Liquid Uranium Rocket Engine Could Enable Year-Long Mars Trips

2025-09-15
Liquid Uranium Rocket Engine Could Enable Year-Long Mars Trips

Engineers at Ohio State University are developing a revolutionary nuclear thermal rocket engine using liquid uranium. This centrifugal nuclear thermal rocket (CNTR) promises significantly faster and more efficient space travel, potentially enabling round trips to Mars within a single year. By directly heating propellant with liquid uranium, the CNTR boasts higher specific impulse (potentially exceeding 900 seconds) than traditional chemical or other nuclear engines, allowing for longer distances with less fuel. While still in its early stages and facing engineering challenges, the CNTR represents a significant leap towards faster, more efficient deep space exploration.

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BYOJS: Embrace Native JavaScript for Web Development

2024-12-17

The BYOJS project champions building web applications with core JavaScript, rather than relying on heavy frameworks. While frameworks and languages like TypeScript are popular, BYOJS argues that building efficient web apps using the core JS language is a lost art. It encourages using loosely-coupled libraries instead of tightly-coupled frameworks, advocating for choosing the least powerful tool that gets the job done and prioritizing concise code. The project provides helpful utilities such as a simple key-value storage API, an asynchronous event emitter, a modal wrapper, and more. All code is MIT licensed.

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C++ shared_ptr's Non-Atomic Reference Counting: A Microbenchmark Surprise

2025-08-31
C++ shared_ptr's Non-Atomic Reference Counting: A Microbenchmark Surprise

A microbenchmark comparing Rust and C++ data structures revealed unexpected behavior in C++'s `shared_ptr`. In single-threaded environments, GNU libstdc++ optimizes `shared_ptr`'s reference counting to be non-atomic if `pthread_create` isn't imported. This performance optimization, while generally safe, can lead to issues in uncommon scenarios, such as when a dynamically linked library is loaded by a statically linked program. The author investigated other C++ implementations (libcxx and Visual C++) and ultimately resolved the performance discrepancy by referencing `pthread_create` in their benchmark. The discovery highlights the complexities of low-level optimizations and their potential unintended consequences.

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Development

Classified Fighter Jet Specs Leaked on War Thunder Forums Again

2024-12-23
Classified Fighter Jet Specs Leaked on War Thunder Forums Again

The War Thunder online combat game forums are again embroiled in controversy after a leak of classified documents related to the Eurofighter Typhoon's CAPTOR radar system. A user shared restricted material to support a claim, prompting swift removal of the content and suspension of the user. This incident highlights recurring concerns about the platform's failure to prevent repeated leaks of sensitive information. Previous leaks have included details on the Challenger 2 tank, Leclerc main battle tank, and Chinese ammunition systems. Experts warn that such unauthorized disclosures carry significant legal risks and can compromise the operational security of military platforms.

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Cozy Free-to-Play Game 'Dogwalk' Tops Steam Charts

2025-07-14
Cozy Free-to-Play Game 'Dogwalk' Tops Steam Charts

Blender Studio's 'Dogwalk,' a free-to-play game, has taken Steam by storm, accumulating over 300 overwhelmingly positive reviews within two days of its release. This charming game features a delightful winter landscape and simple gameplay. Players take on the role of a cute, fluffy dog, leading a child through snowy forests and frozen ponds to gather materials for a snowman. Developed entirely using the open-source Blender and Godot game engine, 'Dogwalk' showcases the power of open-source tools and lowers the barrier to entry for game development. Despite its short playtime (around 20 minutes), its relaxing atmosphere and free-to-play nature have made it a surprising hit on Steam.

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macOS Tahoe 26: A Stunning New Mac Experience

2025-06-10
macOS Tahoe 26: A Stunning New Mac Experience

Apple unveiled macOS Tahoe 26, featuring a redesigned interface and powerful new capabilities. The update boasts a more expressive design with extensive customization options for the desktop, Dock, in-app navigation, and toolbars. Continuity features are enhanced with the addition of the Phone app to the Mac. Spotlight receives its biggest update ever, enabling direct execution of hundreds of actions. Apple Intelligence expands with Live Translation, Genmoji, and Image Playground, along with powerful Shortcuts improvements. Gamers will appreciate the new Apple Games app and Game Overlay, plus support for Metal 4. Safari gets a speed and battery life boost, and features a refreshed design.

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Kagi Search Major Update: Android App Launch and New Features

2025-02-05

Kagi Search team announced exciting updates following their annual retreat in Barcelona. The official Android app is now live, offering immediate access without an account and featuring native homescreen widgets. A new innovative search operator, "Snaps," lets users perform site-specific searches directly from the search bar. The popular Universal Summarizer extension is now available for Chrome. The Kagi Assistant received a 30-day update, adding file uploads, a stop button, and mobile improvements. These updates aim to enhance user experience and leverage a recent EU ruling to boost Kagi's presence on Android and Chrome.

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Tech

California Bans AI-Only Health Insurance Claim Denials

2025-01-06
California Bans AI-Only Health Insurance Claim Denials

California has enacted a new law prohibiting health insurance companies from denying claims based solely on artificial intelligence algorithms. The law prioritizes human judgment in coverage decisions, aiming to prevent AI miscalculations from denying patients necessary care. While acknowledging AI's potential benefits in healthcare, the legislation emphasizes the irreplaceable role of human empathy and understanding of individual patient needs. The law's impact extends beyond California, with other states and even Congress considering similar legislation, highlighting growing national concerns about AI's use in insurance.

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Tech

California Bill Mandates Disclosure for All Online Bots

2025-02-07
California Bill Mandates Disclosure for All Online Bots

Assembly Member Wilson's legislation reshapes California's approach to online bots, requiring all bots to identify themselves when interacting with state residents, regardless of purpose. This expands current law, which only mandates disclosure for bots influencing commerce or voting. The bill updates the definition of 'bot' to include AI-powered systems generating synthetic content. Anyone using a bot must disclose its automated nature and provide this information upon request. This applies across websites, apps, and platforms. Large platforms (over 10 million monthly US visitors) must ensure compliance. The changes reflect the evolving AI landscape and prioritize transparency in online communication.

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yknotify: A macOS YubiKey Touch Prompter

2025-02-12
yknotify: A macOS YubiKey Touch Prompter

yknotify is a macOS command-line tool that monitors system logs for events associated with a YubiKey waiting for a touch, then prompts the user. It supports FIDO2 and OpenPGP, identifying specific log messages to determine if a touch is needed. While rare false positives exist, no false negatives have been reported. Users can install and run it; issues can be filed if problems arise.

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Development

The Surprisingly Messy Smart Home of a Home Assistant Lead Engineer

2025-05-18
The Surprisingly Messy Smart Home of a Home Assistant Lead Engineer

Frenck, lead engineer of Home Assistant, reveals the truth about his smart home: it's not the extravagant setup you might imagine. Instead, it's a chaotic experiment with hundreds of devices, multiple Home Assistant instances, inconsistent automations, and disastrous dashboards. His family has even accepted the flaky nature of the system. He confesses to the mess and vows to improve it, aiming for a truly optimized smart home experience for his family.

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Development

Mergeable: A Superior Inbox for GitHub Pull Requests

2025-05-12
Mergeable: A Superior Inbox for GitHub Pull Requests

Mergeable is a browser application designed to improve the management of GitHub Pull Requests. It lets users organize PRs into sections using flexible search queries, stores all data locally in the browser, supports keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation, and connects to multiple GitHub instances (including GitHub Enterprise). Crucially, it highlights PRs awaiting your action, all without needing any GitHub app installations. Try the public instance at https://app.usemergeable.dev or self-host using the documentation at https://www.usemergeable.dev.

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Development

Meta's Byte Latent Transformer (BLT): Outperforming Tokenization-Based LLMs

2024-12-14

Meta AI researchers introduced the Byte Latent Transformer (BLT), a novel large language model architecture that processes bytes directly, rather than tokens. BLT dynamically allocates computational resources based on byte entropy, resulting in significant improvements in inference efficiency and robustness compared to tokenization-based models. Scaling experiments up to 8 billion parameters and 4 terabytes of training data demonstrate BLT's ability to match the performance of token-based LLMs while offering enhanced reasoning capabilities and handling of long-tail data. This research showcases the feasibility of training large-scale models directly on raw bytes without a fixed vocabulary.

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Eight Years Since Left-Pad: A Principled Stand Against Corporate Power

2025-06-11

Eight years ago, the left-pad incident shook the npm community. The author reflects on the event, revealing it wasn't a rash act but a principled stand against npm's decision to remove his packages under pressure from Kik Messenger. He argues npm disregarded the open-source ethos, acting heavy-handedly and lacking communication. Following the incident, the author left the US, traveled extensively, and shifted his focus from open-source to business, experiencing a personal 'death' and 'rebirth'.

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Development

Applying the Hierarchy of Controls to Software Engineering

2025-03-08

A mechanical engineer introduced the author to the Hierarchy of Controls (HoC), a crucial concept in workplace safety. The author applies HoC to software engineering, analyzing a production database incident caused by a wrong query ten years ago. The article explores applying elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, and personal protective equipment (PPE) to mitigate risks in software development. Each level's advantages, disadvantages, and limitations are discussed – for example, overly strict access policies might slow down problem resolution. The author emphasizes holistically considering the impact of controls on system safety, preventing the introduction of new risks.

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Development

AI in Education: A Century-Old Prediction?

2025-08-16
AI in Education: A Century-Old Prediction?

Over a century ago, Edison predicted that motion pictures would replace books and revolutionize education within a decade. Today, a similar narrative surrounds AI, with claims that it will obsolete books and transform education in ten years. However, history shows that new technologies aren't a panacea. Using Edison's prediction about film as a parallel, the author cautions against AI hype, urging a rational assessment of its role in education – potentially as a supplementary tool, not a sole one.

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Training Long-Horizon Terminal Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Terminal-Bench-RL

2025-07-29
Training Long-Horizon Terminal Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Terminal-Bench-RL

This project details the creation of a stable RL training infrastructure scaling to 32x H100 GPUs across 4 nodes for training long-horizon terminal-based coding agents. The author developed Terminal-Agent-Qwen3-32b, achieving the highest score on terminal-bench for Qwen3 agents *without* training! Built upon the rLLM framework, it includes custom environments and infrastructure. Using ~$1M in compute, the agent achieved 19th place on the terminal-bench leaderboard, outperforming several top agents from Stanford and OpenAI. A sophisticated system prompt and custom tools guide the agent's behavior. While a full training run was cost-prohibitive, the code and dataset are provided, inviting further research with increased compute resources.

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Development Terminal Agent

PyPI Token Exfiltration via Compromised GitHub Actions

2025-09-20
PyPI Token Exfiltration via Compromised GitHub Actions

A recent attack campaign targeted GitHub Actions workflows to steal PyPI publishing tokens. Attackers modified workflows in various repositories, sending PyPI tokens stored as GitHub secrets to external servers. While some tokens were exfiltrated, they weren't used on PyPI. All affected tokens have been invalidated, and impacted maintainers notified. Using GitHub Actions' Trusted Publishers is recommended to mitigate future attacks.

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Development Security Breach

Russian Hackers Exploit Signal's 'Linked Devices' for Phishing Attacks

2025-02-19
Russian Hackers Exploit Signal's 'Linked Devices' for Phishing Attacks

Russian-aligned hackers are exploiting Signal's 'linked devices' feature for large-scale phishing attacks. Attackers create malicious QR codes disguised as legitimate Signal resources like group invites or security alerts. Scanning these codes links victims' accounts to attacker-controlled Signal instances, allowing real-time eavesdropping on conversations. This technique, used by groups like APT44, even targets Ukrainian military personnel. The stealthy nature and lack of effective defenses make this a high-risk, low-signature attack that can go undetected for extended periods.

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Cracks, Demos, and the Fuzzy Copyright of the Demoscène

2025-03-17

This article explores the long-standing ambiguity surrounding copyright within the demoscene. Since the heyday of Amiga and C64 game cracking in the 1980s, a complex relationship has existed between cracking groups and demo production groups. While cracking was commonplace, even seen by some as a rebellion against expensive games, the demoscene itself has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism among its members. Using examples like Unit A and The Movers' cracktros, the article highlights this paradoxical culture, discussing how former crackers coexist with game companies in commercial game development, and how to view originality, code sharing, and AI-generated art. Ultimately, the article points out that the demoscene's understanding of copyright is fluid and ever-changing, lacking clear rules, relying instead on unwritten norms and community consensus.

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Game cracking

Japanese Lunar Lander Enters Moon Orbit Ahead of June Landing Attempt

2025-05-10
Japanese Lunar Lander Enters Moon Orbit Ahead of June Landing Attempt

ispace's lunar lander, Resilience, has entered lunar orbit and is scheduled to attempt a landing in the first week of June. This is ispace's second attempt, following the crash landing of its first lander in 2023. Resilience carries a small rover to collect lunar soil samples for analysis. This mission follows successful (or partially successful) moon landings by US companies Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines earlier this year.

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Tech

LLVM IR Gains Byte Type: Native Support for Raw Memory Operations

2025-09-09

A Google Summer of Code 2025 project under the LLVM Compiler Infrastructure successfully added a new byte type to the LLVM IR, representing raw memory values. This enables native implementation of memory intrinsics like memcpy, memmove, and memcmp, fixes unsound transformations, and unlocks new optimizations, all with minimal performance overhead. The project addressed LLVM's longstanding lack of a type for representing raw memory, improving compiler correctness and optimization through pointer provenance tracking and precise poison bit representation. Clang's handling of C/C++ raw memory access types was also improved, along with fixes for several unsound optimizations.

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Development

Cactoide: Effortless Event Management

2025-08-28
Cactoide: Effortless Event Management

Cactoide is a mobile-first event RSVP platform that lets you create events, share unique URLs, and collect RSVPs without any registration. Features include instant event creation, one-click sharing, all-in-one clarity, no sign-ups required, smart limits, and effortless simplicity. Designed to streamline coordination and make events vibrant and unforgettable. The project is open-source with detailed setup instructions.

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Development

MinorMiner: Mining Bitcoin with Children's Math Homework?

2025-05-17
MinorMiner: Mining Bitcoin with Children's Math Homework?

Hobert Reaton pitches a groundbreaking investment opportunity: MinorMiner, a platform that mines Bitcoin using children's math homework. By breaking down the SHA-256 hashing algorithm into simple arithmetic problems, the platform transforms kids' assignments into computational resources. They've also developed the CUDAAAAGH library, distributing computations across a vast pool of 'computation partners' (students). Future plans include applying this technology to AI training and even building a computer system entirely powered by children. A controversial yet imaginative venture.

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Startup

Maya Blue: Cracking the Code of an Ancient Pigment

2025-06-16

This article unravels the mystery of Maya Blue, a remarkably durable blue pigment used by the ancient Maya civilization. It reveals Maya Blue isn't a simple organic or inorganic pigment, but a unique, human-made nano-structured hybrid of the clay mineral palygorskite and the indigo dye. Through analysis of ancient pottery and sacrificial offerings, the author unveils two methods the Maya used to create it: one involving burning palygorskite, indigo, and copal incense; the other, grinding wet palygorskite with indigo leaves and then heating the mixture. This discovery highlights the Maya's sophisticated craftsmanship and offers insights for modern materials science.

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Open Source Switch Bounce Dataset: A Robust Debouncing Solution

2025-05-04
Open Source Switch Bounce Dataset: A Robust Debouncing Solution

This open-source project provides a collection of oscilloscope traces illustrating switch bouncing behavior. It includes various switch types (rocker switches, push buttons, etc.) tested under different actuation forces and speeds. Data is available in CSV and PWL formats for use in designing and simulating debouncing algorithms for circuits and firmware. The dataset includes detailed descriptions of the testing methodology and equipment, making it a valuable resource for engineers.

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Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace for Notes, Tasks, Wikis, and Databases

2025-01-25
Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace for Notes, Tasks, Wikis, and Databases

Notion is an all-in-one workspace that combines notes, task management, wikis, and databases into a single platform. You can use it to take notes, manage to-dos, create team wikis, and even build custom databases. Notion's strength lies in its flexibility; it's highly customizable to fit your needs, whether for personal use or team collaboration. Its clean and intuitive interface makes it easy to learn and use, allowing you to effortlessly manage information and boost productivity.

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Development

AI's Disruptive Impact on Tech Hiring

2025-02-20

The tech hiring process, particularly technical interviews, is universally disliked. Traditional interviews focus on algorithms and data structures, but AI tools like GitHub Copilot and LLMs are making it easy for candidates to fake skills and pass these tests. This article explores AI's impact on various interview types—online coding assessments, computer science fundamentals, and architecture design—and proposes solutions. These include switching to in-person interviews, using anti-cheating software, and fundamentally changing interviews to assess AI tool proficiency and code refactoring skills. Ultimately, the article suggests future tech interviews will prioritize complex problem-solving, teamwork, and real-world project experience.

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Development Technical Interviews
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