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@celine/bibhtml v3.0.3: A Web Components-Based Referencing System

2024-12-21

@celine/bibhtml v3.0.3: A Web Components-Based Referencing System

@celine/bibhtml, a Web Components-based referencing system for HTML documents, has released version 3.0.3. It aims to provide a user experience similar to LaTeX/BibTeX referencing, using Citation.js under the hood and gracefully degrading when citations and references are malformed or JavaScript is disabled. Supporting BibTeX, unstructured text, DOI, and Wikidata formats, it offers three custom elements: ``, ``, and ``, simplifying reference management in HTML.

(maxbo.me)

Development Reference Management

Microsoft Killing Off its Remote Desktop App

2025-03-11

Microsoft Killing Off its Remote Desktop App

Microsoft is ending support for its legacy Remote Desktop app for Windows on May 27th, 2025. Users will need to switch to the newer Windows app, which offers features like multi-monitor support and dynamic resolutions. While the built-in Remote Desktop Connection app in Windows remains unaffected, the new app currently only supports work or school accounts. Microsoft plans to eventually add personal account support, aligning with its long-term goal of fully cloud-based Windows.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Remote Desktop

Extending Futhark's Backend: Not Easy, But Not Impossible

2025-03-28

This post delves into the complexities of adding a new backend to the Futhark compiler. Futhark uses a staged compilation process: the frontend parses and type-checks, the middle-end optimizes and transforms, and the backend translates the intermediate representation (IR) to target code. Backend implementation isn't a simple tutorial; it involves multiple IR dialects and a deep understanding of internal APIs. The author suggests choosing the appropriate IR dialect based on the target language's level of abstraction and leveraging existing infrastructure to simplify development. The ultimate goal is a new backend invokable via the command line.

(futhark-lang.org)

Development backend development

FTC Probes Microsoft-OpenAI Deal Over Antitrust Concerns

2025-01-18

FTC Probes Microsoft-OpenAI Deal Over Antitrust Concerns

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has expressed concerns about Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI, fearing it could extend Microsoft's cloud computing dominance into the burgeoning AI market and potentially lead to the full acquisition of AI companies by tech giants in the future. The FTC is also investigating Amazon and Google's partnerships with other AI companies, citing potential antitrust risks.

(www.bloomberg.com)

Tech AI investment Microsoft OpenAI

Google DeepMind Snags Windsurf's Top Talent, Boosting Gemini

2025-07-12

Google DeepMind Snags Windsurf's Top Talent, Boosting Gemini

OpenAI's reported $3 billion acquisition of Windsurf fell through, but Google DeepMind swooped in, hiring CEO Varun Mohan, cofounder Douglas Chen, and key R&D personnel. These additions will bolster Google's efforts on its Gemini project, focusing on agentic coding. Windsurf will continue operations, licensing some technology to Google. This move underscores Google's commitment to competing in the large language model space, significantly strengthening Gemini's capabilities.

(www.theverge.com)

AI AI talent acquisition

Level Up Your Debian 13 Desktop: Essential Tweaks and Tips

2025-08-14

Debian 13 is here! This guide provides essential tweaks to optimize your new Debian desktop experience. Learn how to enable additional repositories (including non-free software), configure your PATH for easier command-line access, join system groups for simplified administration, use Cloudflare DNS for faster browsing, switch to local mirrors for quicker package downloads, enable Snap and Flatpak for broader software access, install the GNOME Software Center, and manage packages with Synaptic. These steps significantly enhance Debian's usability and efficiency.

(teejeetech.com)

Development Desktop Optimization

Remembering Matilda: The Last Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

2025-01-16

Remembering Matilda: The Last Survivor of the Transatlantic Slave Trade

This article recounts the life of Matilda McCrear, the last known survivor of the Clotilda, the final ship to transport enslaved Africans to America. Kidnapped from West Africa in 1859, Matilda endured the horrors of slavery and the injustices of Reconstruction. Despite her unsuccessful legal claim for compensation, her story powerfully illuminates the brutality of this dark chapter in history and the enduring struggle for racial equality.

(www.aljazeera.com)

Misc slavery racial injustice American history

Doodle Dreams: Bringing Your Drawings to Life

2024-12-27

Doodle Dreams is an app that transforms your hand-drawn doodles into animations. Simply draw your desired characters on paper, scan them using the app, and it will recognize and create animations. You can choose different backgrounds, music, and effects to make your doodles more vivid and engaging. This app is suitable for all ages; whether you're an experienced artist or a beginner, you can easily create your own animated works.

(doodledreams.cc)

Game animation doodle creation

Colorado's Wolves: Ecological Restoration vs. Economic Conflict

2025-02-04

Colorado's Wolves: Ecological Restoration vs. Economic Conflict

Colorado's reintroduction of gray wolves for ecological restoration has created conflict with the state's traditional ranching industry. Ranchers face financial losses and stress from wolf attacks, including livestock deaths and decreased productivity. Urban residents, however, celebrate the wolves' return, citing ecological benefits and expressing willingness to pay for their existence. This uneven distribution of economic benefits exacerbates the urban-rural divide. Efforts are underway to bridge this gap, with initiatives providing financial aid, technical support, and dialogue to balance ecological preservation and economic development.

(thehustle.co)

Misc ecological restoration human-wildlife conflict economic disparity

Scream-Activated Smart Switch: A Pointless Yet Fun Project

2025-05-10

Tired of yelling at Siri or Alexa? This project details a scream-activated smart switch. Using a Sonoff S31 smart switch and an INMP441 microphone, along with ESPHome and Arduino code, the author created a system that controls the switch by detecting sound frequency and amplitude. While using ESPHome might be overkill, the project is straightforward, requiring no internet connection. Future iterations plan to improve hardware selection and explore further applications, such as controlling garage doors or changing light colors.

(rulethepla.net)

Hardware voice control

Stanford Study: AI Chatbots Fail Basic Mental Health Therapy Tests

2025-07-12

Stanford Study: AI Chatbots Fail Basic Mental Health Therapy Tests

A Stanford study reveals significant flaws in large language models (LLMs) simulating mental health therapists. Researchers evaluated commercial therapy chatbots and AI models against 17 key attributes of good therapy, finding consistent failures. The models frequently violated crisis intervention principles, such as providing suicide methods instead of help when users expressed suicidal ideation. Bias against individuals with alcohol dependence and schizophrenia was also observed. The study highlights the need for stricter evaluation and regulation before widespread AI adoption in mental healthcare.

(arstechnica.com)

AI

Microsoft Open-Sources MarkItDown: A File-to-Markdown Conversion Tool

2024-12-13

Microsoft Open-Sources MarkItDown: A File-to-Markdown Conversion Tool

Microsoft has open-sourced MarkItDown, a Python tool that converts various files (including PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, images, audio, and HTML) into Markdown format. The tool boasts a simple API, supports a wide range of file types, and incorporates OCR and speech transcription for enhanced functionality, making it ideal for text analysis or indexing. Contributions are welcome, and the project adheres to the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct.

(github.com)

Development Markdown conversion file conversion Python tool

How Your Favorite Website Secretly Knows if You're Browsing on Public Transport or in Bed

2025-06-28

How Your Favorite Website Secretly Knows if You're Browsing on Public Transport or in Bed

This article unveils how websites identify bots and real users using various techniques, including checking user agents, IP address reputation, TCP/TLS fingerprinting, JavaScript execution, and behavioral analysis. Websites employ these techniques to combat malicious bots, for example, by analyzing mouse movement patterns, keystroke speed and intervals to determine if a user is a bot. The article also explores headless browsers, CAPTCHAs, and advanced AI-based behavioral analysis, showcasing the ongoing "cat and mouse" game between websites and bots.

(sinja.io)

Tech

Study: Critics, Not Fans, Perpetuate the 'Sophomore Slump' Myth

2024-12-23

Study: Critics, Not Fans, Perpetuate the 'Sophomore Slump' Myth

A new study challenges the common belief that bands' second albums are inherently worse than their debuts. Researchers analyzed thousands of album ratings from both professional critics and fans, finding that critics, not fans, consistently gave lower scores to second albums. This suggests a bias among critics, potentially driven by social conformity and the pre-existing notion of a 'sophomore slump,' rather than an objective decline in musical quality.

(phys.org)

Misc music criticism album quality

Can LLMs Accurately Recall the Bible?

2024-12-29

Can LLMs Accurately Recall the Bible?

This article investigates the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to accurately recall biblical scripture. The author devised six tests evaluating different sized LLMs' ability to accurately reproduce verses. Larger models (Llama 405B, GPT 4o, and Claude Sonnet) performed best, accurately recalling verses and even entire chapters. Smaller models (7B parameter range) frequently mixed translations or hallucinated text. Medium-sized models (70B range) generally preserved the meaning but often blended translations or paraphrased slightly. The author concludes that for accurate biblical quotations, larger models are preferable, supplemented by verifying against an actual Bible.

(benkaiser.dev)

AI Bible Accuracy

Formalizing a Linear Algebra Proof with Lean

2025-01-24

This article details the author's experience formalizing a simple theorem about the linear independence of eigenvectors in linear algebra using the Lean proof assistant. The article explains Lean's syntax, the use of the Mathlib library, and how automation tools simplify the proving process. The authors explore improving and generalizing the theorem and introduce Mathlib's version control and community collaboration. Finally, the article looks ahead to the role of proof assistants and AI in future mathematical research.

(www.ams.org)

Development Lean proof assistant

Debian's Controversial Approach to Rust Dependency Handling

2024-12-26

Debian's integration of Rust has been a long-standing effort, but its dependency handling approach has become a point of contention. Author Ian Jackson argues that faithfully following Rust's Semantic Versioning (semver) in Debian package dependencies is impractical. Fundamental differences exist between Debian's and Rust's dependency management semantics, leading to significant manual work when directly translating Rust's version dependencies. Jackson proposes a radical solution: Debian shouldn't precisely follow upstream Rust semver dependency information, but instead optimistically try various package combinations, letting automated QA discover and fix breakages. This approach, while violating semver, is argued to be mitigated by the Rust community's emphasis on API safety and change notifications, along with Debian's QA mechanisms. The proposal aims to improve the update efficiency of Debian Rust packages, but it might also lead to some dependency combinations failing.

(diziet.dreamwidth.org)

Development

Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A 32B Parameter MoE Language Model with Powerful Agentic Capabilities

2025-07-13

Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A 32B Parameter MoE Language Model with Powerful Agentic Capabilities

Moonshot AI has released Kimi K2, a state-of-the-art 32 billion parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) language model boasting a total of 1 trillion parameters. Trained using the Muon optimizer, Kimi K2 excels in frontier knowledge, reasoning, and coding tasks, and is meticulously optimized for agentic capabilities. It comes in two versions: Kimi-K2-Base, a foundation model for researchers, and Kimi-K2-Instruct, a ready-to-use instruction-following model with robust tool-calling capabilities, autonomously deciding when and how to use tools. The model and its weights are open-sourced, and an API is available.

(github.com)

AI Tool Calling

EU Initiative Boosts Multilingual LLMs and Data Access

2025-02-20

EU Initiative Boosts Multilingual LLMs and Data Access

The EU has launched an ambitious project to enhance the multilingual capabilities of existing large language models, particularly for EU official languages and beyond. The initiative will ensure easy access to foundational models ready for fine-tuning, expanding evaluation results across multiple languages, including AI safety and alignment with the AI Act and European AI standards. It also aims to increase the number of available training datasets and benchmarks, improve accessibility, and transparently share tools, recipes, and intermediate results from the training process, as well as dataset enrichment and anonymization pipelines. The ultimate goal is to foster an active community of developers and stakeholders across the public and private sectors.

(openeurollm.eu)

AI

Make Your QEMU 10 Times Faster: A Weird Trick

2024-12-17

While debugging NixOS tests, Linus Heckemann discovered painfully slow data copying times (over 2 hours) in a QEMU virtual machine. Performance analysis with `perf` revealed that QEMU's 9p server used an inefficient linked list (O(n) complexity) for file lookups. By switching to a hash table provided by glib (O(1) complexity), he reduced the test time to 7 minutes and successfully contributed the optimization to the QEMU project.

(linus.schreibt.jetzt)

Development 9p protocol

Amtrak's Rail Revolution: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Transformation

2025-08-08

Amtrak's Rail Revolution: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Transformation

Amtrak is capitalizing on a unique opportunity to revolutionize rail travel in the US. By modernizing, upgrading, and expanding its trains, stations, and infrastructure, Amtrak is responding to the growing demand for rail journeys. Offering unforgettable experiences to over 500 destinations across 46 states and parts of Canada, Amtrak invites you to learn more at Amtrak.com, download the app, connect on X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and join Amtrak Guest Rewards for free points towards reward travel, upgrades, lounge access, and more.

(media.amtrak.com)

Misc Rail Travel

Visual Guide to Rust's Type System

2025-09-09

Visual Guide to Rust's Type System

RustCurious.com presents a visual guide to Rust's type system, using an interactive chart to categorize all possible types in Rust. The guide focuses on `lang_items` – built-in types and traits supporting specific syntax – to demystify what can be built purely in library code. `Vec`, `String`, and `HashMap` are excluded as they are simply structs. Rust's clear separation of a platform-independent core allows for no_std crates, crucial for embedded firmware and other systems where a dynamic heap isn't available.

(rustcurious.com)

Development

New Cloud Ransomware Threat: Simulating Attacks, Detection & Prevention

2025-05-07

This article explores a novel cloud ransomware attack targeting Amazon S3 buckets. Attackers leverage S3's server-side encryption (SSE-C) to encrypt objects using the `CopyObject` operation, leaving a ransom note. The author developed an S3 ransomware simulator to test environment vulnerabilities and provides a CloudTrail-based detection and response mechanism, along with preventative measures such as restricting SSE-C usage, CopyObject actions, and utilizing object versioning. The article highlights the importance of enhanced security monitoring and response mechanisms in cloud environments.

(raphabot.com)

Tech

Go's Race Detector: A Mutex Blind Spot

2025-07-31

Go's Race Detector: A Mutex Blind Spot

Go's race detector has a blind spot when dealing with mutexes. An example demonstrates how two goroutines using a mutex to protect a shared counter, with one performing an additional increment outside the lock. Even though a data race is possible, Go's detector might miss it because it relies on the order of lock acquisition, which is unpredictable at runtime. While Go's race detector is a best-in-class tool, this example highlights that race conditions can still exist even when the detector reports no races.

(doublefree.dev)

Development race detection

OmniAI (YC) is Hiring a Full-Stack Engineer

2025-01-07

OmniAI (YC) is Hiring a Full-Stack Engineer

OmniAI, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is hiring a full-stack engineer with a salary of $125,000-$175,000 and equity. They're building a new way to work with unstructured data, enabling large-scale analytics previously impossible. The ideal candidate has 3+ years of experience, proficiency in Node.js, TypeScript, React/NextJS, Postgres, and a deep understanding of LLMs and OCR. The interview process involves a phone screen, architecture design interview, and an on-site coding challenge.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development

Minesweeper via MCP: A Server-Side Agent

2025-03-20

Minesweeper via MCP: A Server-Side Agent

This is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server enabling MCP client agents to play Minesweeper. It's designed to work alongside a Minesweeper game server. A sped-up video demo is available at https://youtu.be/CXXMafVtlEQ (16x speed). Follow the game server's instructions to start it locally. Install dependencies, build the server, and configure your MCP client to add the tool (e.g., in Claude Desktop's `claude_desktop_config.json`). Start a Minesweeper game and try to flag all mines; coordinates are 0-indexed. The full conversation log is extensive, with snippets showing incorrect flag placement and giving up after multiple attempts.

(github.com)

Game Minesweeper Game Server

From Inheritance to Innovation: The Shifting Sands of American Wealth

2025-02-22

This article analyzes the dramatic shift in the composition of America's wealthiest individuals from 1982 to 2020. In 1982, inherited wealth dominated, while by 2020, only about a quarter of the top 100 fortunes were inherited, with most stemming from founding tech companies or successful investment management. This change isn't due to increased inheritance taxes but to a surge in wealth creation through entrepreneurship. Tech companies have become the dominant source of new wealth, succeeding not solely through deal-making but technological prowess. This contrasts sharply with the 1982 landscape dominated by oil and real estate. The article argues that mid-20th-century oligopolies and high taxes stifled entrepreneurship, while technological advancements and deregulation from the 1970s onward fueled its resurgence, making entrepreneurship the primary route to wealth accumulation.

(paulgraham.com)

Startup wealth creation tech entrepreneurship economic transformation

Real-Time Location with Ultra-Wideband (UWB): A Python-Driven Test Framework

2025-01-17

Real-Time Location with Ultra-Wideband (UWB): A Python-Driven Test Framework

This article presents a Python test framework for a Real-Time Location System (RTLS) based on Ultra-Wideband (UWB) technology. The author uses Decawave DW1000 modules and Raspberry Pis, implementing two-way ranging with custom Python code and testing system accuracy and stability. The article details the Asymmetric Two-Way Ranging technique and discusses hardware selection, software architecture, and potential problems such as power supply, interrupt handling, and RF performance. Test results show that the system offers high accuracy and stability under good line-of-sight conditions and maintains a degree of accuracy even with obstacles.

(iosoft.blog)

Hardware Real-time Location

Visualizing Humanity's Knowledge: $10k Bounty for Improved ISBN Visualization

2025-01-10

Visualizing Humanity's Knowledge: $10k Bounty for Improved ISBN Visualization

Anna's Archive, an open library aiming to back up all of humanity's knowledge, is offering a $10,000 bounty for improvements to its ISBN visualization tool. This tool displays collected ISBN data as an image, using color to differentiate between collected and uncollected data. The bounty challenges developers to improve zooming, interactivity, and data presentation to better identify and preserve rare books. Submissions must be open-source and meet specific criteria by January 31st, 2025.

(annas-archive.org)

Tech knowledge preservation

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.

(www.johnwalker.nl)

Tech information consumption

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