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Sony Ends Recordable Blu-ray Production After 18 Years

2025-01-24

Sony Ends Recordable Blu-ray Production After 18 Years

Sony is ceasing production of recordable Blu-ray discs in February, ending a nearly two-decade run. This also affects MiniDiscs and MiniDV cassettes. While Sony initially planned to continue production for business clients, dwindling consumer demand due to the rise of streaming services made it unsustainable. The article contrasts the convenience of streaming with its drawbacks: lack of ownership, monthly costs, and security concerns. It highlights the advantages of optical media for long-term archival storage and mentions competitors like Pioneer offering century-lasting Blu-ray discs and research into even longer-lasting glass storage.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Tech Blu-ray Data Storage

Poland Furious Over US AI Chip Export Restrictions

2025-01-21

Poland Furious Over US AI Chip Export Restrictions

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.

(www.politico.eu)

Tech US export restrictions Poland

Fixing a Sneaky uname Bug in Apache NuttX RTOS: Static Variables Strike Back

2025-01-21

Fixing a Sneaky uname Bug in Apache NuttX RTOS: Static Variables Strike Back

This post details the debugging journey of a seemingly minor bug in the Apache NuttX RTOS's `uname` command. The initial problem: the commit hash was missing from the output. The investigation led down a rabbit hole, involving inspecting the kernel image, calling `uname` at kernel startup, and disassembling the application. The culprit? A broken static variable (`g_version`) responsible for storing the commit hash within NuttX applications. This unexpected behavior highlighted the importance of thorough debugging in embedded systems, emphasizing that even minor anomalies can signal deeper, more serious issues.

(lupyuen.org)

Development bug fix

Garmin's $40B Pivot: From Car GPS to Fitness Watch King

2025-01-21

Garmin's $40B Pivot: From Car GPS to Fitness Watch King

GPS pioneer Garmin faced near-extinction from Apple and Google's rise. However, massive R&D investment allowed a dramatic pivot, transforming the company from a car navigation device firm into a leader in fitness watches and trackers. The article details Garmin's journey, from the invention of GPS and Garmin's founding to its transition from car navigation to the outdoor and fitness tracking market. Its sustained R&D spending enabled survival and growth in a fiercely competitive landscape, showcasing the importance of continuous innovation and adaptation.

(www.readtrung.com)

Tech Transformation

Startup Winter: Hacker News' Faith in the Startup Myth Freezes Over

2025-01-21

Startup Winter: Hacker News' Faith in the Startup Myth Freezes Over

A recent Hacker News post highlights a shift in startup sentiment. While in 2013, failed founders received supportive comments, now similar stories are met with skepticism about the risks. This change is attributed to: the increased visibility of negative consequences (burnout, relationship issues, mental health struggles); high salaries at Big Tech making the financial incentive for startups less appealing; limitations of the VC model becoming clear; and the low-hanging fruit of the mobile/web era being largely picked. The author suggests this signals a 'Startup Winter,' potentially leading to a more authentic and sustainable startup ecosystem.

(www.vincentschmalbach.com)

Startup Startup Winter Venture Capital

Wild: A Blazing-Fast Linker for Linux

2025-01-24

Wild: A Blazing-Fast Linker for Linux

Wild is a linker designed for speed in iterative development. While incremental linking isn't yet implemented, it's already impressively fast. For production builds, more mature linkers like GNU ld or LLD are recommended. However, for development, Wild significantly speeds up build times, especially on x86-64 Linux systems. It supports statically and dynamically linked executables and shared objects, and has been tested with many popular crates from crates.io. Currently under development are features like incremental linking, support for other architectures, and more linker flags.

(github.com)

Development linker

The Gilded Age Mystery: Luigi Mangione, Henry James, and the Unknowable Act of Political Violence

2025-01-21

The Gilded Age Mystery: Luigi Mangione, Henry James, and the Unknowable Act of Political Violence

The murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione has captivated the public, leaving many to question his motives. This article draws parallels between the case and Henry James' lesser-known novel, "The Princess Casamassima," which features a charismatic young revolutionary grappling with conflicting desires for luxury and violence. Both the real-life event and the fictional narrative leave crucial details shrouded in mystery, fueling speculation about the psychology behind political violence and highlighting the limitations of realism in depicting such acts.

(theconversation.com)

Misc Political Violence Psychology

FOSDEM 2025: Statement on Planned Protests

2025-01-21

FOSDEM 2025 organizers issued a statement addressing planned protests against a controversial talk. The statement clarifies that the talk's inclusion wasn't influenced by sponsorship; claims suggesting otherwise are false. FOSDEM has always welcomed peaceful protests, provided they don't disrupt proceedings. Organizers urge protest organizers to contact them beforehand to ensure safety and fire regulations are met.

(fosdem.org)

Misc protest

A Naturalist's Artistic and Scientific Exploration of Butterfly Wing Color Patterns

2025-01-24

A Naturalist's Artistic and Scientific Exploration of Butterfly Wing Color Patterns

In 1897, naturalist Alfred G. Mayer published *On the Color and Color-Patterns of Moths and Butterflies*, showcasing unique color projections of butterfly wings. Mayer presented the tonal variations of butterfly wings as geometric patterns, attempting to reveal the underlying principles. However, his method was criticized by renowned naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace for distorting the patterns and hindering species identification. Despite this, Mayer's work transcends scientific research, representing an artistic exploration of color itself. His vibrant color projections remain visually striking today.

(publicdomainreview.org)

Tech natural history butterflies color patterns

Self-Driving Buses: The Next Frontier for Autonomous Vehicle Tech?

2025-01-24

Self-Driving Buses: The Next Frontier for Autonomous Vehicle Tech?

Facing a looming shortage of bus drivers and the inefficiency of robotaxis, self-driving buses are emerging as a promising solution. Unlike robotaxis, which exacerbate traffic congestion, autonomous buses offer increased efficiency. Imagry, a San Jose-based company, has successfully deployed Level 3 autonomous buses in Israel and aims to expand to Level 4 technology globally. Their cost-effective approach utilizes cameras and machine learning for high-definition map generation, ensuring safe and reliable autonomous operation. Competitors like MAN, Karsan, and Iveco are also actively developing self-driving bus technology, with supportive government initiatives in Europe and Asia. The widespread adoption of autonomous buses could revolutionize public transportation.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech buses

Goodbye Distributed Coordination: How Restate Simplifies Distributed Apps with a Single Log

2025-01-24

Goodbye Distributed Coordination: How Restate Simplifies Distributed Apps with a Single Log

Building resilient distributed applications remains a significant challenge. Developers often spend considerable time addressing failover strategies, retries, race conditions, and other complexities. This article introduces Restate, a novel approach that simplifies development by avoiding distributed coordination. The core idea is to treat all systems (message queues, databases, locking services, etc.) as a single log. Every operation is recorded in this log, and retries automatically read previous operation records, preventing inconsistencies and race conditions. Restate is an open-source project based on this principle, simplifying the development and maintenance of distributed applications and improving system reliability.

(restate.dev)

Development log

FBI's Warrantless Searches Deemed Unconstitutional, Sparking Calls for Section 702 Reform

2025-01-24

FBI's Warrantless Searches Deemed Unconstitutional, Sparking Calls for Section 702 Reform

A US court ruled that the FBI's warrantless searches of communications, conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), violate the Fourth Amendment. The ruling stems from a case involving 3.4 million warrantless searches in 2021. While the judge acknowledged potential exceptions for national security emergencies, the decision emphasizes that the government cannot circumvent warrant requirements simply because data is already held. This ruling reignites calls for Section 702 reform, with digital rights groups urging Congress to mandate warrants for searching US persons' data and increase transparency to protect civil liberties.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech Fourth Amendment

Amurex: Simplifying LLM Deployment

2025-01-21

Amurex is an open-source project aiming to simplify the deployment of large language models (LLMs). It provides an easy-to-use framework, enabling developers to integrate powerful LLMs into their applications with ease, without needing deep knowledge of complex underlying technologies. Find the project here: https://github.com/thepersonalaicompany/amurex. This project lowers the barrier to entry for AI applications, accelerating the adoption of AI technology.

(sansyrox.github.io)

AI AI Deployment

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

Building a Better Future with 'Plausible Fiction'

2025-01-24

This article proposes a novel approach called 'plausible fiction' to tackle real-world problems by constructing believable narratives that bridge the gap between our present and a desired future. The author argues that collective participation in filling the gaps within these narratives can transform fiction into reality. This process resembles a form of collective prediction and creation, potentially leveraging mathematical tools like applied category theory. The article uses a hypothetical platform, FutureForge, to illustrate how gamification and incentive mechanisms can encourage broader participation, ultimately leading to a better future.

(topos.institute)

AI future prediction applied category theory collaborative creation

Redis UNLINK vs DEL: A Deep Dive into Internal Mechanics

2025-01-21

Redis UNLINK vs DEL: A Deep Dive into Internal Mechanics

Both Redis' UNLINK and DEL commands remove keys, but their internal implementations differ. DEL synchronously deletes keys and frees memory, while UNLINK asynchronously queues the deletion for background processing. UNLINK's 'non-blocking' nature isn't absolute; it calculates the cost of deleting an object: if the cost is less than 64, it deletes synchronously; otherwise, asynchronously. The article delves into the Redis source code, explaining the implementation details of UNLINK and DEL, including key slot calculation, two-phase unlinking, and asynchronous deletion, and discusses the role of LAZYFREE_THRESHOLD.

(www.pankajtanwar.in)

Development

Has Our Respect for Complexity Vanished?

2025-01-21

This blog post explores the modern societal loss of understanding and respect for complexity. With automation and the information age, direct contact with complex systems has diminished, leading to a lack of appreciation for the intricacies of fields like agriculture and manufacturing. This lack of respect manifests in simplified approaches to complex problems in daily life and impacts education and future perspectives. The author argues that admitting 'I don't know' is a valuable trait, and respect for complexity is truly admirable.

(wilsoniumite.com)

Misc information age

libmodulor: An Opinionated TypeScript Library for Business Applications

2025-01-23

libmodulor: An Opinionated TypeScript Library for Business Applications

libmodulor is an opinionated TypeScript library designed to accelerate the creation of high-quality business applications. It employs a layered architecture (UseCase, App, Product, Target), emphasizing type safety and end-to-end testing. Developers are free to use their preferred database, frontend framework, server, and tools; libmodulor provides higher-level primitives to avoid boilerplate code and vendor lock-in. While still under active development, it's already been used in pilot projects.

(github.com)

Development Business Applications

X's Community Notes: Building a Community to Combat Misinformation

2025-01-20

The team behind X's (formerly Twitter) Community Notes shares their design process and philosophy for combating misinformation on the platform. Initially observing the difficulty in accessing accurate information online, they moved beyond traditional methods (internal review teams or media partnerships) which suffered from speed, scale, and trust issues. Inspired by Wikipedia's crowdsourced model, they developed Community Notes: users submit specific notes addressing individual posts, and an algorithm filters for notes deemed helpful across the political spectrum. This algorithm analyzes user voting history, identifying notes that bridge disagreements even among opposing viewpoints. Years of iteration and piloting led to a global rollout, significantly reducing misinformation spread and boosting user trust.

(asteriskmag.com)

AI

100% Unemployment: The Looming Threat of Automation

2025-01-24

Software engineer Mike expresses concern about the potential for widespread unemployment due to automation. He argues that AI and automation will soon replace many, if not all, jobs susceptible to automation, challenging the notion that technological advancements will create new jobs. He raises the critical question of how to define personal worth in a future where most people lack economic value, prompting reflection on societal structures and individual value.

(hyponymo.us)

Tech Unemployment

Icelandic Turf Houses: A Journey Through Time

2025-01-22

Icelandic Turf Houses: A Journey Through Time

This article recounts the author's journey through Iceland, visiting several remarkably preserved turf houses, including Laufas and Glaumbaer. These ancient structures, with walls and roofs primarily made of turf, offer excellent insulation thanks to their thick walls. The author details the interior layout, lifestyle within these homes, and the evolution of turf house design over time. The narrative includes a captivating interlude of unexpectedly encountering a traditional music performance in a Glaumbaer turf house. Furthermore, the article highlights other open-air turf house museums, providing a glimpse into Iceland's unique cultural heritage.

(rachelsruminations.com)

Tech turf houses historical architecture

South Korea's Democracy Defends Itself Against a Midnight Coup Attempt

2025-01-24

South Korea's Democracy Defends Itself Against a Midnight Coup Attempt

President Yoon Suk-yeol's surprise midnight declaration of martial law in South Korea was swiftly met with a powerful response from legislators and civil society. This near-coup attempt was thwarted within hours, highlighting the resilience of South Korean democracy. Decades of struggle against authoritarian rule have fostered a deeply networked society with strong civic engagement and near-universal digital connectivity. While political polarization remains a concern, the rapid mobilization against the attempted power grab underscores the strength of South Korea's democratic institutions and its citizens' commitment to defending them.

(carnegieendowment.org)

Tech democracy political crisis

Gartner Warns: Large-Scale VMware Migrations Are Long, Costly, and Risky

2025-01-21

Gartner Warns: Large-Scale VMware Migrations Are Long, Costly, and Risky

Gartner's latest report warns that migrating from VMware to alternative virtualization platforms will be a long, expensive, and risky undertaking. For organizations running 2,000+ VMs, migrations could take 18-48 months, with per-VM costs ranging from $300 to $3,000. The report highlights the complexity stemming from VMware's deep integration beyond just virtualization, encompassing networking, storage, and management tools. Many VMware users haven't started migration planning; Gartner advises starting early to avoid potential Broadcom price increases. Alternatives exist from vendors like Red Hat and Oracle, but migration still demands extensive planning and testing.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech VMware Migration

Bunster: Compile Shell Scripts to Static Binaries

2025-01-23

Bunster: Compile Shell Scripts to Static Binaries

Bunster is a project that compiles shell scripts into efficient, static binaries, enhancing portability and security. Instead of simply wrapping scripts, it leverages the Go compiler to translate scripts into native machine code, enabling cross-platform execution (currently Unix only). Bunster primarily supports Bash scripts, with plans to support more shells, and add features like a module system, static asset embedding, password and expiration locks. The project is in its early stages but has already implemented many core features and follows SemVer versioning.

(github.com)

Development Shell Script Static Compilation

Solar-Powered Backpacks Light Up the Future for African Children

2025-01-23

Solar-Powered Backpacks Light Up the Future for African Children

Innocent James, founder of Tanzanian startup Soma Bags, experienced firsthand the struggles of reading after dark due to lack of electricity in rural Tanzania. His solution? Solar-powered backpacks made from recycled cement bags. These innovative backpacks charge a built-in reading light while children walk to and from school, providing 6-8 hours of illumination – a cheaper and cleaner alternative to kerosene lamps. Soma Bags has sold 36,000 backpacks and is supported by the UNDP, demonstrating a sustainable and impactful solution to energy poverty and improving access to education for children in rural Africa.

(edition.cnn.com)

Startup African entrepreneurship

Dhruv Vidyut: Bolt-On E-Conversion Kit for Bikes

2025-01-23

Dhruv Vidyut offers a revolutionary electric conversion kit (DVECK) for bicycles and tricycles. Easily retrofitted, DVECK transforms any bike into an e-bike, providing a comfortable, efficient, and eco-friendly ride on any terrain. The company offers various options and welcomes business inquiries, including bulk purchases, dealership opportunities, and overseas imports.

(dhruvvidyut.co.in)

Hardware e-bike conversion kit electric bicycle

Ben Pence's Portfolio: A Clean Showcase of Design & Development Skills

2025-01-23

Ben Pence's website is a clean and effective portfolio showcasing his skills as a designer and developer. The minimalist design highlights his work, featuring a range of projects including web design, branding, and interactive experiences. His carefully curated case studies demonstrate expertise in visual design and UX, while readily available contact information allows for easy outreach from potential clients or collaborators. Overall, it's a highly effective and impressive personal portfolio reflecting professionalism and attention to detail.

(benpence.com)

Design portfolio website designer

UK Watchdog Probes Apple and Google's Mobile Empires

2025-01-23

UK Watchdog Probes Apple and Google's Mobile Empires

Britain's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched investigations into Apple and Google's mobile ecosystems, marking the first use of its new digital market powers. The CMA will examine whether Apple and Google are abusing their dominant market positions, including practices like pre-installing their own apps and imposing unfair app store terms. This move aims to protect consumers and businesses from unfair practices by Big Tech. Both Apple and Google stated they would cooperate with the regulator.

(apnews.com)

Tech tech regulation Apple Google

AI Mistakes: Unlike Human Errors, Harder to Predict

2025-01-23

Unlike human errors, Large Language Model (LLM) mistakes are random, unclustered, and made with high confidence. This article explores the unique characteristics of LLM errors and proposes two strategies: engineering more human-like LLMs and building new error-correction systems. Current research focuses on techniques like reinforcement learning with human feedback and methods like repeated questioning to improve AI reliability. While some quirks of LLMs mirror human behavior, their frequency and severity far exceed human error rates, demanding cautious use of AI decision-making systems and confining their application to suitable domains.

(www.schneier.com)

AI AI errors

Filesystems: More Perilous Than You Think

2025-01-23

A Deconstruct 2019 talk revealed shocking truths about filesystems: from the inconsistencies and difficulty of correctly using the file API, to serious bugs within filesystems themselves and the high error rates of disks, data corruption is rampant. The speaker delved into the atomicity issues of file writes and the challenges posed by different filesystem modes (e.g., ext3/ext4's data=journal, ordered, writeback). Even experienced programmers struggle to avoid mistakes leading to data loss or corruption. The talk also analyzed errors in popular databases and version control systems and suggested using databases instead of files to improve data reliability.

(danluu.com)

Development filesystem software reliability

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