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Snow Signs: A Cross-Cultural Journey Through Time

2024-12-25
Snow Signs: A Cross-Cultural Journey Through Time

This article explores the diverse ways different cultures around the world have represented 'snow' in writing and symbolism, from the Shang oracle bone script in ancient China to the 'wind, flowers, snow, and moon' motif on ancient Chinese wine jugs, and from the Naxi Dongba script to the Inuktitut language's detailed descriptions of various snow types. The article also delves into snow-related words and symbols in ancient Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, and Mayan civilizations, showcasing the unique understandings and expressions of snow across cultures, highlighting their cultural contexts and historical origins.

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(viewsproject.wordpress.com)
Misc writing systems cross-cultural comparison snow

Librebooting a ThinkPad T480: A Challenging Open-Source Journey

2024-12-13

This blog post details the author's experience librebooting a ThinkPad T480, a process fraught with challenges. From updating the BIOS and backing up the original firmware, to using a Raspberry Pi Pico W and SOIC-8 clip to read and write the BIOS chip, and finally compiling the Libreboot firmware (encountering numerous compilation errors and seeking help from the IRC community), the author documents the entire process. The post also shares post-libreboot experiences, including performance improvements, hardware compatibility issues, and troubleshooting tips, along with recommendations for screen, RAM, and storage upgrades.

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(ezntek.com)
1
Hardware Open-Source Firmware

MDN Learning Resources Get a Major Overhaul: New Learning Experience Launched

2024-12-25
MDN Learning Resources Get a Major Overhaul: New Learning Experience Launched

In December 2024, MDN launched a major update to its "Learn Web Development" section, merging the MDN Curriculum with existing learning content to create a more streamlined learning path. This upgrade addresses previous issues like bloated content and unclear learning pathways, providing a clearer and more accessible experience for beginners. The new site uses a modular structure with "Getting Started," "Core," and "Extensions" sections, incorporating clear learning objectives and interactive content. MDN will continue to improve content and design, aiming to deliver even better learning resources in the future.

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(developer.mozilla.org)
Development Web Development Learning Learning Resource Upgrade

Delta Emulator Triples Apple's In-App Prices to Push Patreon

2024-12-20
Delta Emulator Triples Apple's In-App Prices to Push Patreon

Delta gaming emulator developer Riley Testut is tripling the price of in-app purchases on Apple's iOS App Store to encourage users to subscribe via Patreon. This move leverages Apple's new policy allowing external payment links while protesting Apple's in-app purchase system. Patreon subscriptions offer additional benefits like iPad and SEGA Genesis support, private Discord access, and more convenient refunds and customer support.

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(www.theverge.com)
Game game emulator in-app purchase

Open-Source RAG Logger: RAG-logger Released

2024-12-23
Open-Source RAG Logger: RAG-logger Released

RAG-logger is an open-source logging tool designed specifically for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications. It offers a lightweight alternative to existing solutions, focusing on the specific logging needs of RAG pipelines. Key features include comprehensive logging of the entire RAG process, from query tracking and retrieval results (text and images) to LLM interaction recording and step-by-step performance monitoring. It utilizes a JSON-based log format, organizes logs daily, and handles automatic file management and metadata enrichment. A simple API allows for quick integration; for instance, `logger.log_query()` logs queries, `logger.log_retrieval()` logs retrieval steps, and `logger.log_llm()` logs LLM interactions.

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(github.com)
Development logging open-source tool

Literary Review: The Achievements and Limitations of the 20th-Century Novel

2024-12-15
Literary Review: The Achievements and Limitations of the 20th-Century Novel

Edwin Frank's new book, *Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel*, explores the accomplishments of the 20th-century novel. Frank argues that novels, through formal innovations like Kafka's rambling sentences and Stein's repetitions, guide readers to slow down and savor the nuances of language. He praises novelists' efforts in expressing collective experiences, particularly the horrors of war and the awakening of self-awareness, but also points out the book's Eurocentric perspective, its insufficient attention to novels from other cultural backgrounds, and its somewhat superficial exploration of war and self-awareness.

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(thebaffler.com)
Misc 20th-century novel literary review self-awareness

Programming Language Memory Models: Challenges and Solutions in Concurrent Programming

2024-12-12

This article delves into programming language memory models, specifically the behavior of shared memory in multithreaded programs. Using a simple C-like program as an example, it illustrates how compiler optimizations can lead to unexpected results, such as race conditions between threads. To address this, modern languages introduce atomic variables and atomic operations to ensure thread synchronization and avoid data races. The article compares the memory models of Java, C++, Rust, and other languages, analyzing their strengths and weaknesses and evolution, and points out the remaining challenges in formally defining memory models.

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(research.swtch.com)
Development memory model multithreading concurrent programming

Castle Game Engine Update: Web Target, IFC Support, and mORMot Collaboration

2024-12-18
Castle Game Engine Update: Web Target, IFC Support, and mORMot Collaboration

The Castle Game Engine team announced updates including a web target (using JS+WebAssembly for browser-based game execution), support for the IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) format, and collaborative editing using mORMot2. The web target currently handles basic functions and is improving WebGL support. IFC support allows loading, modifying, and saving models, with future enhancements planned. Collaborative editing is still under development but already enables 3D world modification and server synchronization.

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(castle-engine.io)
Development game engine

Hospital Workers' Dexterity Assessed: Surgeons Show Superior Skill, But Also More Swearing

2024-12-28
Hospital Workers' Dexterity Assessed: Surgeons Show Superior Skill, But Also More Swearing

A prospective study of 254 hospital staff members found that surgeons significantly outperformed other roles in a manual dexterity test using a 'buzz wire' game, achieving an 84% success rate. However, surgeons also displayed a higher rate of swearing during the task. Nurses and non-clinical staff showed lower success rates but expressed audible frustration more frequently. The findings highlight the diverse skill sets across hospital roles and suggest incorporating similar dexterity games into future training to improve both skill and stress management.

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(www.bmj.com)
Tech manual dexterity hospital staff surgeons

Popeye, Tintin, and Literary Classics Enter the Public Domain

2024-12-16
Popeye, Tintin, and Literary Classics Enter the Public Domain

In 2025, iconic comic characters Popeye and Tintin, along with numerous novels by literary giants like Faulkner and Hemingway, will enter the US public domain. This means these works can be freely used and adapted without permission or payment to copyright holders. The list includes Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury' and Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms,' among others whose copyrights expired after 95 years. Early Mickey Mouse cartoons also join the public domain, including those where Mickey speaks for the first time. This expansion of public domain works offers creators a wealth of material and invigorates cultural preservation.

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(apnews.com)
Misc public domain cultural heritage

Interactive Groundwater Movement Simulator: Unlocking Aquifer Mysteries

2025-01-20

This interactive science simulation lets learners explore groundwater movement. By adjusting permeability parameters, they observe how water flows through different layers, track a water droplet's path, and learn about aquifer formation. Users can also drill wells, experiencing sustainable versus unsustainable water extraction to understand groundwater resource management. This game is part of the "Will there be enough fresh water?" lesson.

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(has.concord.org)
Tech groundwater science simulation

Particles.js: Code Samples and More

2025-01-09

Particles.js is a powerful JavaScript library for creating stunning particle effects. This article provides code samples and additional examples of Particles.js, enabling developers to easily implement various particle animations, from simple falling effects to complex interactive scenes. Whether for web design or game development, Particles.js adds a touch of visual flair to your projects.

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(tiki.li)
Development particle effects web effects

$800 Emotional Support Robot for Kids Bricked, No Refunds

2024-12-12
$800 Emotional Support Robot for Kids Bricked, No Refunds

Embodied, the maker of the $800 Moxie robot for kids, is shutting down, leaving thousands of children without their robotic companions. The company blamed a failed funding round for its closure, and announced that Moxie's cloud connectivity will be severed, rendering the robots inoperable. While Embodied expressed some willingness to refund recent purchases, they offer no guarantees, leaving many parents facing significant financial losses alongside their children's emotional distress. This incident highlights concerns about the lack of long-term support for smart devices and the potential for significant consumer disappointment.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech robot children refund

Git Project Deadlocked Over Rust Integration

2024-12-13

The Git project is embroiled in a heated debate over the integration of the Rust programming language. Proponents argue that Rust's memory safety and ease of refactoring would enhance Git's security and developer experience. However, opponents express concerns that Rust integration could compromise support for niche platforms like NonStop, potentially hindering Git's long-term viability. NonStop's prevalence in the financial sector, its reliance on Git, and the lack of a Rust compiler for the platform complicate the issue. The discussion ultimately reached no resolution, leaving the Git project grappling with a critical decision between maintaining broad platform support and improving security and developer experience.

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(lwn.net)
Development Platform Support

Maps and Fantasy: Unveiling the Secrets of Fictional Geographies

2024-12-14
Maps and Fantasy: Unveiling the Secrets of Fictional Geographies

This article explores the evolution and symbolism of maps in fantasy literature. From Tolkien's "The Hobbit" to "Game of Thrones," maps are more than just geographical guides; they are essential tools for constructing worldviews and shaping cultural identities. The author analyzes common features of fantasy maps, such as vast western oceans and mysterious eastern lands, exploring the cultural and psychological factors behind these features and their relationship to real-world geography, colonial history, and cultural biases. Ultimately, the author argues that the appeal of fantasy maps lies in their unknown aspects and the possibilities they represent beyond reality.

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(longreads.com)
Misc fantasy literature maps cultural symbolism

Adding Refinement Types to Rust: A Feasibility Study

2024-12-24

This article explores the feasibility of adding refinement types to the Rust programming language. Drawing on experience with YAIOUOM, a static analyzer that used refinement types to check units of measure, the author examines approaches to implementing refinement types within Rust's type system. Several options are proposed, including modifications to trait resolution, type variable unification, and the introduction of a pluggable keyword mechanism for post-compilation type checking. An optimistic approach—ignoring unit information early in compilation and checking later—is deemed more practical. API design and error message handling are discussed. Future work involves gathering feedback, writing a rustc driver supporting plugins, and implementing several refinement types, potentially including a new version of YAIOUOM and subsets of Flux or Liquid Haskell.

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(yoric.github.io)
Development Refinement Types Type System

Ultralytics Suffers Supply Chain Attack: A PyPI Security Incident Analysis

2024-12-14
Ultralytics Suffers Supply Chain Attack: A PyPI Security Incident Analysis

The Python project Ultralytics recently suffered a supply chain attack. Attackers compromised the project's GitHub Actions workflows and stole a PyPI API token, resulting in tainted versions 8.3.41, 8.3.42, 8.3.45, and 8.3.46. The attack didn't exploit a PyPI vulnerability but targeted the GitHub Actions cache. PyPI, leveraging Trusted Publishing and Sigstore transparency logs, quickly identified and removed the malicious software. The incident highlighted shortcomings in API token and GitHub environment configurations. The article stresses securing software forges and build/publish workflows, providing developers with security recommendations: using Trusted Publishers, locking dependencies, avoiding insecure patterns, and enabling multi-factor authentication.

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(blog.pypi.org)
Development supply chain attack PyPI security software security

Negotiating with Infringers: A Better Option for Creative Professionals

2024-12-16
Negotiating with Infringers: A Better Option for Creative Professionals

When a creative professional's copyright is infringed, litigation isn't the only option. This article's author, a lawyer, suggests considering negotiation with the infringer. Negotiation is quicker and cheaper than litigation and may yield benefits beyond monetary compensation, such as promotion and collaboration opportunities. The author points out that most infringements are not malicious but due to negligence. Through negotiation, adversaries can be transformed into collaborators, leading to long-term success. Of course, if negotiations fail, litigation remains a last resort.

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(www.thelegalartist.com)
Startup intellectual property copyright infringement negotiation

Taming LLMs: A Practical Guide to Avoiding Pitfalls

2024-12-12

This book, "Taming LLMs," delves into the key limitations and implementation pitfalls encountered by engineers and technical product managers when building LLM-powered applications. Instead of focusing solely on capabilities, it tackles practical challenges such as handling unstructured output, managing context windows, and cost optimization. With reproducible Python code examples and battle-tested open-source tools, it provides a practical guide to navigating these challenges, allowing readers to harness the power of LLMs while sidestepping their inherent limitations.

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(www.souzatharsis.com)
Development Large Language Models Open Source Software LLM Application Development

Hilbert Curve: A Beautiful Space-Filling Curve and its Visualization

2025-01-18

This article delves into the Hilbert curve, a space-filling curve with excellent clustering properties. The author creatively visualizes it by projecting a 3D RGB color space Hilbert curve onto a 2D plane. The visualization is aesthetically pleasing and intuitively demonstrates the clustering characteristics of the Hilbert curve. The article also explains the algorithm implementation of the Hilbert curve and provides a Python project for generating and visualizing various space-filling curves.

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(corte.si)
Development Hilbert curve space-filling curve

Hacking Physics with a Napkin

2024-12-14

This article explores unconventional approaches to solving physics problems using simple estimation and dimensional analysis. The author demonstrates the power of these methods by calculating the speed of falling raindrops, the length of the E. coli genome, and the mass of a proton, among other examples. The article suggests this napkin-based approach can greatly enhance physics education and learning. Further techniques like Fermi estimation and random walks are introduced and applied to problems like estimating the E. coli genome length and determining the optimal speed for walking or running in the rain, showcasing their practicality.

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(hapax.github.io)
Misc dimensional analysis Fermi estimation

Trellis: AI-Powered PDF Workflow Automation

2025-01-22
Trellis: AI-Powered PDF Workflow Automation

Trellis is an AI-powered platform that automates PDF workflows. Its engine transforms complex documents and calls into usable data for Ops and engineering teams in seconds, not weeks. Offering customizable actions, data validation, and real-time syncing with data sources, Trellis prioritizes security with SOC II Type 2 compliance, data encryption, and private cloud deployment options. Applicable across finance, healthcare, and real estate, Trellis helps organizations improve efficiency and ensure regulatory compliance.

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(runtrellis.com)
Tech PDF Automation Data Processing

Unraveling the PPG Wave 2.2 & 2.3: An 8-bit vs. 12-bit DAC Mystery

2024-12-15

This article delves into the subtle yet significant differences between the PPG Wave 2.2 and 2.3 synthesizers. While the 2.3 utilizes 12-bit DACs, wavetable playback remains 8-bit; only samples imported via external devices fully leverage the 12-bit precision. Oscilloscope measurements reveal a unique audio processing method: two oscillators send data interleaved, resulting in a DAC output frequency double the individual oscillator sample rate. This creates a distinctive timbre and high-frequency aliasing beyond human hearing. The article also notes the relatively slow CV update rate, yet the sound retains its character.

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(till-kopper.de)
Hardware synthesizer digital audio

Unspoken Rules of Terminal Programs: A 20-Year Retrospective

2024-12-12

This article summarizes the author's 20 years of experience with terminal programs, distilling common, albeit unofficial, 'rules' of behavior. These rules cover program responses to Ctrl-C, Ctrl-D, and the 'q' key, color usage, readline keybinding support, and pipe output. The author notes that while not mandatory standards, understanding these rules helps predict terminal program behavior and reduces the learning curve. The article uses examples to analyze the applicability and exceptions to these rules, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between a program's own responsibility and default OS behavior.

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(jvns.ca)
Development terminal programs command line programming tips

Geometry Clipmaps: Simple Terrain Rendering with Level of Detail

2024-12-12

This blog post details geometry clipmaps, a technique for rendering vast terrains in real-time. It leverages a mesh with varying tessellation density—finer near the camera, coarser further away—to achieve level of detail. The author meticulously explains implementation details, including mesh generation, rendering procedures, handling seams, and efficient heightmap storage. Mesh alignment is crucial, preventing shimmering artifacts. While complex, the technique shines for its simplicity, avoiding computationally expensive algorithms while maintaining high-quality terrain rendering.

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(mikejsavage.co.uk)
Game terrain rendering geometry clipmaps

DeepSeek-V3: A 671B-Parameter Open-Source Mixture-of-Experts Language Model

2024-12-26
DeepSeek-V3: A 671B-Parameter Open-Source Mixture-of-Experts Language Model

DeepSeek-V3 is a powerful 671-billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model activating 37 billion parameters per token. Utilizing Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) and the DeepSeekMoE architecture, it innovatively employs an auxiliary-loss-free load balancing strategy and a multi-token prediction training objective. Pre-trained on 14.8 trillion high-quality tokens, followed by supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning, DeepSeek-V3 outperforms other open-source models and achieves performance comparable to leading closed-source models with remarkable training efficiency—only 2.788M H800 GPU hours.

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(github.com)
AI

Optimistic Computing: A Path Towards Better Software

2024-12-15

This essay explores the concept of "Optimistic Computing," not as blind optimism, but as a convergence of several powerful ideas: simplicity and ease of use ("boot to kill"), local-first principles, and user empowerment. The author argues that by limiting dependencies, simplifying workflows, creating a seamless "just works" experience, and giving users more control, we can build more reliable, secure, and long-lasting software. This philosophy applies to both individual users and enterprise software development, ultimately aiming for a digital world that respects user privacy and data ownership.

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(www.deobald.ca)
Development optimistic computing local-first

Improving F# Error Handling: Introducing FaultReport

2024-12-22

This article critiques the shortcomings of F#'s Result type in error handling, highlighting inconsistencies in error types and the problems stemming from using strings as error types. The author proposes FaultReport as an alternative, using an IFault interface to standardize error types and a Report<'Pass', 'Fail> type to represent operation outcomes, where 'Fail must implement IFault. This ensures consistent and type-safe error handling, avoiding the inconveniences of string-based errors. FaultReport further provides Report.generalize for upcasting and a FailAs active pattern for downcasting, facilitating handling of diverse error types. While replacing FSharp.Core's Result is a significant undertaking, the author argues that FaultReport's design offers a valuable improvement to F#'s error handling.

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(paul.blasuc.ci)
Development

CCxTrust: A Confidential Computing Platform Leveraging Collaborative Trust from TEE and TPM

2024-12-12
CCxTrust: A Confidential Computing Platform Leveraging Collaborative Trust from TEE and TPM

CCxTrust is a novel confidential computing platform that cleverly combines the strengths of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs) to establish a collaborative trust framework. By leveraging the black-box Root of Trust (RoT) embedded in CPU-TEEs and the flexible white-box RoT of TPMs, CCxTrust achieves end-to-end protection of sensitive data and models, overcoming the limitations of relying on a single hardware RoT. The platform implements independent Roots of Trust for Measurement (RTM) and a collaborative Root of Trust for Report (RTR), further enhanced by a composite attestation protocol for improved security and efficiency. Experimental results demonstrate significant performance advantages.

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(arxiv.org)
AI Confidential Computing Trusted Execution Environment Trusted Platform Module
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