's Talking Stamps: A Surprising Investment Opportunity

2025-05-21

Bhutan's Talking Stamps: A Surprising Investment Opportunity

Issued in 1972, Bhutan's miniature vinyl record stamps, playable on a standard turntable, were initially dismissed as novelties. These seven stamps, featuring Bhutanese folk songs and history, have recently surged in value due to their rediscovery by vinyl collectors. The stamps' creator, American adventurer Burt Todd, revolutionized Bhutan's philatelic program with innovative designs, transforming what were once cheap trinkets into a highly sought-after collector's item.

(thevinylfactory.com)

Misc Bhutan

Facebook's Sneaky AI Photo Grab

2025-06-28

Facebook's Sneaky AI Photo Grab

Facebook is testing a new feature that requests access to users' camera rolls to suggest AI-edited photo versions, even those not yet uploaded. This "cloud processing" option allows Facebook to upload photos for analysis, creating collages, recaps, AI stylings, and themes. While Facebook claims these suggestions are only visible to the user and not used for ads, its AI terms allow facial feature and other data analysis. This raises privacy concerns, as Facebook doesn't fully clarify data usage or whether it trains its AI models with this data. Currently testing in the US and Canada, users can disable the feature in settings.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech

Spirit Airlines teeters on the brink of bankruptcy

2025-08-12

Spirit Airlines teeters on the brink of bankruptcy

Just months after emerging from bankruptcy, budget airline Spirit Airlines is warning of substantial doubt about its ability to remain a going concern within the next year. Weak domestic leisure travel demand and increased competition have led to a $245.8 million net loss in Q2 2025, significantly higher than the previous year. Unlike larger carriers, Spirit heavily relies on domestic leisure travel and hasn't been able to offset losses through premium offerings. To meet debt obligations and credit card processor requirements, the airline is considering selling assets, including aircraft, real estate, and airport gate rights. This highlights the vulnerability of the airline industry under economic pressure.

(www.businessinsider.com)

Tech airline industry budget airline

Stanford Report Warns of Mirror Bacteria Feasibility and Risks

2024-12-17

Stanford Report Warns of Mirror Bacteria Feasibility and Risks

A Stanford University technical report details the feasibility of creating 'mirror bacteria' and their potential risks. Mirror bacteria, with all chiral molecules (proteins, nucleic acids, and metabolites) replaced by their mirror images, cannot evolve naturally but are becoming increasingly synthesizable. Immune systems and predation rely on chiral molecule interactions, meaning mirror bacteria could evade detection and control, potentially spreading unchecked and posing serious threats to humans, animals, plants, and the environment. The report comprehensively assesses synthesis, biosecurity, human health impacts, medical countermeasures, and ecological consequences, urging attention to this potential biosecurity risk.

(purl.stanford.edu)

AI biosecurity

Native Sparse Attention: Hardware-Aligned and Natively Trainable

2025-08-02

Native Sparse Attention: Hardware-Aligned and Natively Trainable

Long-context modeling remains a challenge in NLP. This ACL 2025 paper introduces NSA, a Natively trained Sparse Attention mechanism. NSA cleverly combines algorithmic innovations with hardware-aligned optimizations. Using a dynamic hierarchical sparse strategy (coarse-grained token compression and fine-grained token selection), it achieves significant efficiency gains while preserving global context awareness and local precision. NSA enables end-to-end training, reducing pre-training costs, and matches or exceeds Full Attention models across benchmarks, showing substantial speedups on 64k-length sequences in decoding, forward, and backward propagation.

(aclanthology.org)

AI long-context modeling

Z.AI Open Platform API Call Example: A cURL Demonstration

2025-09-06

Z.AI Open Platform API Call Example: A cURL Demonstration

This code snippet demonstrates a cURL POST request to the Z.AI Open Platform API to obtain a response from the glm-4.5 large language model. The request includes a conversation with user and assistant roles, and a description of the Z.AI Open Platform. This example showcases how to call the API and obtain generated text from the model, crucial for understanding the functionality and usage of the Z.AI Open Platform.

(docs.z.ai)

Development API call Z.AI Open Platform

Building a No-Code Platform with Clojure: Balancing Life and Ambitious Goals

2025-01-10

Building a No-Code Platform with Clojure: Balancing Life and Ambitious Goals

A Valentine's Day server crash became a turning point for three developers, leading them to adopt Clojure and build the ambitious no-code platform, Vade Studio. Clojure's immutable data structures, powerful REPL, and functional programming paradigm helped them overcome challenges in real-time collaboration, drag-and-drop UI builder, unified data modeling, and workflow engine. The result? Efficient development and a healthy work-life balance.

(bytes.vadelabs.com)

Development no-code platform

Insect Diapause: The Science of Manipulating Life's Pause Button

2025-08-28

Insect Diapause: The Science of Manipulating Life's Pause Button

From bears hibernating to insects entering diapause, nature is full of mysteries of life's pause button. This article delves into insect diapause – a programmed state of developmental arrest – and its immense potential in agriculture, disease control, and insect farming. For millennia, humans have indirectly controlled pest diapause through methods like crop rotation. Now, scientists are attempting to manipulate the hormones and environmental factors governing diapause for more precise pest control and to improve the efficiency of beneficial insect farming. Research on diapause not only promises huge economic benefits but also helps us better understand the very mysteries of life itself.

(www.asimov.press)

Tech insect diapause biological control

The Gang of Four Got Delegation Wrong (and so did everyone else)

2025-03-26

This article challenges the common understanding of delegation as presented in the Gang of Four's *Design Patterns* and various Ruby libraries. The author argues that many examples cited as 'delegation' are simply message forwarding, not true delegation. True delegation, as defined by Henry Lieberman, requires that 'self' always refers to the original message recipient throughout the delegation process. Using JavaScript and Ruby examples, the article clarifies the correct meaning of delegation, highlighting the widespread misunderstanding caused by incorrectly labeling message forwarding as delegation. The author urges developers to understand the true meaning of delegation to write cleaner, more maintainable code.

(www.saturnflyer.com)

Development Delegation

Sparrow: Idiomatic C++20 APIs for Apache Arrow

2025-09-06

Sparrow: Idiomatic C++20 APIs for Apache Arrow

Sparrow is a C++20 implementation of the Apache Arrow columnar format, offering idiomatic APIs and easy conversion from/to the C interface. It supports various compilers and is installable via mamba/conda. Sparrow provides flexible data initialization and access methods, enabling seamless integration with other libraries. You can easily read Arrow data structures from external libraries and convert them to Sparrow structures, and vice versa. Documentation is under development. This project is funded through a collaboration between ArcticDB, Bloomberg, and QuantStack.

(github.com)

Development

Breakthrough in Optimal Space Complexity for Frequency Moment Estimation

2024-12-29

A paper by Mark Braverman and Or Zamir proves an optimal space lower bound of Ω(log(nε²)/ε²) for estimating frequency moments, where ε = Ω(1/√n). This research solves a long-standing problem in computational complexity, matching the classic Alon-Matias-Szegedy upper bound within a certain range. For smaller values of ε, the paper also introduces an improved algorithm that further refines the space complexity of frequency moment estimation. This breakthrough provides crucial theoretical guidance for stream data processing and algorithm design.

(eccc.weizmann.ac.il)

AI frequency moment estimation space complexity stream data processing

A Thrilling Ride: Building a Self-Modifying C Program

2025-05-25

This article details the creation of a C program capable of modifying its own code at runtime. The author first explains how program code is stored in memory and how to use the `mprotect()` function to change the permissions of the code segment to writable. Then, by modifying the immediate value of an `addl` instruction, the author demonstrates altering the program's output. Finally, the author goes further, using `memcpy()` to copy shellcode into the program's code segment, successfully executing a shell command at runtime. The entire process is technically challenging, requiring a strong understanding of x86_64 assembly language.

(ephemeral.cx)

Development Self-Modifying Program

LLMs Fail Gracefully: Long Context Performance Degrades Even in Simple Tasks

2025-07-15

LLMs Fail Gracefully: Long Context Performance Degrades Even in Simple Tasks

This research challenges the common assumption that large language models (LLMs) perform uniformly well on long-context tasks. By extending the Needle in a Haystack benchmark and introducing variables like semantic matching and distractors, researchers found that even under simplified conditions, model performance degrades as input length increases. This was confirmed across conversational question answering and a repeated word replication task, revealing limitations in LLM long-context capabilities and suggesting potential challenges in real-world applications.

(research.trychroma.com)

AI Long Context Performance Evaluation

Is Computer Art Just Another Fad?

2025-06-03

Is Computer Art Just Another Fad?

This article critiques the notion of "computer art" as merely the latest fashion trend manipulated by art dealers. The author argues that the use of computers in art shouldn't be limited to producing more aesthetically pleasing objects but should focus on its potential to reveal social realities, enhance communication, and foster understanding. Several research avenues are proposed, such as investigating technology's impact on artists and their work, analyzing the sign systems of different artistic styles, and examining the role of aesthetic information in broader societal contexts. The author believes the true value of computers lies in their utility as tools serving more significant social issues, rather than becoming another art trend catering to market demands.

(dam.org)

Design computer art art trends aesthetic information

Rethinking Bug Trackers: A Separation of Concerns

2025-03-10

After years of using various bug trackers, the author identifies a fundamental flaw in their data representation, leading to recurring frustrations. Three key issues are highlighted: a unified 'Fix Version' field conflating facts and plans; a two-tiered Status and Resolution system blurring the lines between code reality and future intentions; and the conflation of bug lists with to-do lists, creating awkwardness for non-bug tasks. The author proposes a 'separation of concerns' principle, suggesting a split into 'facts' and 'plans' tables. The facts table records objective bug information (existence, version, severity), while the plans table tracks intentions, timelines, and subjective priorities. This separation streamlines bug tracking, better accommodates different project types, and even allows for the complete omission of the plans table for projects focused solely on bug resolution.

(www.chiark.greenend.org.uk)

Development Bug Tracker Data Modeling

The Truth About Mixed-DPI Support in X11

2025-06-26

This article clears up the misconceptions surrounding mixed-DPI configuration support in the X11 windowing system. The author delves into the history of X11, from its origins with single X screens, through the Xinerama extension, to the modern XRANDR extension. The article reveals that X11 has always had the capability to support mixed DPI, but the key lies in client applications correctly utilizing the DPI information provided by the XRANDR extension. Different approaches are examined, along with solutions for various scenarios, including using the Qt toolkit for automatic mixed-DPI support and workarounds for toolkits lacking support, such as GTK+. Ultimately, the author calls on developers to improve toolkits and applications to fully leverage X11's mixed-DPI capabilities.

(wok.oblomov.eu)

Development mixed DPI multi-monitor

Tail Call Optimization in Java: An ASM Bytecode Manipulation Approach

2025-03-30

This article presents a neat way to implement tail call optimization in Java using bytecode manipulation with ASM. Tail recursion, where the recursive call is the last operation, can be significantly optimized by avoiding the creation of new stack frames for each call. The article details method call mechanics, the structure of tail recursion, and the usage of the ASM library. JMH benchmarks demonstrate performance improvements, especially with a higher number of recursive calls, showcasing the effectiveness of this optimization technique.

(unlinkedlist.org)

Development Tail Call Optimization

Tortoise and Hare: Finding Balance in Productivity

2025-05-02

Using the analogy of a childhood ride-on lawnmower lacking blades, the author explores the 'Tortoise and Hare' approach to life. He contrasts the high-efficiency 'Hare Mode' with the slower, more contemplative 'Tortoise Mode,' arguing that these aren't opposing forces but complementary ones. Reflecting on the anxiety and exhaustion following a period of 'Hare Mode' success, the author emphasizes the importance of slow thinking and deep work, advocating for a flexible shift between the two modes, much like regulating a wood-burning stove. The balance between high efficiency and slow living is crucial for sustainable progress, avoiding burnout or stagnation.

(www.autodidacts.io)

Misc contemplation

Pocket Read-It-Later App Shutting Down in 2025

2025-05-22

The popular read-it-later app, Pocket, will be shutting down on July 8, 2025. Users will have until October 8, 2025 to export their saved content before all data is permanently deleted. The decision comes as user web browsing habits evolve, and Mozilla is refocusing resources on projects better aligned with those habits. Pocket's email newsletter will be rebranded as "Ten Tabs" and continue offering curated content.

(support.mozilla.org)

Misc read-it-later shutdown

Hidden Features of Animal Crossing's NES Emulator Discovered and Exploited

2024-12-29

A hacker named jamchamb reverse-engineered Nintendo's GameCube game, Animal Crossing, uncovering a hidden NES emulator. This emulator not only played the game's built-in NES titles but also allowed loading custom ROMs from a memory card. Further exploitation revealed a method to inject custom code into the game via modified memory card files, ultimately achieving arbitrary code execution and unlocking the game's developer mode. This opens doors for game modification and homebrew content, highlighting the power of reverse engineering and its potential applications in game development.

(jamchamb.net)

Game game modification NES emulator

The Tiny Half Cent: America's Smallest Coin

2025-02-13

The Tiny Half Cent: America's Smallest Coin

The United States half cent coin, the smallest denomination ever minted, held a brief but fascinating history. Minted from 1793 to 1857, it underwent five design changes, all crafted from pure copper at the Philadelphia Mint. Its diameter varied slightly over the years, and it was ultimately replaced by the smaller cent in 1857. Today, these coins are highly sought after by collectors for their rarity and historical significance.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Misc US Coins Numismatics

Telegram Founder Durov to Leave $13.9B Fortune to Over 100 Children

2025-06-20

Telegram Founder Durov to Leave $13.9B Fortune to Over 100 Children

Pavel Durov, founder of the messaging app Telegram, plans to bequeath his estimated $13.9 billion fortune to over 100 children—six biological children and numerous others conceived via sperm donation. Durov stated all children will inherit equally, but with a 30-year delay to encourage independence. This decision stems from the risks associated with his work and concerns for Telegram's future. Durov currently faces accusations including money laundering and child pornography distribution, which he denies.

(www.cnn.com)

Startup

Equal Earth: A World Map for Everyone

2025-08-24

The Equal Earth Wall Map accurately represents the relative sizes of countries and continents. Unlike many maps, Africa appears its true size, not diminished. It's free to download and print in three regional versions (Africa/Europe, Americas, East Asia/Australia), measures a substantial 55” x 29”, and boasts high resolution for larger prints. Featuring over 2,600 labels, it provides ample geographic detail without being overwhelming, all in a professionally designed, aesthetically pleasing format.

(equal-earth.com)

Misc

Douglas Adams's Prophecy of the AI Age: Humor and Insight

2025-06-08

Douglas Adams's Prophecy of the AI Age: Humor and Insight

This essay starts with a debate on whether Douglas Adams invented the ebook, then explores his predictions about future technology in science fiction. The author argues that Adams's foresight surpasses William Gibson's, accurately predicting annoying computer assistants (like Clippy) and AI-infused smart devices. More importantly, Adams foresaw the core challenge of human-AI interaction: formulating the right questions, not just possessing powerful computational abilities. The author uses personal experiences with smart devices to humorously illustrate the reality of Adams's predictions, highlighting humor as a key indicator of insight.

(krisstgabriel.substack.com)

AI Technological Prediction

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