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Gentoo's Ingenious Solution to Perl Versioning Chaos

2025-07-21

Gentoo's Perl package versions don't directly match upstream versions due to Perl's inconsistent versioning schemes. Upstream uses two incompatible methods: treating versions as floating points (making 1.1 and 1.10 equal) and using 'v' prefixes or multiple dots. Gentoo elegantly solves this with the `Gentoo::PerlMod::Version` module, which translates upstream versions into a consistent scheme, preserving sorting order and avoiding conflicts. The module converts floating-point versions into a 'v'-like format before comparison, ensuring compatibility while preventing version collisions and maintaining correspondence with upstream.

(wiki.gentoo.org)

Development Versioning

AI Takes Flight: Saab's Gripen E Successfully Integrates Helsing's Centaur AI

2025-06-14

AI Takes Flight: Saab's Gripen E Successfully Integrates Helsing's Centaur AI

Saab, in collaboration with Helsing, announced the successful completion of three test flights integrating Helsing's AI agent, Centaur, into a Gripen E fighter jet. These flights, part of Saab's 'Project Beyond', demonstrate a significant leap in bringing AI capabilities to military aircraft. Centaur autonomously executed complex maneuvers in a Beyond Visual Range (BVR) combat environment and cued the pilot to fire. The project, funded by the Swedish Defence Material Administration (FMV), is a key component of Sweden's Future Fighter Systems concept program.

(www.saab.com)

Tech Fighter Jet

Revolutionary Rechargeable-Free Nuclear Battery Developed

2025-07-17

Revolutionary Rechargeable-Free Nuclear Battery Developed

Researchers at South Korea's DGIST have developed a groundbreaking perovskite betavoltaic cell (PBC) powered by carbon-14, offering decades of power without recharging. By improving electron mobility and energy conversion efficiency through the use of perovskite materials and carbon-14 nanoparticles, the team created a battery with potential applications in various small devices, from pacemakers to space probes.

(www.neowin.net)

Tech nuclear battery carbon-14

Artifact: AI-Powered Collaborative IDE for Hardware Engineers Secures $3.5M

2025-05-08

Artifact: AI-Powered Collaborative IDE for Hardware Engineers Secures $3.5M

Artifact is a collaborative IDE for hardware engineers, accelerating every step of the engineering lifecycle: design, procurement, manufacturing, integration, test, and sustainment. The company raised $3.5M to build an integrated, verifiable AI copilot with an intuitive UI reflecting how hardware is actually built. Every artifact is auto-generated and traceable to a single source of truth. Artifact aims to make hardware engineering rigorous, deliberate, and system-aware, working directly with customers solving complex technical problems.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Hardware Hardware Engineering Collaborative IDE

Tetris in PostScript: A Real-time Game in Under 600 Lines

2025-02-22

Tetris in PostScript: A Real-time Game in Under 600 Lines

A developer has implemented a real-time Tetris game using PostScript, remarkably achieving it with only 600 lines of code (around 10KB) and 69 distinct operators. The game features arrow and spacebar controls, increasing game speed, 7 tetrominoes, high scores, and a Nintendo-style scoring system. It runs in GhostView on macOS and draws some implementation inspiration from MeatFighter.

(github.com)

Game Real-time game

Libya on Screen: Distorted Visions and a Call for Authentic Storytelling

2025-08-25

Libya on Screen: Distorted Visions and a Call for Authentic Storytelling

This personal essay recounts a Libyan author's journey from childhood piracy of Hollywood films to a critical reflection on Libya's distorted portrayal in Western cinema. From the depiction of Libyans as terrorists in 'Back to the Future' to other films' misrepresentations of Libyan history and culture, the author expresses disappointment with how Libya is portrayed. The essay also reflects on the shortcomings of Libya's own film industry and the Libyan people's love for global cinema alongside their unfamiliarity with their own rich culture. It concludes with a call for Libyan filmmakers to create authentic stories that resonate with Libyans and showcase the country's diverse narratives to the world.

(newlinesmag.com)

Misc Libyan Cinema

Accidental Discovery: Nanomaterial Harvests Water from Air Without External Energy

2025-05-26

Accidental Discovery: Nanomaterial Harvests Water from Air Without External Energy

A serendipitous observation in a Penn Engineering lab has led to the discovery of a new class of nanostructured materials that can extract water from the air, collect it in pores, and release it onto surfaces without needing external energy. This material, a blend of hydrophilic nanopores and hydrophobic polymers, uses capillary condensation to capture moisture from the air, even at low humidity, and expels it as droplets. The discovery holds promise for passive water harvesting in arid regions and for cooling electronics or buildings using evaporative cooling.

(blog.seas.upenn.edu)

Tech water harvesting passive cooling

Microsoft Tests 45% M365 Price Hike in Asia, Citing AI Features

2025-01-13

Microsoft Tests 45% M365 Price Hike in Asia, Citing AI Features

Microsoft is testing a 45 percent price increase for its M365 suite in six Asian countries, claiming the hike is necessary to ensure customers have early access to powerful AI features. The move has sparked outrage among subscribers, with many accusing Microsoft of price gouging, especially in regions with high living costs. While Microsoft says users can opt for a cheaper plan without AI features like Copilot, finding this option proves difficult. This test may foreshadow global M365 price adjustments, reflecting Microsoft's massive investment in AI.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

Design Pressure: The Invisible Hand Shaping Your Code

2025-05-25

Design Pressure: The Invisible Hand Shaping Your Code

Ever feel that gut feeling something's wrong in your code but can't pinpoint it? Hynek Schlawack's PyCon US 2025 talk explores 'design pressure,' the invisible force shaping your architecture. He delves into topics like coupling types, attractive nuisances in software design, and type-driven design, highlighting trade-offs in data mapping and typestate patterns. The talk also critically examines the impact of ORMs and async primitives on code complexity.

(hynek.me)

Development code architecture

Out of Eden Walk: Hospitality and the Human Spirit

2025-06-26

Out of Eden Walk: Hospitality and the Human Spirit

National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek's 12-year journey retracing human migration offers a profound look at hospitality across cultures. A chance encounter with an 84-year-old woman, Yoshiko, running a traditional guesthouse in Japan, highlights the warmth and compassion exceeding simple transactions. Yoshiko's life story and the guesthouse's history reveal the depth of Japanese hospitality and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of hardship. Salopek's journey is not just geographical; it's a testament to human connection, revealing the overwhelming kindness and generosity found across the globe.

(theworld.org)

Misc Exploration Humanity

Getty Images and Shutterstock Merge to Create Visual Content Giant

2025-01-07

Getty Images and Shutterstock Merge to Create Visual Content Giant

Getty Images and Shutterstock announced a merger of equals, creating a leading visual content company with an enterprise value of approximately $3.7 billion. The combined entity will offer a significantly expanded library of still images, videos, music, 3D models, and other assets. The merger promises increased investment in content creation, event coverage, and technological innovation, including generative AI. Significant cost synergies are projected, reaching $150-$200 million annually within three years, boosting earnings and cash flow from year two. This strategic move positions the new company to better meet the growing demand for visual content and compete effectively in a dynamic market.

(newsroom.gettyimages.com)

Tech Merger

Pontevedra, Spain: A Pedestrian-First City Model That Works

2025-09-10

Pontevedra, Spain: A Pedestrian-First City Model That Works

Pontevedra, a city in Spain, has successfully tackled air pollution, traffic accidents, and loss of public space by prioritizing pedestrians over cars. Mayor Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores's administration implemented policies reducing traffic, expanding pedestrian and cycling areas, and imposing speed limits. The result? Improved air quality, decreased carbon emissions, and a higher quality of life for residents. Pontevedra's success offers a compelling model for other cities seeking sustainable and people-centered urban planning.

(www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu)

Tech traffic management

Baby's First Type Checker: A 350-Line Python Adventure

2025-09-06

Baby's First Type Checker: A 350-Line Python Adventure

This article details the creation of a basic type checker for Python in just 350 lines of code. The author walks through the process, from parsing Python code and finding type annotations to checking type compatibility, handling function calls and return types, supporting lists, dictionaries, and union types, and implementing type narrowing. While limited in scope, the resulting type checker successfully catches several type errors in real-world Python code, providing a clear and accessible example of how type checkers work.

(austinhenley.com)

Development type checker

School Smartphone Ban Improves Sleep and Mood

2024-12-15

School Smartphone Ban Improves Sleep and Mood

A three-week school smartphone ban experiment at the University of York showed significant improvements in students' sleep and mood. Students fell asleep 20 minutes faster on average, gained an hour of sleep nightly, and reported 17% less depression and 18% less anxiety. While cognitive improvements were modest, researchers suggest longer-term bans may yield greater benefits, informing policy decisions regarding smartphone use among young people.

(www.york.ac.uk)

Misc smartphone ban sleep mood

qrkey: Command-line Tool for Offline Private Key Backup with QR Codes

2025-06-13

qrkey: Command-line Tool for Offline Private Key Backup with QR Codes

qrkey is a command-line tool for generating and recovering QR codes from files for offline private key backup. It handles large files by splitting them into multiple QR codes and includes metadata for easy recovery and validation. Install via Homebrew (macOS), Docker, or see releases for other systems. Generate: `qrkey generate --in --out file.pdf`; Recover: `qrkey recover --in `.

(github.com)

Development private key backup

Deep Dive into the SQLite Database File Format

2025-09-07

This document details the on-disk database file format used by all SQLite releases since version 3.0.0. SQLite databases typically reside in a single file, the "main database file," containing the database state. Additional files, rollback journals or WAL files, aid in recovery to a consistent state. This document focuses on the main database file, covering page size and types, B-tree pages, freelists, and record format. Rollback journals and WAL file formats are also briefly described.

(www.sqlite.org)

Development

The X-COM Creator's Journey: From BASIC to Phoenix Point

2025-09-07

The X-COM Creator's Journey: From BASIC to Phoenix Point

This article chronicles the legendary career of strategy game maestro Julian Gollop, from his early BASIC creations like Rebelstar Raiders to the career-defining X-COM and the ongoing Phoenix Point. Gollop consistently refined his signature turn-based squad tactics, incorporating innovations such as AI and illusionary gameplay in Chaos: The Battle of Wizards, and hidden enemies and opportunity fire in Laser Squad. His story showcases not only the evolution of game technology but also the unwavering dedication of an independent game developer to his craft.

(www.pcgamer.com)

Game

Salesforce Aims to Dominate the Digital Labor Market with AI Agents

2025-03-01

Salesforce Aims to Dominate the Digital Labor Market with AI Agents

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff declared their ambition to become the world's leading provider of digital labor, leveraging AI agents to handle tasks like scheduling meetings, executing trades, and even coding. Unlike chatbots, these proactive AI agents require minimal human oversight. Salesforce's Agentforce, launched last year, allows companies to delegate responsibilities such as customer case handling and marketing campaigns to these AI agents. Benioff highlighted that nearly half of Fortune 100 companies utilize Salesforce's AI and Data Cloud products.

(sfstandard.com)

AI digital labor

Waymo's Autonomous Vehicles Outperform Human Drivers in Safety

2024-12-20

Analyzing 25.3 million autonomous miles of Waymo's data, using third-party auto liability insurance claims, a study reveals that Waymo's Automated Driving System (ADS) significantly outperforms both the general driving population and a benchmark of latest-generation human-driven vehicles (2018-2021 models). The ADS showed an 88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims compared to the general population, and an 86% and 90% reduction respectively compared to the latest-generation HDV benchmark. This validates ADS safety at scale and provides a new methodology for ongoing evaluation, impacting transportation safety policies, insurance risk assessments, and public acceptance of autonomous vehicles.

(waymo.com)

AI Autonomous Vehicles Safety Performance

Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean: An Open Source Project

2025-08-03

Formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem in Lean: An Open Source Project

An ambitious open-source project aims to formally prove Fermat's Last Theorem using the Lean theorem prover. Led by Kevin Buzzard and funded by the EPSRC, hosted at Imperial College London, the project employs a modern variant of the original Wiles/Taylor-Wiles proof, planned in collaboration with Richard Taylor. The project website provides details on Fermat's Last Theorem, the Lean prover, project goals, and contribution guidelines.

(github.com)

Development

Escaping the Nightmare of Pasted Text: WYSINWLB

2025-06-19

The author encountered the frustrating task of manually untangling nested `` and `

` tags from pasted content. The formatting was a mess, machine-generated for appearance rather than semantic correctness, rendering the text nearly uneditable. The author argues this poor editing experience would cause average users to give up, coining the term "WYSINWLB: What You See Is Not What Lies Beneath" to highlight the problem of pasted text's deceptive simplicity.

(ratfactor.com)

Development text editing

Google Kills Individual Storage in Free G Suite Accounts

2025-03-18

Google Kills Individual Storage in Free G Suite Accounts

Google is ending individual storage allowances for its legacy free G Suite accounts, switching to pooled storage shared across all users starting May 1st. This affects users who've kept their accounts since Google stopped offering them in 2012. While the total storage remains the same, users needing more will have to pay, though Google promises a discount. Admins can set individual user limits to prevent hoarding. This change, initially announced in 2022 and then reversed, simplifies storage management but adds extra work for admins preferring the old system. It benefits groups wanting to share unused storage.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Storage

The Protester's Guide to Smartphone Security: Stay Safe, Stay Connected

2025-01-26

The Protester's Guide to Smartphone Security: Stay Safe, Stay Connected

This comprehensive guide provides crucial information on securing your smartphone during protests. It covers essential steps like setting strong passcodes, disabling biometric authentication, hiding notifications, and disabling lock screen actions to prevent data theft and misuse by authorities. The guide recommends using secure messaging apps like Signal, regularly backing up data, and employing additional pre- and post-protest measures such as keeping your device locked, utilizing backup communication networks, and scrubbing photo metadata. The article stresses the importance of understanding your rights and minimizing risks of surveillance.

(www.privacyguides.org)

Tech smartphone security protest safety

The Rediscovered Sumerian Game: A Lost Chapter in Gaming History

2025-07-21

The Rediscovered Sumerian Game: A Lost Chapter in Gaming History

This article recounts the fascinating story of The Sumerian Game, a pioneering strategy game from 1964. Played on mainframe computers via printer terminals, the game tasked players with managing grain resources as a Sumerian king. Despite its limited reach at the time, it's considered a progenitor of modern strategy games, particularly city-building and empire management titles. Decades later, game historian Andrea Contato painstakingly reconstructed this lost classic using surviving printouts and documents, releasing a free version on Steam, bringing a forgotten piece of gaming history back to life.

(spillhistorie.no)

Game strategy games game recreation

Exa: Building the Next-Gen AI Chips - Join the Founding Team!

2025-02-21

Exa: Building the Next-Gen AI Chips - Join the Founding Team!

Exa is building the next generation of AI chips, aiming to surpass current market leaders. Their novel polymorphic XPU chips self-reconfigure for optimal dataflow, supporting AGI and ASI while drastically reducing energy consumption. They're seeking exceptional engineers to join their founding team and build revolutionary technology with lasting impact for centuries.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Hardware Job Opportunity

Scottish Tidal Turbine Achieves 6.5-Year Uninterrupted Operation

2025-07-11

Scottish Tidal Turbine Achieves 6.5-Year Uninterrupted Operation

A tidal turbine submerged 40 meters off the Scottish coast has achieved a remarkable 6.5 years of continuous operation, showcasing the technology's commercial viability. This record, set by one turbine at the MeyGen project, significantly boosts investor confidence and paves the way for larger-scale tidal energy farms. The four 1.5-megawatt turbines at MeyGen currently power up to 7,000 homes annually. While still in its early stages, the project demonstrates the immense potential of tidal energy as a clean and sustainable resource. Overcoming challenges like regulatory hurdles and environmental concerns remains crucial for wider adoption, but this milestone addresses key durability questions that previously hindered investment and development.

(apnews.com)

Tech tidal energy Scotland

2025 Task Runner Census: GitHub Actions Reigns Supreme, Make Endures

2025-07-17

2025 Task Runner Census: GitHub Actions Reigns Supreme, Make Endures

A 2025 census of task runners on GitHub reveals GitHub Actions dominating the CI/CD landscape, while the venerable Make utility remains surprisingly prevalent. Emerging package managers like uv (Python) and pnpm (JavaScript) are also gaining traction in new repositories. Analyzing the top 100,000 starred repos, the study found GitHub Actions in nearly 40% of repositories, with Make holding a strong 19%. In the JavaScript ecosystem, npm leads but pnpm is rising; for Python, uv offers a significantly improved task management experience.

(aleyan.com)

Development Task Runners Package Managers

Real-time Hand Gesture & Voice Control for 3D Models

2025-06-03

Real-time Hand Gesture & Voice Control for 3D Models

Control 3D models in real-time using only your hands and voice! This interactive web app leverages three.js, MediaPipe computer vision, the Web Speech API, and Rosebud AI. You can drag, rotate, scale, and animate models, and import your own GLTF models by drag-and-drop. All you need is a modern WebGL-enabled browser, camera and microphone access. Clone the repo and experience the magic!

(github.com)

Development

Brazilian Court Orders Apple to Allow Alternative App Stores on iOS

2025-03-07

Brazilian Court Orders Apple to Allow Alternative App Stores on iOS

A Brazilian court has ordered Apple to allow alternative app stores on iOS within 90 days. The ruling stems from a 2022 complaint filed by Mercado Livre. While Apple argues this compromises user privacy and security and plans to appeal, the court deemed that similar compliance in other countries hasn't caused significant harm. This echoes the EU's Digital Markets Act, signifying growing global pressure on Apple to open its closed ecosystem.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Taming the C++ UB Dragon: A Status Update on Safety and Security Improvements

2025-03-31

Taming the C++ UB Dragon: A Status Update on Safety and Security Improvements

C++'s undefined behavior (UB) has long been a source of security vulnerabilities and hard-to-debug errors. The C++ standards committee is actively working to address this, making progress in C++26 by eliminating UB for uninitialized variables and enhancing the standard library's bounds safety. Future efforts will systematically catalog and address remaining UB cases using erroneous behavior, language profiles, and contracts. The goal is to achieve parity with other modern memory-safe languages in terms of security vulnerabilities, without sacrificing C++'s performance or flexibility.

(herbsutter.com)

Development

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