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US-Funded International Broadcasters Under Threat

2025-09-06

US-Funded International Broadcasters Under Threat

For decades, the U.S. government has funded international broadcasters, providing news and information to authoritarian countries and countering censorship. However, a new appointee in the Trump administration is attempting to defund and dismantle these outlets, leading to legal battles. This move not only threatens the survival of these broadcasters but also allows countries like China and Russia to fill the information void with their propaganda, posing a threat to U.S. national security. The cuts also jeopardize America's efforts to combat censorship and disinformation globally.

(www.theatlantic.com)

Tech international broadcasting

64KB Minimalism: Japanese Demoscener 0b5vr's GLSL Techno Live Set

2025-09-06

64KB Minimalism: Japanese Demoscener 0b5vr's GLSL Techno Live Set

Japanese demoscener 0b5vr stunned Revision 2023 with his 64KB GLSL Techno live set, "0b5vr GLSL Techno Live Set." This wasn't a simple recording; it's a masterful blend of techno demos, live coding, and 64K intros. Working solo for a year, 0b5vr built the engine, a live coding environment, composed the music, and created the visuals. The interview details the struggles and joys of the creation process, offering unique insights into demoscene culture, live music performance, and the state of the Japanese demoscene. He even explains why even non-programmers can appreciate his work, showcasing the inclusivity and artistry of the demoscene.

(6octaves.com)

Game Live Coding

LA Highway Guardrail Thefts Surge: AI Surveillance Offers a Potential Solution

2025-09-06

LA Highway Guardrail Thefts Surge: AI Surveillance Offers a Potential Solution

A surge in guardrail thefts on Los Angeles freeways is jeopardizing public safety. Over the past two years, repairs have cost over $62,000. Thieves target aluminum guardrails due to rising aluminum prices and ease of resale at scrap yards. Caltrans' attempts to deter theft by welding bolts have failed, leading them to consider fiberglass composite materials. Beyond guardrails, copper wire and cable theft also plagues the city, disrupting essential infrastructure like power and transit. AI surveillance systems are being deployed in some areas to detect and predict suspicious activity, offering a new approach to combating metal theft.

(laist.com)

Tech metal theft infrastructure security

The Secret History of Pigments: From Prehistoric Cave Paintings to Contemporary Art

2025-09-06

This article explores the origins, creation processes, and cultural significance of various pigments, tracing their journey from prehistoric humans using ochre in cave paintings to modern artists' exploration of color. It delves into pigments like ochre, bone black, ultramarine, Tyrian purple, Venetian ceruse, and the Pantone system, revealing their historical narratives, societal impact, and artistic value, along with the symbolic meaning of color in different cultures. The engaging storytelling reveals the hidden darkness and light behind colors, and humankind's enduring pursuit of them.

(emergencemagazine.org)

Design pigments

MentraOS: Open-Source Smart Glasses App Development Platform

2025-09-06

MentraOS: Open-Source Smart Glasses App Development Platform

MentraOS is an open-source platform for developing applications for smart glasses, supporting models like Even Realities G1 and Mentra Mach 1. Developers can use the TypeScript SDK to build apps quickly and distribute them through the Mentra Store. MentraOS handles pairing, connection, data streaming, and cross-compatibility, allowing developers to focus on creating innovative apps. The platform is entirely open-source (MIT license) and boasts a vibrant community.

(github.com)

Development

Building a Homelab DNS Server with BIND: A How-To

2025-09-06

Building a Homelab DNS Server with BIND: A How-To

This blog post details the author's journey in setting up a BIND DNS server on a Raspberry Pi 4 running Fedora 42 to achieve digital sovereignty within their home network. The author meticulously guides the reader through the installation and configuration of BIND, covering the main configuration file (`/etc/named.conf`), forward zone file (`/var/named/forward.homelab.jhw`), and reverse zone files (`/var/named/reverse.homelab.jhw` and `/var/named/reverse2.homelab.jhw`). Crucially, the importance of incrementing the serial number after any zone file modifications is stressed to prevent DNS issues. The post concludes with a successful test using `nslookup`, demonstrating the resolution of hostnames within the home network.

(jan.wildeboer.net)

Development Home Network

Optimizing UTF-8 Decoding with a Lookup Table: Branchless Approach

2025-09-06

Optimizing UTF-8 Decoding with a Lookup Table: Branchless Approach

This article explores optimizing UTF-8 decoding by using a lookup table to avoid branch prediction overhead. The author details creating a 256-byte lookup table that maps the lead byte of a UTF-8 sequence to its length. This replaces branching with simple array access, improving decoding efficiency. While adding a 256-byte memory cost, this approach can significantly boost performance in many scenarios.

(nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com)

Development Decoding Lookup Table

Paris Fights Heatwaves with Innovative River-Based Cooling

2025-09-06

Paris Fights Heatwaves with Innovative River-Based Cooling

Facing increasingly severe summer heat waves, Paris is aggressively developing an innovative system that uses the Seine River water to cool buildings. This system transfers heat from buildings to the river water through heat exchangers, maintaining high cooling efficiency even when the river water is warm in summer, reaching up to 15 times the efficiency of conventional air conditioning in winter. However, with rising summer temperatures, the system faces new challenges. How to further improve cooling capacity while protecting the environment has become a crucial issue for Paris to address.

(www.wired.com)

Tech urban cooling

Rendering the Impossible: Introducing Meschers

2025-09-06

Representing impossible objects – geometric constructions perceivable but not physically realizable – has been a challenge in computer graphics. Existing methods, like cutting or bending, disrupt geometry, hindering downstream processing. This paper introduces Meschers, a novel mesh representation based on discrete exterior calculus. Instead of 3D vertex positions, Meschers store 2D screen-space positions and per-edge depth differences, allowing representation of Escher-like impossibilities. This enables standard geometry processing operations like smoothing, heat diffusion, and geodesic distance queries, as well as inverse rendering, deforming possible shapes into impossible ones. Meschers offer new avenues for understanding human visual perception and expanding computer graphics capabilities.

(anadodik.github.io)

Development impossible objects geometry processing

Google Kills Cloud Support for 1st and 2nd Gen Nest Thermostats: Smart Home Reliability Crisis?

2025-09-06

Google Kills Cloud Support for 1st and 2nd Gen Nest Thermostats: Smart Home Reliability Crisis?

Google's announcement to end cloud support for its 1st and 2nd generation Nest thermostats has sparked concerns among users. While the thermostats will continue to function locally, control via the Nest or Home apps, and integration with smart home platforms like Hubitat, will be lost. Many users face the prospect of replacing numerous thermostats. Alternatives suggested include locally controlled Zigbee/Z-wave thermostats or Ecobee thermostats (used with Home Assistant) for improved reliability and future compatibility. However, even newer Nest models with Matter support have limited functionality, raising questions about the long-term reliability of smart home devices and prompting a wider discussion on planned obsolescence.

(community.hubitat.com)

Hardware Cloud Dependency Nest thermostat device compatibility

Tesla's FSD: From Full Self-Driving to Advanced Driver-Assistance System

2025-09-06

Tesla's long-standing promise of unsupervised autonomous driving with its Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability remains unfulfilled. Tesla has quietly redefined FSD, downgrading it from fully autonomous driving to an "advanced driver-assistance system," no longer promising unsupervised self-driving. This shift is linked to Elon Musk's massive stock option bonus package, which hinges on the number of Tesla FSD subscribers. While seemingly tying Musk's reward to FSD delivery, the new definition allows even the current version—requiring constant driver supervision—to easily meet the criteria. This raises concerns about Tesla's misleading marketing and bait-and-switch tactics, highlighting the massive gap between its promises and the reality of its autonomous driving technology.

(electrek.co)

Tech

DIY Website Font: A Calligraphr Success Story

2025-09-06

DIY Website Font: A Calligraphr Success Story

To personalize his website, the author embarked on a quest to create a custom handwritten font. Initial attempts using open-source tools like Inkscape and FontForge proved frustrating due to their clunky UIs. He switched to the paid service Calligraphr, which uses a print-write-scan workflow. Calligraphr's intuitive interface and powerful features enabled efficient font creation. The author praises Calligraphr's fair pricing and user-friendly data handling, contrasting it favorably with other services.

(chameth.com)

Design website personalization

Building a Space Flight Sim in Clojure: A 5-Year Odyssey

2025-09-06

Building a Space Flight Sim in Clojure: A 5-Year Odyssey

This post details a five-year journey building a space flight simulator using Clojure. The author tackled challenging 3D rendering aspects first (planets, atmosphere, shadows, volumetric clouds), drawing inspiration from the open-sourced Orbiter simulator. The project leverages numerous libraries, including the LWJGL suite for graphics and input, Jolt Physics for the physics engine, and Clojure's strengths like immutable values and safe parallelism. The author delves into atmospheric rendering, planet rendering techniques using NASA data, OpenGL shader templating, performance optimization, build processes, and Steam deployment. While core features are complete, future plans include adding cockpits, moons, and space stations.

(www.wedesoft.de)

Game Space Flight Simulator

The Subtle Art of Animation in UI Design

2025-09-06

The Subtle Art of Animation in UI Design

This article delves into the art of using animation effectively in user interface design. Well-executed animations can make an interface feel faster, more enjoyable, and even memorable. However, poorly implemented animations can have the opposite effect. The key takeaway is that animations should always serve a purpose – explaining a feature, improving responsiveness, or adding a touch of delight. Crucially, the frequency and speed of animations are critical; high-frequency interactions should generally avoid animation, and animations should aim for speeds under 300ms to maintain responsiveness. The article concludes that great UI design isn't about animating everything; sometimes, the best animation is no animation at all.

(emilkowal.ski)

Design animation design

Record-Low-Loss Hollow-Core Fiber Achieves 45% Faster Data Transmission

2025-09-06

Record-Low-Loss Hollow-Core Fiber Achieves 45% Faster Data Transmission

Researchers from the University of Southampton and Microsoft have developed a novel hollow-core fiber (HCF) with a record-low attenuation of 0.091 dB/km at 1550 nm, significantly outperforming traditional silica fibers. This breakthrough, achieved through advanced modeling to minimize loss mechanisms, enables 45% faster transmission speeds and opens the door for longer, unamplified spans in optical communication networks.

(phys.org)

Tech hollow-core fiber

Apple's Clone Wars: A Story of Brand Identity and Licensing Gone Wrong

2025-09-06

This article recounts the dramatic history of Apple's relationship with Mac clone manufacturers. From initial crackdowns to a brief period of licensing and eventual abandonment, the story of Apple's clone program reflects the fragility of brand identity and the complexities of licensing strategies. The article examines numerous clone manufacturers, including Unitron, Power Computing, and UMAX, and their intertwined relationships with Apple. It analyzes the reasons behind the failure of Apple's clone program, ultimately attributing it to factors such as unclear market positioning, profit conflicts, and poor timing. This article is not just a piece of tech history, but a case study in business decisions and brand management.

(tedium.co)

Tech Clones

16 Years of Commenting: A Zero-ROI Social Investment?

2025-09-06

16 Years of Commenting: A Zero-ROI Social Investment?

After 16 years of active commenting on platforms like Hacker News, Reddit, and Substack, a seasoned internet commenter is calling it quits. He's realized that his years of investment in online commenting yielded zero real-world friendships, a zero ROI on his social energy. He argues that comment culture is inherently transactional, consisting of one-off interactions with strangers. Platforms prioritize engagement over genuine connection, subtly diverting users' social energy towards boosting ad impressions. He's seeking more authentic human interaction, prioritizing the creation and maintenance of lasting friendships.

(sustainableviews.substack.com)

Misc internet sociality comment culture

Retro Robot Collection: A Treasure Trove for Robot Enthusiasts

2025-09-06

This website showcases a meticulously curated collection of robots from a passionate enthusiast. It features educational robots, Tomy toy robots, Omnibots, and a wide variety of other robotic creations, all neatly categorized for easy browsing. The last update date (January 14, 2008) hints at a time capsule of robotic history, offering a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of robotics.

(www.theoldrobots.com)

Misc robot collection retro robots

Gym Class VR: Hiring Founding UX Design Engineer

2025-09-06

Gym Class VR: Hiring Founding UX Design Engineer

Gym Class, Meta Quest's top-rated social VR game with millions of downloads and a 4.9-star rating, seeks a founding UX Design Engineer. You'll own the development of their upcoming mobile web app (embedded in native) and web surfaces within their flagship VR experience. This full-stack role demands expertise in Figma, React/Node/CSS, and a commitment to performance and accessibility. It's a high-impact opportunity for a designer-engineer who thrives in startups, values speed and polish, and wants to build for a highly engaged social audience. Backed by top-tier investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator, Gym Class is rapidly expanding into new sports categories after securing a licensing deal with the NBA.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Game VR Game UX Design Engineer

Massive Offshore Aquifer Discovered in the North Atlantic: A Potential Game Changer for Global Water Security?

2025-09-06

Massive Offshore Aquifer Discovered in the North Atlantic: A Potential Game Changer for Global Water Security?

Expedition 501, a multinational research project, has unearthed a massive freshwater aquifer under the North Atlantic seabed, potentially holding enough water to supply New York City for 800 years. Building on a serendipitous discovery in 1976, the expedition extracted tens of thousands of liters of water samples for analysis of their origin and usability. This discovery offers a potential solution to the growing global water crisis, but also raises challenges concerning ownership, sustainable extraction, and the impact on marine ecosystems. Further research will determine the water's age and suitability for consumption.

(apnews.com)

Tech freshwater resources

Columbia University Tests AI Debate Tool, Sparks Controversy

2025-09-06

Columbia University Tests AI Debate Tool, Sparks Controversy

Columbia University is testing Sway, an AI debate program designed to facilitate more productive discussions among students on sensitive topics like abortion, racism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the tool has been used by over 3,000 students from more than 30 colleges. However, the initiative has sparked controversy within Columbia, with some arguing that it fails to address root issues, potentially obscuring political and historical contexts and even being used to censor student viewpoints. Concerns regarding data privacy and the application of AI in education have also been raised.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Real-Time Blur Algorithms: From Box Blur to Dual Kawase Blur

2025-09-06

Real-Time Blur Algorithms: From Box Blur to Dual Kawase Blur

This article details the evolution of real-time blur algorithms, from the simple Box Blur to the efficient Dual Kawase Blur. Using interactive WebGL demos, the author progressively explains Box Blur, Gaussian Blur, Separable Gaussian Blur, Kawase Blur, and finally the Dual Kawase Blur, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses and performance of each. The article also explores frequency-domain image processing and downsampling techniques in blur algorithms, and how to optimize GPU performance. Ultimately, the author champions the Dual Kawase Blur as a fundamental building block for real-time visual effects due to its balance of performance, stability, and visual quality.

(blog.frost.kiwi)

Development blur algorithms

Plateshapez: A Tool for Generating Adversarial License Plate Datasets

2025-09-06

Plateshapez: A Tool for Generating Adversarial License Plate Datasets

Plateshapez is a research tool for generating datasets of adversarially perturbed license plate images. Designed with a user-first, safe-by-default, and expert-hackable philosophy, it offers a CLI and Python API to create reproducible, transparent, and ethically sound structured datasets. Users can customize configurations, adding various perturbations (shapes, noise, textures, warping), and controlling the scope of the perturbation (license plate region or the entire image). The tool is intended for research into the adversarial robustness of OCR and ALPR systems and includes comprehensive documentation and ethical guidelines.

(github.com)

Development adversarial examples license plate recognition data augmentation

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