Poland, a key US ally, is furious over US restrictions on the export of AI chips. This move threatens Poland's ambitious military expansion and technological development. The Polish government considers the decision incomprehensible and is seeking redress from both the US and the EU to protect its technological and defense interests.
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Imagine a spreadsheet where a single cell can hold multiple values simultaneously. That's the core idea behind Ambsheets, a project extending traditional spreadsheets to handle 'amb values'—values representing multiple possibilities. This allows users to easily explore various scenarios, like budgeting for different car and apartment prices, without tedious restructuring. Unlike Excel's What-If Analysis, Ambsheets offers a cleaner interface and powerful automatic combination capabilities, efficiently managing multi-dimensional possibility spaces. Researchers are currently exploring Ambsheets' applications in filtering, visualization, and continuous distributions, aiming to develop it into a more powerful scenario exploration tool.
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Type, an AI-native document editor backed by Y Combinator, is looking for a product-minded senior software engineer to join its small team in Brooklyn. The ideal candidate will have extensive experience building complex web applications, be proficient in React and TypeScript, and possess strong product intuition. Responsibilities include building advanced rich text editing features, collaborative editing capabilities, and LLM-based writing and editing tools. Competitive salary, stock options, and comprehensive benefits are offered.
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This article explores the pervasive issue of complexity in software development. Using the metaphor of pyramids, the author likens complex software systems to impressive but ultimately empty structures, expensive to maintain and lacking substance. From a marketing perspective, complexity is often presented as a high-status symbol, but ultimately simplicity and efficiency reign supreme. The article analyzes various factors contributing to complexity, including the allure of creativity, legacy systems, team dynamics, and the pressure to innovate. It urges developers to strike a balance between simplicity and practicality, avoiding over-engineering and building truly valuable software.
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Engineer reputation at large tech companies isn't solely about technical skill; it's a gradual process. Starting with low-level tasks, engineers build trust and gain access to higher-profile projects through consistent success. This "ratchet effect" makes reputation slow to change. Even mistakes can be overcome with continued delivery. However, repeated failures lead to a downward spiral. The author advises new hires to focus on smaller projects to build a solid reputation, avoiding risky attempts to jump to high-profile work immediately.
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Doctor Droid is building a smart assistant to help engineering teams quickly resolve production incidents. This open-source platform, used globally, aims to reduce downtime and boost developer productivity. Their vision is to empower any team member to debug common production issues without needing senior engineers. Backed by Accel and a Y Combinator W23 graduate, Doctor Droid is looking for passionate developers to join their team.
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Forget cute focus apps; this one's brutal. There's no start button – the only way to use it is to put your phone away. Pick it up, and a deafening siren will sound, erasing all progress. It's a paid app, no free features, and the developers argue that if you can't afford it, you're not their target audience. This app is designed to be the hardest and most effective, a defense system against the attention-grabbing economy, forcing discipline through harsh penalties for distraction.
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HyperEssays is a project dedicated to creating a modern and accessible online edition of Michel de Montaigne's Essays. The website hosts four editions of the Essays, including the original French, early modern English translations, and a modern English translation, which are continuously updated and improved. The project aims to provide readers with a convenient reading experience and rich interpretive resources, including annotations, indexes, and downloadable PDFs.
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This primer provides a concise overview of the US equity trading landscape. Initially created as an onboarding document for new hires, it covers the lifecycle of an order, market participants, communication mechanisms between them, and a high-level view of overall market activity. The guide can be read sequentially or selectively, with a visual representation of the order lifecycle offering a clear picture of the process. Even with limited prior knowledge, the sections on market participants, communication, and overall market activity provide a functional understanding of US equities trading. Future updates will delve deeper into market structure history and inherent conflicts of interest.
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EZ-TRAK is an open-source satellite tracking suite designed for amateur radio operators, weather satellite enthusiasts, and educational purposes. It uses a portable satellite dish antenna and a BLE device to track satellites in real-time, providing azimuth and elevation data for optimal antenna positioning. Features include a graphical user interface, pass prediction, data recording, and support for multiple data sources. Detailed setup and usage instructions are provided.
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This essay by Edsger W. Dijkstra explores the nature of computing science. Dijkstra argues that computing science should be a highly formalized branch of mathematics, emphasizing methodology over factual knowledge, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice. He criticizes the current academic world's pursuit of complexity and the resulting neglect of simple and effective solutions, and calls on computer scientists to pursue elegant solutions and find joy in the process.
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This article explores moving objects in 3D space, specifically along a spherical helix path. Starting with simple circular motion, the author explains how sine and cosine functions can control an object's x, y, and z coordinates to create spirals and more complex trajectories. The core concept is using parametric equations, defining the object's 3D position as a function of time. What appears as complex dynamic effects are ultimately derived from simple mathematical functions.
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Benchi is a minimal benchmarking framework leveraging Docker to create isolated environments for measuring application and infrastructure performance. It simplifies the benchmark setup and execution process, supporting Docker Compose for environment definition, CSV metric export, custom hooks, and real-time monitoring of container statuses and metrics. Installation is flexible, offering Go and shell script options. Detailed configuration and usage examples cover metric collectors, test step definition, and Docker Compose integration, streamlining performance testing and analysis.
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The author and his wife switched from Matrix to XMPP (using Snikket) for all their calls and chats, with remarkable success. While Matrix suffered from unreliable audio and video, Snikket provided reliable voice and video calls, seamless messaging, and photo sharing, even with frequent network changes. The author's wife, a typical end-user, found it easy to use. The only drawback is Snikket's lack of multi-domain support, limiting communication with other XMPP users.
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The Misty programming language, developed by Douglas Crockford, aims for conciseness and efficiency. It features a unique type system, operators, statements, functions, pattern matching, and intrinsic constants and functions. Misty prioritizes performance with built-in support for math, Blob, JSON, Parseq, and system security. Its parse tree structure and unique Wota message format are also noteworthy aspects.
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arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved share arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners who adhere to them. Got an idea for a project that will benefit the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
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This article details the author's journey in debugging the "Lake" effect from the Area5150 demo within their IBM 5150 emulator, MartyPC, using a bus sniffer and decoder. Initially, the author confesses to using title-specific hacks to emulate the "Wibble" and "Lake" effects. However, by delving into the intricacies of the IBM CGA, particularly its lack of a vsync interrupt, the author overcame the challenges. The article thoroughly explains how dynamic clocking, scanline polling, and a custom vsync interrupt were leveraged to perfectly emulate the "Lake" effect. It shares various problems and solutions encountered during debugging, including precise modeling of CGA registers, timer interrupts, and DMA logic. Ultimately, MartyPC successfully runs the "Lake" effect hack-free, showcasing the brilliance of emulation technology and a passion for retro computing.
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Richard Palethorpe, an engineer, created a demo using the GFXPrim library showcasing a one-dimensional binary cellular automaton and its reversible counterpart. The automaton evolves based on rules where each cell's state is determined by its own state and those of its left and right neighbors. The article details bitwise operation optimizations, such as parallel processing of multiple cells using 64-bit integers and bit rotation to simulate neighbor interaction. Reversible implementation is achieved by XORing with the previous state. The author explores compiler optimization and vectorization impacts on performance and ultimately implements an efficient rendering method.
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This article explores the challenges of using homomorphic encryption to protect private data in local-first software. While homomorphic encryption allows computation without decryption, it introduces significant performance and storage overheads. The author demonstrates the practical limitations of homomorphic encryption on CRDTs by building a homomorphically encrypted 'last-write-wins' register CRDT. The article highlights how homomorphic encryption requires operations under worst-case input assumptions, drastically increasing space and time complexity. Ultimately, the author concludes that securing local-first apps without severely degrading usability remains an open problem.
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President Trump's proposed 2026 budget includes a $491 million (17%) cut to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), framing it as a purge of the so-called "censorship industrial complex." The White House accuses CISA of prioritizing combating misinformation over protecting critical systems. While CISA faces significant cuts, the overall Department of Homeland Security budget receives a substantial boost for increased deportations and border wall construction. The TSA and FEMA also face budget reductions. This proposal, however, requires Congressional approval and is expected to face strong opposition.
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Frustrated with Apple Music's limitations and subscription model, a developer built their own iOS music player from scratch. The player boasts local file playback, iCloud sync, and full-text search, cleverly leveraging SQLite's FTS5 for efficient fuzzy search. The development journey saw a shift from React Native to SwiftUI, employing a backend-like architecture for streamlined data flow and concurrency. While the final product fulfills the developer's needs, the experience highlights Apple's restrictive developer tools and app distribution policies, hindering personal app development in stark contrast to the ease of software creation in the AI era.
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A software engineer with 15 years of experience built two web-based card games based on Argentinian card games in his spare time: one in 3 months, the other in 3 days. The first, Truco, was built entirely by hand using Go for the backend and React for the frontend. The second, Escoba, leveraged the power of LLMs (Claude) to drastically reduce development time for the backend. The author details the process using Go, WASM, and React, providing a minimal Tic-Tac-Toe game as a starting point to encourage others to try game development.
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Researchers at the University of Oulu's SensorFu team have developed a novel network security defense system inspired by the LaBrea tarpit technique. The system intercepts ARP requests and delays SYN-ACK responses, creating a multitude of virtual devices on the network to confuse intruders. This forces attackers to waste significant time identifying real devices, providing administrators with crucial time to patch vulnerabilities. Tests showed the system extends scan times to hours, drastically reducing attack success rates. Lightweight, efficient, and easy to deploy, this system offers robust network protection for organizations of all sizes.
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The author expresses frustration with AI coding tools after trying them out. Blog posts and news articles often hype AI's ability to automatically write code and even build entire libraries, but the author's experience is drastically different. While the author finds AI tools helpful for simple tasks like completing sentences or finding type annotations, complex problems result in useless or buggy code, often introducing new bugs. The author likens this to a cool-looking but fragile 'paper hammer' incapable of real work. This leads to a reflection on the discrepancy between the perceived usefulness of AI tools and the author's own negative experience. This falls under the Development category.
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The classic Unix desktop environment, CDE (Common Desktop Environment), is making a comeback! OpenBSD developers have imported CDE 2.5.2 into their ports collection. While not yet directly installable as a package (it needs some fixes and improvements), nostalgic developers can compile it locally and experience the classic Unix desktop. A warning: the code is old and insecure, not recommended as a daily driver, but fun for a trip down memory lane.
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Utrecht, Netherlands, has installed a 'fish doorbell' – a live stream showing fish attempting to migrate through a city lock. Viewers can click a button to alert authorities when fish are spotted, prompting them to open the lock and aid the fish's journey to their spawning grounds. This unique blend of slow TV and ecological activism has garnered millions of viewers worldwide, proving a simple idea can make a big difference in conservation efforts.
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This article reviews major advances in the algebraic theory of quadratic forms over the last four decades, focusing on how the introduction of algebro-geometric methods revolutionized the field. Tracing the concept's origins from early work in ancient Babylon and Greece to landmark theorems by Fermat and Lagrange, it highlights the solution of the Milnor conjectures and novel approaches to studying quadratic forms using algebro-geometric tools such as quadric hypersurfaces and algebraic cycles. The article also explores field invariants associated with quadratic forms (the u-invariant and Pythagoras numbers), and discusses open questions concerning dimensions and splitting patterns of quadratic forms.
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This blog post discusses best practices for storing event times on event websites. The author argues that directly storing UTC time loses crucial information, such as the user's original intent and location. A better approach is to store the user's intended time and the event location, then derive the UTC time. Examples like user error, international timezone adjustments, and the 2007 Microsoft Exchange DST update illustrate the importance of storing the user's intended time. The author recommends designing a clear and user-friendly interface to help users accurately set event times and locations, emphasizing the importance of maintaining the user's original intent to avoid errors caused by timezone changes.
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New research from Purdue University reveals that using scented products indoors significantly alters air chemistry, producing air pollution comparable to car exhaust. Using a miniature 'tiny house lab,' researchers measured nanoparticles released by flameless candles, finding alarmingly high concentrations capable of reaching deep into the lungs and posing respiratory health risks. These nanoparticles reached levels comparable to those emitted by traditional candles, gas stoves, and even vehicle exhaust, with billions of particles deposited in the respiratory tract per minute. The study underscores the importance of indoor air quality and suggests considering these factors in building design and ventilation systems to mitigate health risks.
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Analyzing the Science Museum Group's open photographic dataset revealed unique items within their collection. Using computer vision techniques, researchers identified individual objects with distinctive appearances based on their distance to their five nearest neighbors. These included vintage appliances, Art Deco objects, and Kinora viewers. The analysis also highlighted trends in the colors and shapes of museum objects over time, and unexpected connections like recycled Nike shoes forming artificial turf and cullet (broken glass) used in glassmaking. This study emphasizes the value of analyzing online museum collections and the potential of computer vision in uncovering and appreciating unique artifacts.
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