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Raspberry Pi 5 Gets Ultrafast Storage Boost with New HAT

2025-08-01

Raspberry Pi 5 Gets Ultrafast Storage Boost with New HAT

Will Whang's RPI5-SDexpress-Hat adds a microSD Express card slot to the Raspberry Pi 5, enabling ultrafast storage speeds. Benchmarks show impressive read speeds exceeding 630 MB/s, though write speeds are closer to high-end microSD cards. The HAT also includes an eject button and two Qwiic connectors. Despite the impressive performance, high microSD Express card costs mean the HAT won't be mass-produced, but the design is open-source.

(www.cnx-software.com)

Hardware high-speed storage

The Art of Global Variables in C++

2025-02-10

This article explores effective techniques for using global variables in C++. The author argues that global variables aren't inherently bad; the key lies in their proper application. The article presents advantages and disadvantages, outlining four rules: 1. Make it hard to misuse; 2. Restore original values after changing observable states; 3. Don't return references or pointers to internal state; 4. Don't make it hard to test. Through code examples, the author demonstrates correct usage and potential pitfalls, recommending thread-local variables for multi-threading.

(codestyleandtaste.com)

Development Global Variables

The Science of Routing Print Orders at Canva

2024-12-14

The Science of Routing Print Orders at Canva

Canva's engineering team built a configurable rules system for graph traversal to optimize print order routing. Decoupling graph building, traversal, and decision-making ensures high availability and scalability. It uses relational databases for data management and asynchronously generates a cached graph for fast querying. A rules engine and a modified minimum-cost flow algorithm find the optimal route in milliseconds, minimizing transport distance and carbon emissions, enhancing user experience and operational efficiency.

(www.canva.dev)

Development graph traversal rules engine order routing

Automerge 3.0: 10x Memory Reduction!

2025-08-06

Automerge 3.0 is here, boasting a massive memory usage reduction—up to 10x or more! This game-changing improvement, achieved by using a compressed representation at runtime, tackles the memory bloat previously experienced with documents having long histories. For instance, processing Moby Dick went from 700MB to a mere 1.3MB! In addition to this, the update includes API cleanup, particularly for text handling, resulting in enhanced performance and reliability. Existing users can easily upgrade, and new users are encouraged to give it a try.

(automerge.org)

Development Collaborative Editing

GAO Slams Federal Agencies for Cybersecurity Failures

2025-08-06

GAO Slams Federal Agencies for Cybersecurity Failures

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued scathing reports criticizing three federal agencies—the General Services Administration (GSA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—for their CIOs' failure to implement cybersecurity recommendations. DHS has 43 outstanding recommendations, seven prioritized by GAO; EPA has 11; and GSA has 4. Common failures include inadequate cybersecurity event logging and IT portfolio reviews. The EPA faces additional issues with cloud software management, lacking documentation and service level agreements. DHS's Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) program remains plagued with problems, with all nine recommendations unimplemented. The GAO hopes newly appointed CIOs will address these shortcomings, and has brought the issues to Congress's attention.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech government accountability IT management

Asynchronous Programming Experiment: Integrating Lua with libuv and C Modules

2025-01-31

Asynchronous Programming Experiment: Integrating Lua with libuv and C Modules

This project explores integrating C-compiled modules into Lua scripts, leveraging the libuv library for asynchronous operations. It features a Lua interpreter, the libuv library, and custom C modules, demonstrating how to compile and load C modules into Lua, culminating in a simple HTTP server. The project boasts a clear structure, detailed setup and compilation instructions, and example code, making it ideal for learning Lua and C integration and asynchronous programming techniques.

(github.com)

Development

SkunkHTML: A GitHub Pages Static Site Generator

2024-12-27

SkunkHTML: A GitHub Pages Static Site Generator

SkunkHTML is a static site generator powered by GitHub Actions, enabling users to quickly create and deploy personal blogs or websites to GitHub Pages using Markdown files. Simply upload your Markdown files to the `/markdown-blog/` folder, and GitHub Actions automatically builds and deploys the updated site. SkunkHTML supports the Giscus commenting system and provides detailed documentation and examples. The project is completely open-source and can be forked directly on GitHub without needing a local download.

(github.com)

Development static site generator

White House Near Collapse: An Unprecedented Reconstruction

2024-12-14

White House Near Collapse: An Unprecedented Reconstruction

In 1948, the White House, worn down by war damage and hasty renovations, faced imminent collapse due to structural decay and inadequate foundations. President Truman and his family were relocated, initiating a three-year comprehensive reconstruction. This project not only repaired the critical structural issues but also modernized the White House, adding basements, expanding utility spaces, and nearly doubling the number of rooms. A secret atomic bomb shelter was also constructed, reflecting the anxieties of the Cold War era. While the renovated White House was modernized, the removal of original interior elements altered its historical character.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Misc White House Reconstruction Truman Historic Preservation

Google's AI Overviews: Publishers Cry Foul Over Traffic Plunge

2025-08-16

Google's AI Overviews: Publishers Cry Foul Over Traffic Plunge

Google's AI Overviews feature is causing a significant drop in search referral traffic for publishers. A Digital Content Next (DCN) survey reveals a 10% year-over-year decline in Google search referral traffic across its member sites, with news sites seeing a 7% drop and non-news sites a 14% decrease. Publishers blame AI Overviews for reduced click-through rates and have submitted evidence to regulators, demanding action against Google. While some publishers are adapting through stronger branding and SEO, many feel trapped unless the Department of Justice forces Google to separate its AI crawler from its search crawler.

(digiday.com)

Tech

Citigroup's $6 Billion Near-Miss: A Systemic Risk?

2025-03-04

Citigroup's $6 Billion Near-Miss: A Systemic Risk?

Bloomberg News reported that Citigroup nearly transferred $6 billion into a customer's account by mistake. A wealth management employee mistakenly copied and pasted an account number into the dollar amount field. While the error was caught the next day, it highlights systemic issues in Citigroup's risk management and data governance. This follows a previous incident where $81 trillion was mistakenly transferred. These incidents have led Citigroup to invest in improved compliance and resulted in hefty regulatory fines, including $400 million in 2020 and $136 million in 2023.

(finance.yahoo.com)

Tech Citigroup transfer error

Rediscovering .NET: A First Look at F#

2025-04-01

Rediscovering .NET: A First Look at F#

After a 15-year hiatus, the author returns to the .NET world, driven by curiosity about the functional programming language F#. The article delves into F#'s features, such as lightweight syntax, immutability, and type inference, illustrating its conciseness and power with code examples. A comparison between F# and OCaml highlights F#'s strengths and weaknesses, along with its applications in web development and data science. Despite its relatively small community, the author finds it vibrant and active, concluding that F# is a fun and practical language worth exploring for .NET developers.

(batsov.com)

Development

Clang Hardened Mode Proposal: Prioritizing Security Over Compatibility

2025-08-02

Clang Hardened Mode Proposal: Prioritizing Security Over Compatibility

The Clang team proposes a "hardened mode" to enhance the safety and security of C and C++ programs. This mode will unify existing security mechanisms, including enabling various compiler flags, predefined macros, and warnings, and adjusting diagnostic behavior to reduce false positives and prioritize security. The proposal explores several implementation approaches: a configuration file, a separate driver, and orthogonal flags, seeking community feedback on the optimal solution. This mode may break existing code, but the team believes this is a necessary trade-off for improved security, aiming for a low false positive rate.

(discourse.llvm.org)

Development

Warner Bros. DVDs Are Mysteriously Rotting

2025-03-07

Warner Bros. DVDs Are Mysteriously Rotting

A wave of DVD rot is affecting Warner Bros. Home Entertainment titles manufactured between 2006 and 2008. Editor Chris Bumbray highlighted the issue after several of his classic films became unplayable. Warner Bros. has acknowledged the widespread problem and is offering replacements, but some out-of-print titles can only be exchanged for comparable movies. This surprising development underscores the inherent risks even with physical media, a stark contrast to the perceived permanence.

(arstechnica.com)

Misc DVD rot physical media

ElevenLabs Unveils Conversational AI 2.0: More Natural, Intelligent Voice Interactions

2025-06-01

ElevenLabs Unveils Conversational AI 2.0: More Natural, Intelligent Voice Interactions

ElevenLabs has released Conversational AI 2.0, a significant upgrade to its platform. Version 2.0 focuses on creating more natural conversational flow, using an advanced turn-taking model to understand the rhythm of human dialogue and reduce unnatural pauses. It also features integrated multilingual detection and response, enabling seamless multilingual conversations without manual configuration. Furthermore, 2.0 integrates Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), allowing the AI to access and incorporate information from external knowledge bases for accurate and timely responses. Multimodal interaction (text and voice) is also supported. Finally, the platform prioritizes enterprise-grade security and compliance, including HIPAA compliance and optional EU data residency.

(elevenlabs.io)

AI voice interaction

Bitwarden Service Status: Recent Outages and Latency Issues

2025-01-08

Bitwarden password manager has experienced several service outages and latency issues recently. On January 7th, US and EU cloud services, including Identity Service, RESTful API, and Web Vault, underwent maintenance and experienced intermittent access problems. On January 8th, US cloud services also experienced degraded service, with users encountering unexpected errors or access denied during login. The Bitwarden team is actively monitoring and resolving the issues. Users are advised to try different network connections to resolve access problems.

(status.bitwarden.com)

Tech outages

YouTube's Algorithmic Shift: From Addictive to Tedious

2025-05-18

YouTube once thrived on a subscription-based recommendation system, offering relevant and engaging content that kept users hooked. However, the introduction of algorithmic recommendations, while initially providing an illusion of infinite content, ultimately led to repetitive and unpersonalized suggestions, leaving users feeling bored. Now, YouTube's homepage recycles a small number of videos, and search results prioritize videos from channels the user has interacted with, neglecting actual relevance and mixing in unrelated recommendations and Shorts. It feels like a deliberate effort to make the platform less engaging. This shift might be Google's intentional move to reduce YouTube's addictive nature.

(rakhim.exotext.com)

Tech

Eleventy Ditches Luxon, Builds Custom RFC 9557 Date Parser

2025-07-26

Eleventy Ditches Luxon, Builds Custom RFC 9557 Date Parser

To reduce Eleventy's client-side bundle size and prepare for native Temporal API support, the team decided to replace the Luxon date parsing library with a custom RFC 9557-compliant solution. The new library is smaller, more accurate, and its output matches both the upcoming Temporal API and Luxon, although some breaking changes exist. This ultimately simplifies maintenance and improves performance.

(www.zachleat.com)

Development date parsing

Massive Supply Chain Attack: Malware Delivered via Abandoned Amazon S3 Buckets

2025-02-12

Researchers registered roughly 150 abandoned Amazon S3 buckets for around $400, finding they contained software libraries still in use. These buckets received eight million requests in two months, highlighting a massive vulnerability. An attacker could easily inject malware into these libraries, spreading it widely through software updates – a SolarWinds-style attack on a much larger scale. The abandonment of these buckets leaves developers unable to automatically patch vulnerabilities, giving attackers control over updates and hindering vendor identification of affected software. This underscores the critical flaws in software supply chain security; fixing it will be both difficult and expensive.

(www.schneier.com)

Tech software supply chain S3 security

Lottery Odds: A Rare Positive Expected Value?

2025-03-05

Lottery Odds: A Rare Positive Expected Value?

The Texas Lotto example shows that buying every possible lottery ticket isn't always a negative expected value play. With 25.8 million possible number combinations and often only a million tickets sold, weeks regularly go by with no jackpot winners. In 2024, only two jackpot winners emerged from 157 drawings, winning $17.5 million and $29 million respectively, leaving a $59.5 million jackpot by year's end. Someone finally won in February 2025, after the prize swelled to $83.5 million. While the odds remain extremely long, the accumulating jackpot can, theoretically, create a positive expected value – albeit a highly unlikely one.

(www.bloomberg.com)

Misc lottery probability expected value

Rails 8's Solid Queue: A Deep Dive into the New Background Job Processor (Part 1)

2025-05-11

Rails 8's Solid Queue: A Deep Dive into the New Background Job Processor (Part 1)

Rails 8 introduces Solid Queue, a novel background job processing library that eliminates the need for external services like Redis. This article delves into Solid Queue's architecture, explaining the interplay between Jobs and Workers and how database tables (solid_queue_jobs, solid_queue_ready_executions, solid_queue_claimed_executions, solid_queue_processes) manage job queuing, execution, and monitoring. Solid Queue achieves high performance and reliability through clever database design and the use of FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED statements, employing a supervisor process to prevent job loss. The article also highlights SQLite limitations and AppSignal's performance monitoring capabilities, promising a deeper dive in part two.

(blog.appsignal.com)

Development Background Jobs

Chrome's One-Tap Sign-in Dialog: Google Favoring its Browser?

2025-07-28

Many websites show annoying "Sign in with Google" banners. My browser extension, StopTheMadness Pro, hides these banners, but Chrome behaves differently. While Chrome avoids the banners, it displays a similar One-Tap dialog, which is part of the Chrome app itself and can't be hidden by extensions. Fortunately, this dialog can be disabled in Chrome's settings. This highlights yet another instance of Google seemingly favoring its own browser.

(underpassapp.com)

Development Google Sign-in

OOXML: Microsoft's 'Open' Trap? LibreOffice's Accusation and the Truth

2025-09-09

LibreOffice accuses Microsoft's OOXML file format of being deliberately complex to lock in users and create a de facto monopoly. The article cites numerous technical flaws in OOXML and the chaotic standardization process. However, the author argues this wasn't deliberate sabotage by Microsoft, but rather a prioritization of self-interest, a defensive strategy against antitrust pressure and competition from ODF. OOXML's complexity stems from its direct mapping of Office's internal data structures, not a concise description of document content, making it more of a program state dump than an ideal standard. While Microsoft's actions objectively resulted in anti-competitive effects, the motivation differs from deliberate sabotage.

(hsu.cy)

Tech Open Standard

Niantic, Pokémon Go Maker, in Talks to Sell to Saudi Arabia's Scopely

2025-02-19

Niantic, Pokémon Go Maker, in Talks to Sell to Saudi Arabia's Scopely

Niantic, the creator of the 2016 hit Pokémon Go, is reportedly in talks to sell its video game business to Scopely, a Saudi Arabia-owned company, for approximately $3.5 billion. The deal would include Pokémon Go and other mobile games. While Pokémon Go was a global phenomenon, Niantic struggled to replicate its success, leading to staff cuts and canceled projects. This acquisition is part of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund's broader strategy to diversify its economy by investing in the gaming industry, with Scopely acting as a key player in their mobile gaming ambitions.

(finance.yahoo.com)

Game

2000+ Occult Texts Now Online Thanks to Dan Brown

2025-08-16

2000+ Occult Texts Now Online Thanks to Dan Brown

Amsterdam's Ritman Library, a treasure trove of pre-1900 books on alchemy, astrology, magic, and other occult subjects, has digitized 2,178 of its rare texts thanks to a generous donation from Dan Brown, author of *The Da Vinci Code*. The "Hermetically Open" project makes these books, written in various European languages (primarily Latin, with specialized jargon), freely accessible online. The collection isn't limited to the occult; it also includes works bridging philosophy, theology, medicine, and science, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of scholarship in the era.

(www.openculture.com)

Misc Occult Ritman Library

America's Democratic Peril: The Dangerous Embrace of Authoritarianism

2025-02-28

America's Democratic Peril: The Dangerous Embrace of Authoritarianism

This podcast episode explores the growing ties between the United States and authoritarian regimes and the potential threat to American democracy. Through interviews with former National Security Advisor John Bolton, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and analysis of cases in Venezuela and Ukraine, the show reveals how money politics, secret deals, and corruption are eroding democratic institutions. The authors warn that if America continues its drift toward authoritarianism, it risks democratic backsliding with severe consequences for global democratic stability.

(www.theatlantic.com)

Misc American Democracy Authoritarianism Corruption

Saint Paul Hit by Crippling Cyberattack; National Guard Deployed

2025-07-30

Saint Paul Hit by Crippling Cyberattack; National Guard Deployed

Saint Paul, Minnesota's capital city, suffered a major cyberattack that disrupted online services, including online payments and some library and recreation center services. The attack, which lasted through the weekend, overwhelmed the city's and commercial cybersecurity firms' response capabilities. Governor Walz activated the National Guard's cybersecurity forces to assist in investigation and service restoration, ensuring the continuity of essential city services. This incident highlights the cybersecurity risks facing municipal infrastructure and the challenges of responding to large-scale cyberattacks.

(www.bleepingcomputer.com)

Tech National Guard

LOPSA Announces Dissolution, Transitioning Members to ACM

2025-06-16

The LOPSA Board has announced the dissolution of the organization due to its inability to consistently provide professional opportunities in recent years. To ensure a smooth transition for its members, LOPSA is working with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to provide ACM memberships to current, paid members in good standing. The specific membership level will depend on available funds. An AMA session will be held on July 29th to address member questions.

(lopsa.org)

Misc organization dissolution member transition

Syd: A Robust Rust-Based Linux Sandbox Kernel

2025-02-12

Syd is a GPL-3 licensed, rock-solid application kernel written in Rust for sandboxing applications on Linux systems (5.19 and above). Evolving from a tool for detecting package build errors in Exherbo Linux, Syd now provides a robust security boundary. Leveraging modern Linux APIs, it eliminates TOCTTOU vulnerabilities. Unlike other sandboxing tools, Syd operates without extra privileges, offering a simple interface to complex sandboxing mechanisms. Features include path sandboxing, execution control, network sandboxing, and advanced features like lock and proxy sandboxing. It's designed for strong application isolation and security.

(fosdem.org)

Development Linux sandbox

Hatchet: A Robust Background Task Platform Built on Postgres

2025-04-03

Hatchet: A Robust Background Task Platform Built on Postgres

Hatchet simplifies background task management by leveraging Postgres. Forget complex queues and pub/sub systems; Hatchet lets you distribute functions across workers with minimal configuration. It boasts features like complex workflow chaining (DAGs), failure alerting, durable tasks, and a real-time web dashboard. Robust flow control, including concurrency and rate limiting, ensures application stability. Hatchet supports Python, Typescript, and Go, and offers cloud and self-hosted options.

(github.com)

Development background tasks

SpiceNice: An Open-Source Culinary Spice Database Launches

2024-12-17

SpiceNice: An Open-Source Culinary Spice Database Launches

SpiceNice is a new open-source website offering a comprehensive database of culinary spices. It provides detailed information on each spice, including its botanical name, culinary uses, and origin, along with details about the corresponding plant. Built using Strapi (backend), PostgreSQL (database), and Astro (frontend), SpiceNice aims to become a central resource for cooks, biologists, farmers, and spice enthusiasts. Future plans include a web API, multilingual support, and a community forum.

(tderflinger.com)

Development spices

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