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1929 Enters the Public Domain: Mickey Mouse, Gatsby, and More

2025-01-01

On January 1st, 2025, a wealth of works published in 1929 and sound recordings from 1924 entered the public domain! This includes early Mickey Mouse cartoons, Gershwin's 'An American in Paris', Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms', Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury', and many other culturally significant works. The Internet Archive is celebrating with Public Domain Day events and a film remix contest.

(blog.archive.org)

Misc

Venezuela Fines TikTok $10 Million Over Deadly Challenges

2025-01-01

Venezuela Fines TikTok $10 Million Over Deadly Challenges

Venezuela's Supreme Court fined TikTok $10 million for failing to prevent viral video challenges that allegedly led to the deaths of three Venezuelan children. The court cited negligence and ordered TikTok to establish a local office to oversee content and comply with Venezuelan laws. This highlights Venezuela's strict online content regulations and growing concerns over social media platform accountability.

(apnews.com)

Tech Venezuela Online Regulation

Trump's Tax Plan Unexpectedly Reshapes the Creator Economy

2025-09-11

Trump's Tax Plan Unexpectedly Reshapes the Creator Economy

A provision in President Trump's tax plan has inadvertently reshaped the creator economy. The US Treasury Department now allows digital content creators (podcasters, social media influencers, streamers, etc.) to deduct tip income up to a certain limit. This could significantly alter how creators generate revenue, potentially leading platforms to more prominently feature tipping options. The policy reflects the rise of the creator economy and may incentivize more individuals to join the content creation field.

(www.hollywoodreporter.com)

Startup digital content creators

Physics Uncovers Critical Tipping Points in Chess Matches

2025-01-24

Physics Uncovers Critical Tipping Points in Chess Matches

Physicist Marc Barthelemy analyzed over 20,000 top-level chess games using interaction graphs to reveal crucial tipping points. Treating chess as a complex system, he measured the 'betweenness centrality' and 'fragility scores' of chess pieces to predict game outcomes. The fragility score of key pieces rises about eight moves before a critical turning point and remains high for approximately 15 moves afterward, revealing a universal pattern across players and openings. This research offers fresh insights into the complex dynamics of chess and provides new avenues for AI and machine learning.

(arstechnica.com)

AI

Google Cloud's Massive API Outage: A Null Pointer Exception's Ripple Effect

2025-06-14

On June 12th, Google Cloud and Google Workspace products suffered a widespread outage due to a surge of 503 errors in external API requests. The root cause was a new feature in the Service Control system lacking proper error handling and feature flag protection, leading to a null pointer exception that triggered a cascading failure. A policy change containing invalid fields activated this flaw, resulting in a global service disruption. Google swiftly mitigated the issue, but some regions (like us-central-1) experienced prolonged recovery due to infrastructure overload. The incident highlighted issues in Google's error handling, feature flag usage, system architecture modularity, and monitoring and communication, prompting a commitment to implement comprehensive improvements to prevent recurrence.

(status.cloud.google.com)

Tech API Outage Service Disruption

Extreme Server-Side Rendering (XSSR): A Flappy Bird Case Study

2025-02-23

This article introduces Extreme Server-Side Rendering (XSSR), a technique that renders dynamic web pages without JavaScript by dynamically generating HTML on the server and continuously streaming updates to the client. The author demonstrates XSSR using a Flappy Bird game, discussing its performance, bandwidth implications, and potential for Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks. XSSR performs well in low-latency environments but suffers from lag in high-latency scenarios. The technology holds promise for running modern web pages on older devices or browsers without JavaScript support.

(www.scd31.com)

Development No JavaScript

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.

(shkspr.mobi)

AI technological predictions

Beware of Over-Abstraction: The Hidden Costs in Software Development

2024-12-28

Beware of Over-Abstraction: The Hidden Costs in Software Development

Overuse of abstraction layers in software development can lead to performance degradation and code complexity. The article argues that good abstractions should hide underlying complexity, such as the TCP protocol. However, many so-called abstractions merely add extra layers of indirection without providing real value, increasing cognitive load, debugging difficulty, and performance overhead. The author advises developers to use abstractions judiciously, prioritizing code simplicity and performance, and avoiding abstraction for abstraction's sake.

(fhur.me)

Development abstraction

Lean 4.22: A New Verification Infrastructure for Imperative Programs

2025-07-07

Lean 4.22 introduces an exciting new feature: a new verification infrastructure for proving properties of imperative programs. The post uses a simple example—determining if a list contains two integers that sum to zero—to demonstrate the feature's use and compares it to similar tools like Dafny and Verus. The new framework, Std.Do, leverages Hoare triples and combines the `mvcgen` and `grind` tactics to greatly simplify the verification process for imperative programs, even those with complex control flow like loops and early returns. Unlike automated systems relying on external SMT solvers, Lean's interactive proving approach offers greater reliability, easier debugging, and better maintainability, making it a compelling choice for real-world program verification tasks.

(markushimmel.de)

Development Program Verification Imperative Programming

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

The 5 Stages of SaaS Grief in the Age of AI

2025-08-10

The 5 Stages of SaaS Grief in the Age of AI

This article outlines the five stages of SaaS companies' reactions to the disruptive wave of AI: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Many initially deny AI's threat, then become angry as competitors leverage AI, followed by attempts to add AI features (bargaining), leading to depression, and finally accepting that AI will reshape the industry, shifting to building outcome-oriented, AI-native solutions. The author argues that SaaS companies need to move from focusing on "how can we help humans do this better?" to "why do humans need to do this at all?" to survive and thrive in the AI era.

(arnon.dk)

Startup

Y2K Scare: The Millennium Bug That Never Bit

2024-12-30

Y2K Scare: The Millennium Bug That Never Bit

In 1999, the Y2K problem, or millennium bug, sparked global panic. Older computer systems used only two digits to represent the year, leading to fears that at the turn of the millennium, systems would misinterpret '00' as 1900, causing widespread chaos. The Clinton administration called Y2K preparations 'the single largest technology management challenge in history.' Citizens stockpiled food, generators, and even weapons, fearing blackouts, medical equipment failures, and societal breakdown. Ultimately, the world transitioned to 2000 without major incident, highlighting the anxieties surrounding the unknown and the extensive preparations undertaken. The event served as a reminder of the interdependence of technology and societal stability.

(www.npr.org)

Tech Millennium Bug Doomsday Prophecy

Public Bathhouses: A Sustainable Future?

2024-12-22

Public Bathhouses: A Sustainable Future?

This article explores the sustainability of public bathhouses and their historical context. From ancient Roman bathhouses to modern shower rooms, public bathing has played different roles throughout history, fulfilling hygiene needs while also serving as social and recreational spaces. The article analyzes the high energy consumption of modern bathrooms and proposes public bathhouses as a more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly alternative. It also discusses different types of public bathhouses and how to design a low-carbon, environmentally friendly public bathhouse, such as using renewable energy sources like solar and geothermal energy. Ultimately, the article calls for a reconsideration of the value of public bathhouses and their potential as a sustainable solution to address today's environmental crisis.

(solar.lowtechmagazine.com)

Tech public bathhouses

Kalvad Ditches Ubuntu for Alpine and FreeBSD: A Deep Dive into OS Migration

2025-05-20

Kalvad Ditches Ubuntu for Alpine and FreeBSD: A Deep Dive into OS Migration

Kalvad recently underwent a significant server operating system migration, moving from Ubuntu to Alpine Linux and FreeBSD. This post details their rationale, including an in-depth evaluation of various OSes' performance, security, and resource efficiency. They chose Alpine Linux for stateless services and FreeBSD for those requiring high throughput and reliability, highlighting the advantages of ZFS, PF firewall, and pkg package manager. While challenges like software updates and tool compatibility arose, Kalvad found the benefits of FreeBSD and Alpine far outweighed the drawbacks, resulting in significantly improved system stability, efficiency, and security.

(blog.kalvad.com)

Development OS migration

DIY 30kW Dynamometer: Testing Electric Boat Gearboxes

2025-04-04

DIY 30kW Dynamometer: Testing Electric Boat Gearboxes

A mechanical engineer in the electric marine industry built a custom 30kW dynamometer to test marine transmissions he designs and builds. The dyno features torque measurement, water cooling, CAN bus integration, and a Python-based dashboard. The article details the build process, challenges encountered, and technical specifics, covering motor selection, sensor integration, data acquisition, and power supply. It also shares lessons learned in noise suppression and system integration.

(www.thriftybuilder.dev)

Hardware

Norwegian Lake Ice: A Cocktail Comeback After a Century

2025-02-18

Norwegian Lake Ice: A Cocktail Comeback After a Century

In the 19th century, American ice exports to the UK fueled a craze for chilled drinks. Now, Thomas Orderud in Norway is reviving this tradition, hand-harvesting ice from Hemnes Lake to create premium cocktail ice. He operates an 'ice farm' storing massive blocks and uses a robotic arm to sculpt various shapes. Orderud's lake ice is pure, rigorously tested, and an energy study shows it's more environmentally friendly and shippable than machine-made ice. While currently sold only in Norway, he hopes its unique story and high quality will propel it onto the international stage.

(vinepair.com)

Misc hand-harvested ice cocktails

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-05-06

arXivLabs is a framework for collaborators to build and share new arXiv features directly on the site. Individuals and organizations involved embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who share them. Have an idea to improve the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

NIST's Standard Reference Peanut Butter: It's Not What You Think

2025-01-27

NIST's Standard Reference Peanut Butter: It's Not What You Think

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) doesn't just develop high-tech products; it also creates standard reference materials, like peanut butter. Sounds odd, but NIST's peanut butter isn't for eating. It helps food manufacturers accurately label nutritional information, ensuring food safety and consistency. By testing NIST's peanut butter, manufacturers can calibrate their testing methods and equipment, guaranteeing accuracy on product labels. NIST offers many standard reference materials across various fields, from food to pharmaceuticals, contributing to safer and more reliable products for consumers.

(www.nist.gov)

Tech Standard Reference Material Food Safety

Optimizing ESP32 OLED Driver: Speed vs. Font Support

2025-04-14

Optimizing ESP32 OLED Driver: Speed vs. Font Support

The author experimented with several drivers for an SSD1306 OLED display on an ESP32, ultimately settling on a modified, deprecated driver. Initially, an Espressif driver was used, but it only supported a single font. Subsequent attempts with LVGL and U8G2 suffered from low refresh rates. The author returned to the deprecated driver, adapting its I2C API calls for compatibility with the latest ESP-IDF, achieving a 40Hz refresh rate. To add font support, the nvbdflib library was integrated, directly parsing BDF fonts and drawing to the framebuffer, resulting in high-speed refresh and custom font capabilities.

(subalpinecircuits.com)

Development

The Secret History of Wari Textiles: Looting and the Transformation of Andean Art

2025-02-14

The Secret History of Wari Textiles: Looting and the Transformation of Andean Art

Wari textiles represent some of the most remarkable examples of Andean fabric art. However, their study is hampered by unclear provenance, with many pieces entering global collections through illicit means. The lack of archaeological context makes it difficult to understand their original function and significance. Experts have documented instances of alteration, including cutting, cropping, and restitching, transforming these garments from multi-sensory ensembles worn on the body into flat art objects for Western consumption. This manipulation obscures their original cultural context and purpose.

(publicdomainreview.org)

Design Wari textiles Andean culture

Booting Erlang on 16MB: A GRiSP Nano Achievement

2025-07-22

Booting Erlang on 16MB: A GRiSP Nano Achievement

The GRiSP Nano team achieved a significant milestone by successfully booting an Erlang virtual machine on a 16MB STM32U5 microcontroller. Initially aiming for 32MB, a CPU erratum forced a reduction. Through a series of optimizations, including removing the crypto library, aggressive compile/link flags, stripping BEAM files, RTEMS system tweaks, and allocator surgery, they overcame memory constraints. Disabling Unicode temporarily allowed them to reach the Erlang shell prompt. Future plans involve relocating code to internal RAM/Flash, shipping lightweight kernel/stdlib variants, adding energy-aware boot logic, and developing a Unicode-light build.

(www.grisp.org)

Development

Deep Research: Hype Cycle or Paradigm Shift?

2025-03-05

Deep Research: Hype Cycle or Paradigm Shift?

A flurry of "Deep Research" features from leading AI labs—Google, OpenAI, Perplexity, and others—has ignited a buzz. However, the term lacks a clear definition, essentially representing an evolution of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). These systems leverage LLMs as agents, iteratively searching and analyzing information to produce comprehensive reports. This article dissects the technical implementations, ranging from early composite pattern approaches with hand-tuned prompts to end-to-end optimized systems like Stanford's STORM, which utilizes reinforcement learning. While Google Gemini and Perplexity offer similar features, details remain undisclosed. The article concludes with a conceptual map comparing the iterative depth and training sophistication of various "Deep Research" offerings.

(leehanchung.github.io)

AI

argp: A Powerful GNU-Standard Command-Line Argument Parser in Go

2025-03-23

argp: A Powerful GNU-Standard Command-Line Argument Parser in Go

argp is a Go library providing a robust command-line argument parser adhering to GNU standards. It boasts features like built-in help, struct field scanning, support for composite types (arrays, slices, structs), and nested subcommands. argp follows GNU argument rules, handling short and long options, option values, multiple values, and option combinations. It also offers configuration loading, counting, appending, and support for custom data sources, such as MySQL databases. Developers can leverage argp to create powerful command-line tools efficiently.

(github.com)

Development command-line arguments GNU standard

Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out: The Nassim Taleb Problem

2025-01-01

Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out: The Nassim Taleb Problem

This article explores the detrimental effects of social media on the creativity of thinkers. Using Nassim Taleb as an example, the author argues that fame leads thinkers to repeat existing ideas to please the masses, rather than exploring new ones. The author suggests that engaging with a small audience fosters deep thinking, while a large audience leads to simplified and homogenized thought. The article concludes by suggesting that to maintain originality, one should focus on engaging with a few people who genuinely care about your ideas and build independent intellectual circles to resist the negative effects of shallow feedback.

(nothinghuman.substack.com)

Misc creativity thought

Neovim's Bundled tee.exe Exhibited Suspicious Behavior on Windows 11

2025-02-14

Neovim's Bundled tee.exe Exhibited Suspicious Behavior on Windows 11

While security testing Neovim in a Windows 11 sandbox, the bundled tee.exe binary was flagged as malware. Investigation revealed suspicious DNS lookups and network connections, with one IP address confirmed as malicious by VirusTotal. The author recommends a root cause analysis and suggests building Neovim's dependencies from source to mitigate this security risk.

(github.com)

Development

Why Software Estimation Is Always Wrong (and How to Improve)

2025-04-02

Why Software Estimation Is Always Wrong (and How to Improve)

In Scrum teams, story points estimate effort, but software estimations are inherently flawed. They predict an unknown future, and project complexity, unclear requirements, and technical debt contribute to inaccuracies. Cognitive biases like Hofstadter's Law, Brook's Law, and the planning fallacy exacerbate the problem. The article explores improvements: tracking progress, adding buffers, using the COCOMO model, and an alternative from "NoEstimates": dropping story points, focusing on throughput and cycle times, and using visual tools like Kanban.

(newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com)

Development estimation

Bolt Graphics Unveils Ambitious Zeus GPU Architecture

2025-03-29

Bolt Graphics Unveils Ambitious Zeus GPU Architecture

Bolt Graphics announced its Zeus GPU architecture, a modular design based on the RISC-V instruction set. Employing a multi-chiplet approach, Zeus scales up to four chiplets, each boasting 64GB of LPDDR5X and abundant high-speed interconnect options like 800GbE and PCIe Gen5. Targeting large-scale GPU clusters through high memory capacity and bandwidth, Zeus aims to challenge Nvidia's dominance in high-performance computing. While still in early development, with developer kits slated for Q4 2025, its unique architecture and potential for cost-effectiveness warrant attention.

(www.servethehome.com)

Hardware

Critical Security Flaws Found in Apple Silicon: SLAP and FLOP Attacks

2025-01-28

Researchers have uncovered two critical security vulnerabilities, dubbed SLAP and FLOP, affecting Apple's M2/A15 and later chipsets. SLAP exploits incorrect guesses by the Load Address Predictor (LAP) during speculative execution to access out-of-bounds data, leaking sensitive information like email content and browsing history in Safari. FLOP leverages mispredictions by the Load Value Predictor (LVP) to bypass memory safety checks, stealing data such as location history, calendar events, and credit card information from Safari and Chrome. These attacks exploit speculative execution and affect most Apple devices released since 2022. Apple is aware and plans to address these issues in an upcoming security update; users are urged to keep their systems and apps updated.

(predictors.fail)

Tech Apple Security Vulnerability Speculative Execution Attack

The Matrix Calculus You Need For Deep Learning

2025-03-29

The Matrix Calculus You Need For Deep Learning

This paper aims to explain all the matrix calculus you need to understand deep neural network training. Assuming only Calculus 1 knowledge, it progressively builds from scalar derivative rules to vector calculus, matrix calculus, Jacobians, and chain rules. Through derivations and examples, the authors demystify these concepts, making them accessible. The paper concludes with a summary of key matrix calculus rules and terminology.

(explained.ai)

AI matrix calculus

The Case for Fewer Dependencies in Rust

2025-01-24

Armin Ronacher, a renowned developer, laments the over-reliance on external crates in the Rust ecosystem in a recent blog post. He argues that excessive dependencies lead to constant updates, patches, and security audits, burdening developers and often introducing unnecessary code bloat. He advocates a "build it yourself" philosophy, encouraging developers to write their own code when appropriate instead of blindly relying on external libraries. He uses the `terminal_size` crate as an example, illustrating how a simple function depends on multiple crates and has undergone numerous updates, highlighting the drawbacks of over-dependency. The post calls for a shift in the Rust community's perspective, prioritizing fewer dependencies and celebrating developers who create low-dependency libraries.

(lucumr.pocoo.org)

Development

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