Popular：
Virtualization DNS security formal verification reachability analysis compiler errors macro conflict web extension development framework Bitmap Graphics API inconsistencies All Tags

Securely Deploying to On-Prem IIS: Azure Pipelines in Action (Part III)

2025-03-08
Securely Deploying to On-Prem IIS: Azure Pipelines in Action (Part III)

This post details a secure deployment flow from Azure DevOps to an on-premises IIS server without requiring administrator privileges. The author tackles challenges like permission minimization and application pool manipulation, achieving automated deployments. The focus is on secure remote management using PowerShell and Just Enough Administration (JEA), with a complete YAML pipeline template and PowerShell scripts provided for a quick and secure setup.

Read more
(rewiring.bearblog.dev)
Development IIS Deployment Secure Deployment

NIH Grant Freeze Throws Biomedical Research into Limbo

2025-02-22
NIH Grant Freeze Throws Biomedical Research into Limbo

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has halted consideration of new grant applications, freezing roughly $1.5 billion in funding for about 16,000 research projects. This freeze, stemming from the Trump administration's blocking of new notices in the Federal Register, has sparked widespread concern within the scientific community. While the administration claims the pause is for review, suspicions linger that it's an attempt to circumvent a court order blocking a previous, broader funding freeze. The situation, coupled with previous staff cuts and funding caps, casts a shadow of uncertainty over the future of biomedical research in the US, raising fears of disruption and potential restructuring of the NIH.

Read more
(www.npr.org)
Tech biomedical research

Beyond Dynamic Arrays: The Efficient and Stable Segment Array

2025-08-07
Beyond Dynamic Arrays: The Efficient and Stable Segment Array

This article introduces Segment Array, a high-performance data structure combining the flexibility of dynamic arrays, the advantages of stable pointers, and excellent compatibility with arena allocators. Unlike dynamic arrays that move elements during resizing, Segment Array uses pre-allocated segments of fixed sizes, avoiding memory fragmentation and pointer invalidation. Each segment is double the size of its predecessor, with new segments allocated only when needed, achieving O(1) average time complexity. The author provides a C implementation and details its inner workings, including efficient index calculation and integration with generics. Segment Array is particularly useful in scenarios requiring efficient dynamic memory management within an arena allocator, such as in a build profiler.

Read more
(danielchasehooper.com)
Development

zlib-rs 0.4.2 Released: A Blazing Fast Compression Library

2025-03-16
zlib-rs 0.4.2 Released: A Blazing Fast Compression Library

zlib-rs 0.4.2 is out, boasting significant performance improvements! It's now (to our knowledge) the fastest API-compatible zlib implementation for decompression, and outperforms the competition in key compression scenarios. This release leverages clever multiversioning and DFA optimizations to efficiently select the optimal implementation at runtime, leading to dramatic speed gains. Benchmarks show zlib-rs significantly outpacing zlib-ng and zlib-chromium in decompression. While further compression performance improvements are planned, zlib-rs is already exceptionally fast and is seeking funding to complete the remaining work.

Read more
(trifectatech.org)
Development compression library

Escape the Algorithmic Walled Garden: Embrace RSS Feeds

2025-01-19

Tired of algorithmic control over your newsfeed? This article explores the power of RSS and Atom feeds, offering a decentralized alternative to centralized platforms. Using RSS readers like Miniflux or FreshRSS, you can subscribe to blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and even social media updates, customizing filters and sorting to your liking. The article provides tips and resources for finding RSS feeds and encourages readers to take control of their information consumption by embracing decentralization.

Read more
(www.johnwalker.nl)
Tech information consumption

Daemonless Docker Compose Builds with Podman, BuildKit, and a Pinch of Bakah

2025-08-21

Due to Docker's incompatibility with nftables and a preference for a rootless, daemonless approach, the author uses Podman to build a Docker Compose project. The article explores the shortcomings of using both the official Docker Compose CLI and podman-compose, ultimately achieving builds under Podman using the Docker Compose CLI and BuildKit by enabling the Podman socket, creating a Docker context. To avoid a BuildKit daemon, the author developed Bakah, a tool that converts Compose projects into Bake JSON files and uses Buildah for building, resulting in a completely daemonless build process.

Read more
(emersion.fr)
Development

Inheritance: An Accidental Performance Hack

2025-05-08

Simula invented inheritance not for code reuse or extensibility, but to solve problems with its simple garbage collection and intrusive lists. Simula's GC was too simplistic to handle pointers to stack variables; to prevent crashes, it banned various parameter passing methods, limiting expressiveness. To efficiently use intrusive lists, Simula invented "prefixing" (inheritance), allowing objects to directly contain list nodes, avoiding extra memory allocation. Thus, inheritance was initially a performance optimization, not a cornerstone of OOP.

Read more
(catern.com)
Development inheritance

7-Day Trial: Personalized AI Calendar with ChatGPT Integration

2025-01-02

A personalized AI calendar integrating ChatGPT is seeking 20 testers for a 7-day trial (minimum 3 days). This tool helps plan tasks ahead of time, providing AI-powered customized responses on the scheduled day to jumpstart creativity and overcome roadblocks. Users can refine AI responses via a 'Start Chat' feature. The trial has chat limits (10 messages/session, 100 words/message). Bookmark the link; the Discord invite is single-use. Feedback on features and UI is welcome. Fake emails are acceptable.

Read more
(running4-m.github.io)
Development AI Calendar

Hitachi Unveils World's Smallest and Thinnest Contactless IC Chip

2025-08-19

Hitachi has announced the development of the world's smallest and thinnest contactless IC chip, measuring just 0.15 x 0.15 millimeters and 7.5 micrometers thick. Leveraging SOI technology to reduce the distance between circuit elements, the chip maintains the same functionality as its larger predecessor while boasting a quarter of the surface area and one-eighth the thickness. This results in over a tenfold increase in productivity. The breakthrough is expected to revolutionize applications for contactless IC chips across security, transportation, entertainment, traceability, and logistics.

Read more
(www.hitachi.com)
Hardware IC chip SOI technology miniaturization

Trump's War on the Civil Service and the Democratic Party's Dilemma

2025-02-06
Trump's War on the Civil Service and the Democratic Party's Dilemma

This article analyzes Donald Trump's attacks on the federal civil service, arguing that they undermine the government's ability to provide public services and fulfill its functions, while also harming individual civil servants. The author contends that the Democratic Party, in response, has prioritized unity with labor unions over the principle that public institutions should prioritize the needs of their users above those of their workforce or ideological projects. Using education as an example, the author argues that excessive reliance on teachers' unions has led to a decline in Democrats' trustworthiness on education issues. The article emphasizes that effective governance requires a degree of intra-coalition tension, urging Democrats to strike a balance between maintaining coalition unity and pursuing the public good.

Read more
(www.slowboring.com)
Politics Civil Service

IRC Driven: Reviving IRC as a Social Platform

2025-01-13

IRC Driven is a modern IRC indexing site and search engine aiming to revive IRC and transform it into a social platform. It offers network and channel indexing, user profile creation, and channel pages based on network channel lists. The site has undergone multiple rewrites and recent improvements include resolving API issues, bringing back channel bots. The site is also seeking volunteers to help with development to further enhance user experience.

Read more
(www.ircdriven.com)
Development social platform indexing engine

Is Current AI a Dead End?

2024-12-27
Is Current AI a Dead End?

Professor Eerke Boiten of De Montfort University Leicester argues that current AI systems based on large neural networks, such as ChatGPT, are unsuitable for critical applications due to their inherent complexity and unpredictability. These systems lack manageability, transparency, and accountability; their behavior is emergent rather than compositional, making effective verification and error correction difficult. Boiten suggests that the current direction of AI development may be a dead end, advocating for compositional neural networks or hybrid approaches combining symbolic reasoning to build more reliable AI systems.

Read more
(www.bcs.org)
AI AI Safety neural networks

Hands-On Graphics Without X11: A NetBSD wscons Deep Dive

2025-01-17
Hands-On Graphics Without X11: A NetBSD wscons Deep Dive

This article details how to perform low-level graphics programming on NetBSD without X11 or Wayland, leveraging the wscons framework. The author demonstrates accessing and manipulating the framebuffer to draw graphics directly on the terminal and handle keyboard input. This bypasses traditional graphics systems, allowing direct hardware interaction, ideal for resource-constrained environments like embedded systems, enabling faster boot times and reduced resource consumption.

Read more
(blogsystem5.substack.com)
Development framebuffer

pl_synth: A Tiny JSON-Based Music Synthesizer

2025-01-06

Dominic Szablewski of PhobosLab released pl_synth, a lightweight C/JS music synthesizer and accompanying tracker editor. Inspired by Sonant, pl_synth prioritizes small code and data size and leverages WASM to drastically improve the JavaScript version's performance, reducing music generation time from 5 seconds to 25 milliseconds. It supports various instruments and effects, features undo/redo functionality, and allows embedding the final product directly into a URL. pl_synth is now bundled with the high_impact game engine.

Read more
(phoboslab.org)
Development music synthesizer

Microsoft Claims First Topological Qubit: Breakthrough or Hype?

2025-02-20
Microsoft Claims First Topological Qubit: Breakthrough or Hype?

Microsoft announced the creation of the first topological qubit, sparking significant interest in the tech world. Topological qubits, based on non-Abelian anyons, are theoretically more resistant to errors than traditional qubits. While Microsoft retracted a similar claim in 2018, they now assert a fully functional topological qubit. Though currently not practically useful, this marks a milestone in topological quantum computing, with the future success of this approach compared to traditional qubits still uncertain.

Read more
(scottaaronson.blog)
Tech

Seagate's New Hard Drives: A Case of Massive Reselling?

2025-01-29
Seagate's New Hard Drives: A Case of Massive Reselling?

German publication Heise.de reports a widespread issue where numerous Seagate hard drive buyers received used drives instead of new ones. The drives, showing usage times of tens of thousands of hours, were purchased from various retailers, including authorized Seagate sellers and major online marketplaces. Affected models span different series and capacities. While Seagate is investigating, the scale and nature of the problem remain unclear, raising concerns about potential fraud.

Read more
(www.tomshardware.com)
Hardware Hard Drives Fraud

NearlyFreeSpeech.NET: A DIY Hosting Service for Geeks

2025-01-11

NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is a do-it-yourself web hosting service designed for experienced webmasters and highly self-motivated individuals. It operates on a pay-for-what-you-use model, meaning you only pay for the resources you consume. While lacking in personal technical support, it offers extensive documentation and community support, making it a cost-effective option for those comfortable managing their own websites. Services include web hosting, DNS hosting, and domain registration, with support for various programming languages and databases.

Read more
(www.nearlyfreespeech.net)
Development web hosting pay-for-what-you-use

BreakerMachines: Shield Your Microservices from Cascading Failures

2025-07-06
BreakerMachines: Shield Your Microservices from Cascading Failures

In the world of microservices, cascading failures and retry storms are nightmares for developers. BreakerMachines, a Ruby library, acts as a guardian, protecting your system from these disasters using a sophisticated circuit breaker mechanism. Built on the battle-tested state_machines gem, it offers classic and Fiber modes, supports asynchronous operations, and provides flexible configuration options to adjust thresholds and timeouts based on service criticality and traffic. BreakerMachines effectively prevents cascading failures and helps quickly locate problems through visual dashboards and smart alerts, thus improving system stability and reliability.

Read more
(github.com)
Development circuit breaker failure protection

Astronaut Captures Rare Gigantic Jet from ISS

2025-08-18
Astronaut Captures Rare Gigantic Jet from ISS

NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers captured a stunning image from the International Space Station, revealing a gigantic jet, a rarer phenomenon than sprites, a type of Transient Luminous Event (TLE). Gigantic jets are powerful electrical discharges extending from thunderstorm tops into the upper atmosphere, requiring specific turbulent conditions to form. Unlike sprites, which form higher in the atmosphere after lightning strikes, gigantic jets erupt directly upwards from the thundercloud top, creating an electrical bridge between the cloud and upper atmosphere. This discovery provides valuable data for studying atmospheric electricity.

Read more
(science.nasa.gov)
Tech gigantic jet transient luminous event atmospheric physics

Keystone Molecules: The Silent Architects of Ecosystems

2025-03-06
Keystone Molecules: The Silent Architects of Ecosystems

A study published in Science Advances provides compelling evidence for the concept of 'keystone molecules'. These rare chemicals, analogous to keystone species in ecology, exert disproportionately large effects on ecosystem structure and species interactions despite their low abundance. Researchers focused on Alderia sea slugs, isolating novel molecules called alderenes from their slime. Introduction of these alderenes into the mudflat ecosystem dramatically altered the behavior of other species and the overall habitat. This research highlights the often-overlooked role of chemical interactions in food webs and opens new avenues for exploring the influence of chemical signaling in ecosystems.

Read more
(www.quantamagazine.org)
Tech keystone molecules chemical ecology

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.

Read more
(www.theatlantic.com)
Misc American Democracy Authoritarianism Corruption

Open-Source 16mm Film Projector: LaborBerlin's Journey

2025-06-21

The LaborBerlin team is developing a state-of-the-art, open-source 16mm film projector to address the challenges of aging equipment, limited flexibility, and archival projection needs. Their approach leverages readily available projector mechanisms and lenses, incorporating a modular design, open-source technologies, and commonly available parts. After disassembling and analyzing various vintage projectors, the team successfully tested an 800W high-brightness LED light source with a water-cooling system, overcoming a major hurdle in lamp upgrades. Following feedback at the ALUD festival, they resolved flickering issues. The resulting prototype boasts superior brightness and clarity compared to traditional xenon lamp projectors.

Read more
(www.filmlabs.org)
Hardware film projector LED projection

White House Hints at Using Gold Reserves to Buy Bitcoin

2025-03-25
White House Hints at Using Gold Reserves to Buy Bitcoin

A senior White House official hinted at the possibility of the U.S. using its gold reserves to acquire more Bitcoin. Bo Hines, executive director of the President’s Council of Advisers on Digital Assets, suggested this could be a budget-neutral way to increase Bitcoin reserves. He referenced the Bitcoin Act of 2025, proposing the US acquire 1 million Bitcoin over five years, funded by selling Federal Reserve gold certificates. President Trump also voiced his commitment to making the US a leading Bitcoin power.

Read more
(finance.yahoo.com)
Tech Gold Reserves

VirtualBox VM Escape Vulnerability: Integer Overflow Leads to Host Compromise

2025-05-17
VirtualBox VM Escape Vulnerability: Integer Overflow Leads to Host Compromise

A high-severity integer overflow vulnerability in VirtualBox's vmsvga3dSurfaceMipBufferSize function allows attackers to manipulate a malloc call, allocating 0 bytes while VirtualBox tracks a larger buffer size. This leads to linear read/write primitives, escalating to arbitrary read/write access of host memory. A proof-of-concept demonstrates complete virtual machine escape. Exploitation involves triggering a buggy surface allocation, exploiting out-of-bounds read/write, arbitrary heap allocation, and finally gaining RIP control for arbitrary code execution. A patch is available; users should update immediately.

Read more
(github.com)
Tech VM escape

Indoor Air Purification Tech: Effectiveness Questioned, Real-World Studies Needed

2025-08-26
Indoor Air Purification Tech: Effectiveness Questioned, Real-World Studies Needed

A new study reveals that many technologies claiming to purify indoor air and prevent virus spread lack human testing, and their potential risks remain unclear. The research analyzed nearly 700 studies on technologies like HEPA filters, UV lights, ionizers, and advanced ventilation systems. Only 9% examined their impact on human health. Researchers call for more real-world studies evaluating effectiveness and potential risks, standardized health outcome measures, and independent funding to inform public health policy.

Read more
(news.cuanschutz.edu)
Tech air purification virus spread

Crystal Macros: Compile-Time Code Generation Powerhouse

2025-01-14

Crystal 1.15.0's macro system enables compile-time code execution, significantly extending the language's capabilities. The `Crystal::Macros` module offers a rich set of functions, including `read_file` for reading file contents, `run` for executing external programs, `env` for getting environment variables, and even version comparison and type parsing. These features empower developers to perform complex preprocessing tasks at compile time, such as dynamically generating code based on platform or environment, improving development efficiency and code maintainability. This is a powerful tool for building highly customized applications and libraries.

Read more
(crystal-lang.org)
Development Macros

The Exploration Bottleneck in LLMs: The Next Frontier of Experience Collection

2025-07-07

The success of large language models (LLMs) relies on massive pre-training on vast text data, a resource that will eventually be depleted. The future of AI will shift towards an "Era of Experience," where efficient collection of the right kind of experience beneficial to learning will be crucial, rather than simply stacking parameters. This article explores how pre-training implicitly solves part of the exploration problem and how better exploration leads to better generalization. The author proposes that exploration consists of two axes: "world sampling" (choosing learning environments) and "path sampling" (gathering data within environments). Future AI scaling should optimize the information density on these two axes, efficiently allocating computational resources instead of simply pursuing parameter scale or data volume.

Read more
(yidingjiang.github.io)
AI

Beam: SSH-based File and Pipe Transfer Tool

2025-01-04
Beam: SSH-based File and Pipe Transfer Tool

Beam is a tool for transferring files and pipes over SSH, requiring only an SSH client; no binary installation is needed. It supports pipe transfer, offers high security with public key authentication, and uses simple SSH commands for sending and receiving data. Random channel names can enhance security. While the Beam server is located in Germany, transfer speeds might be limited, and end-to-end encryption isn't supported (data is briefly decrypted on the server), its lightweight nature and simple self-hosting make it a convenient file transfer solution.

Read more
(github.com)
Development file transfer pipe transfer

Directed Panspermia: A Moral Minefield in the Cosmos

2025-03-25

This article delves into the ethical and technical challenges of directed panspermia – the deliberate seeding of life in the universe by humans. Scientists suggest genetically modified bacterial spores could survive interstellar travel and potentially terraform habitable planets. However, profound ethical questions arise: Do we have the right to create sentient beings who might suffer? The accelerating expansion of the universe, leading to the loss of potentially habitable planets, adds urgency but also risk, prompting a call for a moratorium on panspermia research until technological maturity and ethical consensus are achieved.

Read more
(www.centauri-dreams.org)
Tech directed panspermia cosmic ethics interstellar travel
1 2 … 484 485 486 488 490 491 492 … 596 597