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Pitfall! Reimagined: A Modern Take on a Classic Platformer

2025-01-22

The 1982 Atari 2600 classic, Pitfall!, returns as a browser-based experience! This isn't a mere emulation; it's a TypeScript rebuild meticulously crafted from the original's 6507 assembly language source code. While faithfully preserving the sounds and graphics, the remake introduces side-scrolling, mid-air control, refined trap mechanics, and more. Easy, Normal, and Hard modes cater to all skill levels. Whether you're a nostalgic gamer or a newcomer, prepare for a thrilling jungle adventure!

(meatfighter.com)

Game platformer

Super Snowflake Maker: A Winter Technological Wonder

2024-12-26

Super Snowflake Maker: A Winter Technological Wonder

The 'Super Snowflake Maker' is not just a toy; it's a technological marvel that uses physics to create intricately shaped ice crystals resembling snowflakes. A precise control system sprays water droplets into an ultra-low temperature environment, instantly freezing them into various snowflake forms. Its design blends scientific rigor with artistic creativity, offering a captivating spectacle. Science enthusiasts and art lovers alike will find unique enjoyment and inspiration.

(supersnowflakemaker.com)

Tech Physics Art

Rural Cell Coverage Failure Cripples 2FA for Elderly User

2025-05-14

Rural Cell Coverage Failure Cripples 2FA for Elderly User

An elderly woman in the Western North Carolina mountains struggles to access online services due to poor cell coverage preventing her from receiving SMS 2FA codes. Despite living a short distance from Asheville, her cell service is unreliable, contradicting the carrier's coverage map. While WiFi calling allows receiving messages from friends, it fails for 5-digit shortcodes used by many services. Switching to TOTP 2FA presents its own hurdles, requiring app downloads and technical knowledge, creating significant inconvenience. This highlights the challenges faced by rural populations with inadequate cell service and the need for more inclusive authentication methods.

(blog.stillgreenmoss.net)

Tech cell coverage rural connectivity

AI Code Assistants: Blessing or Curse?

2025-06-17

AI Code Assistants: Blessing or Curse?

AI coding assistants are becoming increasingly sophisticated, generating clean and efficient code. However, this can lead to 'premature closure,' where developers are seduced by seemingly perfect solutions and overlook deeper issues. The article uses a medical analogy, comparing AI to experienced doctors who might miss a rare condition due to their experience. The author advises developers to critically evaluate AI suggestions, actively explore multiple solutions, and avoid falling into the trap of quick fixes to improve code quality and prevent accumulating technical debt.

(www.shayon.dev)

Development

MCP: The LLM Interface That Might Actually Stick

2025-06-24

MCP: The LLM Interface That Might Actually Stick

Despite the hype, Model Context Protocol (MCP) isn't magic. But it's simple, well-timed, and well-executed. At Stainless, we're betting it's here to stay. Previous attempts to connect LLMs to the world—function calling, ReAct/LangChain, ChatGPT plugins, custom GPTs, AutoGPT—were cumbersome, error-prone, or limited. MCP's success stems from: 1. Models are finally good enough to handle complex workflows reliably; 2. The protocol is good enough, offering a vendor-neutral standard; 3. The tooling is good enough, with easy-to-use SDKs; 4. Momentum is good enough, with adoption by major players and the community. MCP simplifies tool and agent development, fostering tool reuse and ecosystem growth. It's poised to become the future standard for LLM APIs.

(www.stainless.com)

AI

Supabase Launches Declarative Schemas for Easier Database Management

2025-04-03

Supabase Launches Declarative Schemas for Easier Database Management

Supabase has released declarative schemas, a streamlined approach to managing and maintaining complex database schemas. By defining database structure in version-controlled .sql files, developers gain centralized management, reducing redundancy and errors. This is particularly beneficial for complex databases, like Supabase's own projects table with RLS policies and trigger functions, dramatically improving development speed—reducing schema updates from hours to minutes. This simplifies code reviews and makes parallel development significantly easier.

(supabase.com)

Development declarative schema

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-06-17

arXivLabs is a framework that lets collaborators develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Individuals and organizations working with arXivLabs embrace our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners who share them. Have an idea for a project that will benefit the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Unraveling the Mango's Mystery: A Scientific Journey Across Asia

2024-12-16

Unraveling the Mango's Mystery: A Scientific Journey Across Asia

The sweet mango, a beloved fruit worldwide, hides a mysterious past. Dr. Emily Warschefsky, a Ph.D. student at Florida International University, embarked on a scientific journey across Asia to uncover the mango's origins. Visiting botanical gardens and forests, she collected numerous samples of Mangifera species and used DNA sequencing to study relationships between different mango species. Her research revealed genetic differences between Southeast Asian and Indian mangoes, challenging the traditional view of a single Himalayan origin. Several scenarios are proposed, including multiple domestication events and hybridization between different species. Warschefsky's work not only deepens our understanding of mango origins but also offers new insights for mango breeding and cultivation.

(fairchildgarden.org)

Misc mango origin DNA sequencing

Tim Cook's Faustian Bargain: Apple CEO's Dealings with Trump

2025-01-27

Tim Cook's Faustian Bargain: Apple CEO's Dealings with Trump

This article critically examines Apple CEO Tim Cook's relationship with the Trump administration. The author argues that Cook, in pursuit of tax and tariff advantages for Apple, repeatedly ingratiated himself with Trump, including donating to his inauguration and meeting with other CEOs. This, the author contends, directly contradicts Cook's public image as a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, especially given the Trump administration's anti-LGBTQ+ policies. The author calls for critical reflection on Cook's actions and urges Cook to leverage his influence to protect the rights of his employees and customers, rather than solely pursuing corporate gain.

(joe-steel.com)

Tech Business Ethics Social Responsibility

SVG `<path>` Demystified: Mastering the Art of Curve Drawing

2025-08-22

SVG `<path>` Demystified: Mastering the Art of Curve Drawing

This blog post provides a comprehensive guide to the SVG `` element, a powerful tool for creating intricate curved shapes. It breaks down the commands – M, L, Q, C, and the notoriously tricky A (arc) – explaining their parameters and functionalities with clear examples and insightful analogies. The author tackles the complexities of the arc command, clarifying its often-confusing aspects. The post also covers the Z command, relative commands, and practical tips like smoothing chained Bézier curves. A must-read for web developers of all levels.

(www.joshwcomeau.com)

Development curve drawing

Colorado Redefines Nuclear Energy as 'Clean', Sparking Environmental Backlash

2025-04-02

Colorado Redefines Nuclear Energy as 'Clean', Sparking Environmental Backlash

Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill reclassifying nuclear energy as a 'clean energy resource,' despite opposition from environmental groups. The legislation allows future nuclear power plants access to grants previously reserved for renewables and contributes to the state's climate goals. Supporters argue new reactor designs are safer and provide stable, 24/7 power, creating jobs. However, environmentalists worry it diverts resources from wind and solar and poses environmental and community risks.

(www.cpr.org)

Tech

Demystifying Debuggers: Anatomy of a Running Program

2024-12-24

Demystifying Debuggers: Anatomy of a Running Program

This article delves into the low-level mechanics of a running program. Using the analogy of a video game cartridge on an NES, it explains how modern operating systems virtualize program execution. Key concepts like virtual address spaces, threads of execution, executable images, loaders, modules, and processes are detailed. The article explains how virtual address spaces, via page tables, map virtual addresses to physical addresses, allowing multiple programs to share physical memory without interference. It also covers thread scheduling, executable image formats (PE and ELF), the loader's role, and dynamic module loading/unloading. Finally, it summarizes the concept of a process, which integrates threads, modules, and virtual address spaces.

(www.rfleury.com)

Development debugger program execution

BZip3: A Superior Successor to BZip2

2025-02-01

BZip3: A Superior Successor to BZip2

BZip3 is a faster and more efficient successor to BZip2, boasting higher compression ratios and improved performance. This is achieved through an order-0 context mixing entropy coder, a fast Burrows-Wheeler transform utilizing suffix arrays, and an RLE with Lempel Ziv+Prediction pass based on LZ77-style string matching and PPM-style context modeling. Benchmarks comparing it against other compression algorithms, including tests on a massive archive of Perl source code, demonstrate its significant advantages. BZip3's performance is highly dependent on the compiler, with x64 Linux clang13 builds showing impressive speeds. The project is licensed under LGPLv3.

(github.com)

Development

ICO Slams Google's U-Turn on Fingerprinting: Privacy Concerns Raised

2025-01-03

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has expressed serious concerns over Google's decision to allow fingerprinting technology within its advertising products from February 16th, 2025. The ICO argues that fingerprinting is inherently difficult for users to control, undermining user privacy expectations and potentially replacing third-party cookies. Businesses, the ICO stresses, must adhere to data protection laws, including securing explicit user consent, ensuring transparency and fair processing, and upholding information rights. Draft guidance has been released, with a consultation launching December 20th to ensure compliance.

(ico.org.uk)

Tech fingerprinting

Roto VR: Revolutionizing VR Comfort with a Rotating Chair

2025-01-24

Roto VR: Revolutionizing VR Comfort with a Rotating Chair

The Roto VR Explorer chair automatically rotates to match your head movements in VR, significantly enhancing comfort and immersion. By tracking a sensor on your headset, the chair synchronizes its rotation, mitigating motion sickness and improving comfort during extended VR sessions. A Pro version and add-ons are available for productivity, such as working with virtual monitors. While some lag and control issues exist, Roto VR's core concept is innovative, particularly excelling in relaxed VR experiences, showing immense potential for future development.

(skarredghost.com)

Hardware Haptic Feedback

Don't Use Cosine Similarity Carelessly!

2025-01-14

Don't Use Cosine Similarity Carelessly!

This article explores the risks of over-relying on cosine similarity for vector comparisons in data science. The author argues that while computationally simple, cosine similarity often fails to capture semantic similarity and can be easily misled by superficial patterns like writing style and typos. The article uses examples to illustrate this problem and proposes several improved methods, including: directly using LLMs for comparison, fine-tuning or transfer learning to create task-specific embeddings, pre-prompt engineering, and text preprocessing. The author emphasizes the importance of choosing appropriate similarity metrics based on specific needs, rather than blindly using cosine similarity.

(p.migdal.pl)

AI cosine similarity vector comparison

PhD Thesis Written in Typst: A Triumph and Tribulations

2025-06-22

A PhD student recounts their experience writing their dissertation using the innovative typesetting language Typst. Typst blends the ease of Markdown with the power of Rust scripting, resulting in blazing-fast compilation speeds that allowed for rapid iteration on layout and style. However, Typst's bibliography management proved less than ideal, requiring extra tools and manual adjustments to meet stringent citation formatting demands. The author concludes that Typst is a great choice for those who enjoy programming and customizing tools but that LaTeX remains a safer bet for those who prefer an out-of-the-box solution.

(fransskarman.com)

Development PhD Thesis

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-06-16

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved share arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv only partners with those upholding these principles. Got an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Peak Design: A Masterclass in Product Design and Customer Support

2025-09-07

Peak Design: A Masterclass in Product Design and Customer Support

A Peak Design Roller Pro luggage handle broke after only 12 days of use. The owner posted about it on Reddit, and within two hours, the company's Principal Design Engineer responded with a video, not just apologizing but offering troubleshooting and a replacement. This exemplary customer service highlights Peak Design's commitment to product quality and customer experience, setting a high bar for other companies.

(www.core77.com)

Misc after-sales service

Wasm 3.0 Released: GC, 64-bit Addresses, and More

2025-09-18

Wasm 3.0 Released: GC, 64-bit Addresses, and More

Three years in the making, the WebAssembly (Wasm) 3.0 standard is finally here! This substantial update boasts significant features, including 64-bit address spaces, expanding the addressable memory to 16 exabytes; support for multiple memory instances, enhancing large application and data handling; a garbage collection (GC) mechanism, greatly simplifying the process of compiling high-level languages to Wasm; typed references for improved type safety and efficiency; and tail calls, exception handling, and improved vector instructions. These enhancements make Wasm significantly better suited for compiling high-level languages like Java and OCaml, broadening its applications.

(webassembly.org)

Development

Automating My Game Collection Catalog with AI: A Deep Dive

2025-01-23

Automating My Game Collection Catalog with AI: A Deep Dive

The author uses the latest open-source AI model, Qwen2-VL Instruct, to automatically catalog their game collection by taking pictures. The article details the entire process, from picture taking and uploading to game identification, data extraction, and saving. It delves into model selection, the trade-off between image resolution and accuracy/computation time, and the impact of image orientation on results. The author settles on 762x762 pixels as the optimal resolution and plans a follow-up article on matching identified games with real-world data.

(medium.com)

AI

Should Engineering Managers Write Code? It Depends on Your Definition of 'Coding'

2025-03-04

Should Engineering Managers Write Code? It Depends on Your Definition of 'Coding'

This article explores whether engineering managers should write code. The author argues that all managers should be 'in the code,' understanding the codebase and how their team works, but not all managers need to be primary code writers. Managers should focus on improving team efficiency, such as hiring, strategy planning, decision-making, culture building, mentoring, etc. However, in the current economic climate, managers face higher efficiency demands and need to find a balance between being 'in the code' and fulfilling other management responsibilities. The article suggests methods for managers to be 'in the code,' such as setting aside dedicated coding time, pair programming with reports, doing code reviews, and increasing coding involvement during specific occasions (e.g., prototyping or incident handling). Ultimately, the author concludes that the key is whether managers are 'in the code,' not whether they primarily write code.

(theengineeringmanager.substack.com)

Development Engineering Management Team Efficiency

The VUS Problem in Genetic Testing: Can AI Provide a Solution?

2025-08-17

The VUS Problem in Genetic Testing: Can AI Provide a Solution?

Genetic testing has advanced rapidly, but the interpretation of 'variants of unknown significance' (VUS) remains a major challenge in clinical genetics. VUS, genetic variations with unclear health implications, cause significant patient anxiety. This article explores strategies to tackle the VUS problem, focusing on multiplexed assays of variant effect (MAVE) to generate large functional datasets and leverage AI to improve prediction tools. While a complete solution remains elusive, MAVE and AI offer hope for precision medicine, promising to greatly enhance the diagnostic accuracy of genetic testing in the future.

(stetson.substack.com)

AI variants of unknown significance

Finnish Forest Exploitation Debate Archived Online

2025-02-26

Finnish Forest Exploitation Debate Archived Online

The National Library of Finland has archived years of online discussions surrounding the economic exploitation of Finnish forests. This extensive archive includes perspectives from conservationists and businesses, encompassing websites, articles, videos, and forum threads from various sources including news outlets, blogs, government agencies, forestry companies, researchers, and environmental organizations. The material covers topics ranging from carbon stock and biodiversity protection to economic utilization. Access is governed by Finnish copyright law and available at designated legal deposit libraries.

(www.kansalliskirjasto.fi)

Tech forest resources online archive Finland

Data Center Projects Face Community Backlash: 16 Projects Impacted

2025-05-26

Data Center Projects Face Community Backlash: 16 Projects Impacted

Numerous data center projects across the US have stalled or been delayed due to significant community opposition. From a $14 billion Arizona project to others worth millions, developers faced intense pressure from residents concerned about noise pollution, environmental damage, and strain on local resources. Some projects were withdrawn, while others were delayed or embroiled in legal battles. This highlights growing tensions between communities and big tech, and a rising public focus on sustainability and environmental concerns.

(www.datacenterwatch.org)

Tech community protests

Serverless Website Screenshot API: Powering Abbey AI

2025-02-06

Serverless Website Screenshot API: Powering Abbey AI

Gordon Kamer built a robust web scraping API to support Abbey, an AI platform. This API runs locally, taking a URL as input and returning website data and screenshots. Powered by Playwright and Docker, it executes JavaScript, includes security features like memory limits and process isolation, and returns a multipart response with JSON data, page content, and up to 5 screenshots. Access is controlled via API keys, with customizable memory allocation and screenshot parameters.

(github.com)

Development

Generating Stunning Point Cloud Geometry with Signed Distance Functions

2025-03-29

Generating Stunning Point Cloud Geometry with Signed Distance Functions

This article introduces a creative coding technique for generating point cloud geometry using signed distance functions (SDFs). The author uses the example of particles colliding with spheres to explain how SDFs can efficiently detect collisions and extend to more complex shapes. The article provides Processing code examples, including classes like Point, Vector, Ray, and Tracer, and SDF implementations like SphereSDF and BoxSDF, demonstrating how to use SDFs for sphere tracing to generate beautiful point cloud images.

(winterbloed.be)

Development signed distance functions point cloud

NY's $15 Broadband Law Takes Effect After ISP Defeat

2025-01-13

NY's $15 Broadband Law Takes Effect After ISP Defeat

New York's Affordable Broadband Act, requiring ISPs to offer low-cost plans to low-income residents, is now in effect after a lengthy legal battle. Following a Supreme Court decision against industry challenges, the law mandates $15 or $20 monthly plans with varying speeds. The law aims to bridge the digital divide, particularly after a federal program expired, leaving millions without subsidized internet. Small ISPs may seek exemptions, while larger providers face penalties for non-compliance.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech broadband low-income

GitHub Project ted: A Turing Machine-based File Editor

2024-12-18

GitHub Project ted: A Turing Machine-based File Editor

ted is a command-line tool written in Go that allows users to edit files according to the rules of a provided Turing machine. Inspired by the author's need to process log files, ted uses state machines to precisely extract the desired information. It supports various operations, including regular expression matching, sed command execution, variable assignment, capture and output control, and offers features such as multi-line capture, regex capture groups, and file head/tail movement.

(github.com)

Development Turing Machine File Editing State Machine

FTC Delays Enforcement of Click-to-Cancel Rule

2025-05-12

FTC Delays Enforcement of Click-to-Cancel Rule

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has delayed enforcement of its “click-to-cancel” rule until July 14th, pushing back the original May 14th deadline. The rule, part of the Negative Option Rule, requires subscription cancellations to be as easy as sign-ups. The FTC cited a reassessment of the burden of immediate compliance as the reason for the delay. While enforcement will begin July 14th, the FTC remains open to amending the rule if problems arise during implementation.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech click-to-cancel

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