Japanese Couple's Three Divorces, Three Marriages: A Tug-of-War Between Law and Love

2025-06-28
Japanese Couple's Three Divorces, Three Marriages: A Tug-of-War Between Law and Love

Yukari Uchiyama and Yukio Koike, a teaching couple from Nagano, Japan, have divorced and remarried three times to circumvent a law requiring spouses to share the same surname. Deeply in love, they've repeatedly separated and reunited, marrying only to register births and then divorcing to maintain their preferred unmarried lifestyle. Their unconventional situation highlights the conflict between Japanese law and individual freedoms.

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Goodreads Failing Authors: Pre-Publication Negative Reviews Run Rampant

2025-06-25
Goodreads Failing Authors: Pre-Publication Negative Reviews Run Rampant

Authors are reporting a surge in negative reviews on Goodreads before their books are even released, with the platform seemingly failing to adequately address the issue. Crime writer Jo Furniss detailed her experience, receiving a two-star review for her unreleased thriller, "Guilt Trip." After responding, her comment was removed, and Goodreads advised against confronting negative reviewers. This highlights a broader problem of online abuse and a lack of author protection on the platform. Other authors echoed similar experiences, emphasizing the damaging potential of pre-publication negative reviews and calling for a stronger code of conduct from Goodreads.

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8-Bit Retro Pixel Art: 1800s American West Assets

2025-06-07

This asset pack features numerous 8-bit retro pixel art images themed around the 19th-century American West. It includes flora (cacti, shrubs) and fauna (grizzly bears, elk, coyotes) of the Colorado Plateau, weapons (guns, bows, arrows), mountain man era (mid-1800s) clothing and buildings (saloons, cave entrances). Ideal for game development and retro-style design projects.

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US Tariffs: Electronics Prices Soar, Innovation Suffers

2025-04-22
US Tariffs: Electronics Prices Soar, Innovation Suffers

The US government's volatile tariff policies have sent shockwaves through the electronics industry. Shawn DuBravac, chief economist at IPC, predicts that tariffs will lead to higher prices for electronics, reduced consumer choice, stalled investment, and even stifled innovation. Smartphones and video game consoles are particularly hard hit, potentially facing near-doubling price increases. While supply chains are dynamic and adaptive, the uncertainty surrounding tariffs is causing investment hesitation, exacerbating the negative impact. Low-end consumers will be hit hardest, facing higher prices and fewer options. Furthermore, companies may cut R&D to reduce costs, hindering innovation.

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Tech

NSA and CISA Push for Memory-Safe Programming Languages

2025-06-30
NSA and CISA Push for Memory-Safe Programming Languages

The US National Security Agency (NSA) and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have jointly issued guidance urging software developers to adopt memory-safe programming languages like Rust and Go. The report highlights memory safety vulnerabilities as a leading cause of software security issues, citing C and C++ as particularly vulnerable due to their memory management mechanisms. While projects aim to improve C/C++ security, a long-term shift to memory-safe languages is presented as the best risk mitigation strategy. Government initiatives, such as DARPA's TRACTOR program (which aims to automatically translate C code to Rust), are actively promoting this transition.

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Tech

Budget Ampere Altra Dev Machine Build

2025-06-30
Budget Ampere Altra Dev Machine Build

Needing a development machine with 64k page size support, the author built a system based on Ampere Altra. He chose an AsrockRack ALTRA8BUD-1L2T motherboard, a used Q80-30 processor (80 cores, 3.0 GHz), an Arctic Freezer 4U-M cooler, and eight 16GB SK Hynix HMA82GR7CJR8N-XN RAM sticks. After some troubleshooting, the system booted successfully. He also selected a suitable case and power supply, adding NVME storage and a graphics card. The total cost was around €1800, slightly over budget. Future plans include installing Fedora 42, creating RHEL and CentOS Stream VMs, experimenting with different GPUs, and desktop usage.

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Development Development Machine

Livecoding Graphics in Common Lisp: Building a Boids Program Without Restarts

2025-04-23
Livecoding Graphics in Common Lisp: Building a Boids Program Without Restarts

This article demonstrates livecoding in Common Lisp for graphics programming, using the Boids algorithm as an example. Common Lisp's powerful recompilation feature allows code modification and immediate effect while the program is running, eliminating the need for restarts. The author utilizes the Sketch graphics framework, incrementally implementing the Boids algorithm and showcasing the efficient development process enabled by livecoding. By modifying code and observing the real-time effects, the core Boids algorithm—including separation, cohesion, and alignment rules—is implemented, culminating in a mouse-following Boids simulation. Livecoding significantly enhances development efficiency and interactivity.

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arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-04-21
arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Individuals and organizations working with arXivLabs embrace our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will benefit arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

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Development

AI Coding Tools: A 19% Productivity Drop for Experienced Developers

2025-07-11
AI Coding Tools: A 19% Productivity Drop for Experienced Developers

A rigorous study of experienced developers using AI coding tools reveals a surprising 19% decrease in productivity, contradicting developers' self-reported expectation of a 20% increase. The study found that AI-generated code often failed to meet the high standards of mature, large-scale projects, leading to significant time spent reviewing and correcting the AI's output. This highlights the limitations of current AI coding tools, suggesting that their effectiveness is heavily dependent on project type, developer experience, and the maturity of the tools themselves.

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Development

Privacy Isn't All or Nothing: Reclaiming Control in the Data Age

2025-04-24
Privacy Isn't All or Nothing: Reclaiming Control in the Data Age

This article challenges the common myth that benefiting from modern technology requires sacrificing privacy. It argues that users can enjoy data-driven tools while maintaining privacy by choosing trustworthy companies, protecting specific information, and demanding smarter systems. The author highlights technologies like homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs, demonstrating that privacy and data analysis can coexist. The piece calls for users to select privacy-respecting tools, advocate for privacy-preserving technologies, and demand stronger privacy protections.

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OpenTelemetry Protocol and Apache Arrow: Phase 2 in Rust

2025-05-13
OpenTelemetry Protocol and Apache Arrow: Phase 2 in Rust

Phase 2 of the OpenTelemetry Protocol with Apache Arrow project (OTel-Arrow) is underway, focusing on building high-performance telemetry pipelines using Rust. This phase investigates a zero-copy, columnar approach from SDK to pipeline, aiming for significant efficiency gains for large telemetry streams. Integration with the existing OpenTelemetry Collector's Go ecosystem is a key goal, along with enhanced interoperability with data lake technologies like Apache DataFusion.

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Development

Stop Saying 'Click Here'! Better Link Text Writing

2025-07-02

W3C released a guide on writing more effective link text. It advises against using mechanical phrases like 'click here', suggesting instead concise, meaningful text that clearly describes the link's content, not the mechanics of clicking. The article also introduces W3C QA Tips, a resource offering practical advice for web developers and designers, including how to submit tips and an index of existing ones.

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Development Link Text

The Chip Talent Crisis: 6 Reasons Why the Industry is Struggling

2025-04-23
The Chip Talent Crisis: 6 Reasons Why the Industry is Struggling

The global semiconductor industry faces a severe talent shortage, with Deloitte predicting a shortfall of 1 million skilled workers by 2030. This article explores six key reasons: a theory-first education neglecting practical application; a misconception that software pays more; graduate degree requirements creating bottlenecks; premature specialization limiting career paths; a lack of documentation hindering knowledge transfer; and a relatively traditional, high-pressure chip industry culture. The author proposes a practical-first approach to education, the creation of a chip learning community, and improvements to industry culture to attract more talent.

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Lazy Trees Land in Determinate Nix 3.5.2: A Massive Performance Boost for Nix

2025-05-26
Lazy Trees Land in Determinate Nix 3.5.2: A Massive Performance Boost for Nix

Determinate Nix 3.5.2 has landed, bringing with it the highly anticipated lazy trees feature. This significantly improves Nix's efficiency in large repositories, especially massive monorepos, by using a virtual filesystem to optimize file copying. Tests show evaluations in Nixpkgs can be 3x faster and use 20x less disk space. Users can opt-in by enabling `lazy-trees = true` in their custom Nix configuration. While currently opt-in, the team has submitted a pull request to merge this into upstream Nix. Future performance improvements are planned, including better evaluation caching, parallel evaluation for more Nix operations, and multi-threaded unpacking of flakes.

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Development Lazy Trees

Stop Waiting to Be Asked: A Developer's Guide to Career Advancement

2025-04-23

A developer shares his journey from coder to cofounder and back, revealing that job titles define minimum expectations, not limits. He advocates focusing on the intersection of skills, company needs, and personal interests. Instead of waiting for promotions, proactively tackle unmet needs and demonstrate initiative. Even if unappreciated by your current employer, this experience strengthens future job applications. The author illustrates this by detailing self-initiated projects like creating a company newsletter and internal documentation, highlighting the importance of creating your own opportunities.

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Development proactive

Somo: A Human-Friendly Netstat Alternative for Linux

2025-06-09
Somo: A Human-Friendly Netstat Alternative for Linux

Tired of the complexities of netstat? Somo is a more user-friendly socket and port monitoring tool for Linux. It displays information in a clean table view, supports various filter options (protocol, port, IP address, program name, etc.), and offers interactive process killing. Installation is easy, supporting .deb packages for Debian and Cargo installation. Using sudo allows viewing all processes and ports. In short: Somo makes Linux port monitoring simpler, more efficient, and user-friendly.

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Development

EU Slaps Apple and Meta with Hefty Fines for DMA Violations

2025-04-23
EU Slaps Apple and Meta with Hefty Fines for DMA Violations

The European Commission fined Apple and Meta for non-compliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple faces penalties for alleged violations concerning its app store regulations, while Meta's designation of Facebook Marketplace as a regulated service was overturned. Both companies plan to appeal, criticizing the EU's actions. This enforcement marks a significant step in the EU's intensified regulation of Big Tech and highlights growing trade tensions between the US and EU.

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Tech

Musk's DOGE Team Allegedly Siphoned Sensitive Data from NLRB

2025-04-23

A whistleblower alleges that Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) siphoned gigabytes of data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)'s sensitive case files in early March. An investigation reveals a striking similarity between code downloaded from NLRB systems and a program published in January 2025 by DOGE employee Marko Elez, designed to bypass IP restrictions for web scraping and brute-forcing. Elez, who has worked for several Musk companies, faced public scrutiny for racist and eugenicist social media posts. This data breach could unfairly advantage defendants in ongoing labor disputes, as the stolen data includes sensitive employee information and proprietary business documents.

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Tech

o1: Not a Chat Model, But a Powerful Report Generator

2025-01-18
o1: Not a Chat Model, But a Powerful Report Generator

This post details Ben Hylak's journey from initially disliking o1 to using it daily for critical tasks. He discovered o1 isn't a traditional chat model but functions more like a "report generator." Effective o1 usage hinges on providing extensive context, clearly defining goals, and understanding its strengths and weaknesses. o1 excels at one-shot generation of complete files, reduced hallucinations, explaining complex concepts, and medical diagnosis. However, it struggles with mimicking specific writing styles and building entire applications. The author shares tips for improving o1 efficiency and design suggestions for high-latency AI products like o1.

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The Dark Side of AI: Your Phone Might Be Part of a DDoS Attack

2025-04-19
The Dark Side of AI: Your Phone Might Be Part of a DDoS Attack

Companies are paying app developers to include 'network sharing' SDKs in their apps, creating massive botnets. These botnets leverage unsuspecting users' bandwidth for web scraping, brute-forcing mail servers, and other malicious activities, leading to DDoS attacks on smaller servers. This model, using user devices for web scraping, has become a dark side of AI data collection, and tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Google should act.

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Tech Botnets

Edo Period Police: Brutality in the Name of Peace

2025-04-23
Edo Period Police: Brutality in the Name of Peace

After Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan in the early 17th century, Edo (modern-day Tokyo) became the new capital, ending centuries of civil war. However, crime persisted. The government established a police force composed mainly of samurai, overseen by magistrates and employing various ranks of officers, including the doshin (constables) and yoriki (higher-ranking samurai). While the yoriki enjoyed higher status and better pay, the doshin handled the brunt of daily policing, sometimes resorting to brutal methods like eye-crushing irritants and torture to extract confessions. This system, while effective in maintaining order in a city of over a million, highlights the harsh realities and contradictions of Edo-era justice.

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DeepSeek's Open-Source Inference Engine Strategy: Modular Contributions, Not a Direct Release

2025-04-14
DeepSeek's Open-Source Inference Engine Strategy: Modular Contributions, Not a Direct Release

Due to resource constraints, the DeepSeek team has opted against directly open-sourcing its internal inference engine, instead choosing to collaborate with existing open-source projects. They will extract reusable components from the engine and contribute them as independent libraries, while also sharing optimization strategies. This approach aims to sustainably give back to the open-source community, promote AGI development, and ensure its benefits serve all of humanity. Future efforts will prioritize synchronizing inference engineering with the open-source community and hardware partners to enable Day-0 SOTA support for new model releases.

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Maine Wins Restraining Order Against Trump Admin Over Withheld USDA Funds

2025-04-13
Maine Wins Restraining Order Against Trump Admin Over Withheld USDA Funds

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze federal funds withheld from Maine after President Trump clashed with Gov. Janet Mills over transgender athletes in girls' sports. The USDA, among other agencies, threatened to cut funding following Trump's executive order banning transgender athletes. Mills refused to apologize, leading to a legal battle. Maine argued the USDA didn't follow proper procedures before cutting funds, which were used for school programs, including feeding schoolchildren. The court sided with Maine, highlighting the ongoing conflict between federal and state authority on this issue.

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You Inhale Caesar's Last Breath? Fermi Estimation Shows How

2025-05-23
You Inhale Caesar's Last Breath? Fermi Estimation Shows How

This article uses Fermi estimation to calculate how many molecules from Caesar's last breath are in each breath you take. By estimating the volume of Earth's atmosphere and a single breath, along with the number of molecules in the atmosphere, it concludes that you inhale approximately one molecule from Caesar's last breath with each breath! This seemingly unbelievable result showcases the power of Fermi estimation and approximate calculations in science. The article also provides links for further learning about Fermi estimation methods and applications.

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Nintendo Sues Discord to Unmask Pokémon Data Leaker Behind 'Teraleak'

2025-04-23
Nintendo Sues Discord to Unmask Pokémon Data Leaker Behind 'Teraleak'

Nintendo is pursuing legal action against Discord in a California court to identify the individual responsible for the massive Pokémon data breach known as "Teraleak." The leak included source code for the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A (though unreleased), next-generation Pokémon titles, older game builds, and extensive concept art and lore. Nintendo alleges that a Discord user, GameFreakOUT, posted confidential materials to the FreakLeak server, from which the leak spread widely. Despite DMCA takedown attempts, the information persisted online. The lawsuit aims to obtain GameFreakOUT's identifying information to hold them accountable for the breach.

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Game

W3C Exploration IG: Bridging the Gaps in Web Identity

2025-04-22
W3C Exploration IG: Bridging the Gaps in Web Identity

In the rapidly evolving web landscape, identity, authentication, and trust mechanisms face numerous challenges. The W3C Exploration Interest Group (IG) aims to connect the real world with the standards world, exploring technical gaps, emerging wallet models, cross-trust framework use cases, and regulatory signals in web identity. It's not about defining specs, but identifying problems and fostering discussion to inform future standards. All are welcome to contribute ideas and help build a more secure and reliable web.

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Development Web Identity

Cannabis Use Linked to Increased Dementia Risk: Major Study

2025-04-22
Cannabis Use Linked to Increased Dementia Risk: Major Study

A large study of over 6 million people reveals a significant link between regular cannabis use and an increased risk of dementia. Individuals hospitalized due to cannabis experienced a 23% higher dementia risk within five years and a 72% higher risk compared to the general population. While not definitively proving causation, the findings add to growing concerns and warrant further investigation. The study highlights the increased potency of modern cannabis, contributing to rising addiction rates. Experts emphasize that cannabis is a psychotropic substance and users should be transparent with their healthcare providers about its use.

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Exploring a New Protocol for Online Interaction: Spring83

2025-04-23
Exploring a New Protocol for Online Interaction: Spring83

This document introduces Spring83, an experimental protocol designed to explore novel ways of interacting online. It's not intended for users, but rather as an invitation for co-investigators to explore and develop it. Several implementations in various programming languages already exist, and the author encourages further contributions to this open project.

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The Demise of USENIX ATC: The End of Academic Conferences in the Age of Open Source?

2025-05-12

The USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC) has been discontinued, prompting reflection on the academic conference model and the direction of systems research in the age of open source. The author recounts ATC's journey from glory to decline, arguing that the rise of open source has altered how systems research findings are disseminated, diminishing the importance of academic conferences. Simultaneously, ATC itself suffered from becoming overly academic and detached from practice, ultimately leading to its demise. While lamenting ATC's end, the author suggests that the rise of online conferences offers new possibilities for systems research.

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3FS: A High-Performance Distributed File System for AI

2025-02-28
3FS: A High-Performance Distributed File System for AI

3FS is a high-performance distributed file system designed to tackle the challenges of AI training and inference workloads. Leveraging modern SSDs and RDMA networks, it provides a shared storage layer that simplifies the development of distributed applications. Key features include: exceptional performance and usability, strong consistency via CRAQ, standard file interfaces, and support for diverse workloads (data preparation, dataloaders, checkpointing, and KVCache for inference). Benchmarks demonstrate impressive results: up to 6.6 TiB/s read throughput on large clusters and 3.66 TiB/min sort throughput. KVCache significantly boosts LLM inference efficiency, reaching peak read throughput of 40 GiB/s. The project is open-source with detailed setup and run instructions.

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