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Ale, Coal, and the Unexpected Origins of the British Industrial Revolution

2025-02-16
Ale, Coal, and the Unexpected Origins of the British Industrial Revolution

This article unravels a little-known origin story of the British Industrial Revolution: German fuel-saving technology. In the mid-16th century, Germany, facing wood shortages, invented the 'wood-saving art,' an indirect heating process that dramatically reduced fuel consumption. This technology, through a series of patents and technological transfers, eventually reached England. Initially adopted by breweries for its cost-effectiveness, it unexpectedly spurred the large-scale use of coal. London's breweries spearheaded this adoption, leading to a surge in coal demand, which in turn propelled coal mining and related industries, ultimately transforming Britain's energy landscape and laying the groundwork for the Industrial Revolution.

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(www.ageofinvention.xyz)
Tech Industrial Revolution technology transfer energy revolution

Why You Should Ditch Query Builders and Embrace Raw SQL

2025-01-25

This article champions writing database queries directly in SQL instead of relying on query builders. Through several examples, the author demonstrates how SQL features (like `IS NULL`, `COALESCE`, `ARRAY_REMOVE`, `STRING_TO_ARRAY`) elegantly handle optional parameters, arrays, pagination, and batch updates, reducing complex Rust logic. This approach simplifies code, improves readability and testability, and enables easier database testing and debugging. The author argues that raw SQL is often cleaner and more efficient than complex builder patterns.

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(mattrighetti.com)
Development Database Queries

Ordinary Objects: No-Code Mixed Reality Prototyping

2025-01-27
Ordinary Objects: No-Code Mixed Reality Prototyping

Ordinary Objects is a no-code mixed reality prototyping platform enabling designers to rapidly create high-fidelity spatial app prototypes. It boasts powerful authoring features and a unique workflow for prototyping spatial user flows and interactions. Supporting import formats like WAV/MP3 audio, animated GLB 3D assets, and PNG/JPG images, it offers real-time feedback—no play mode needed. Ordinary Objects runs natively on major platforms and features real-time collaborative editing, streamlining teamwork.

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(ordinary.space)
Development mixed reality prototyping spatial computing

LG Halts XR Commercialization, But R&D Continues

2025-03-20
LG Halts XR Commercialization, But R&D Continues

LG has confirmed it's ceasing commercialization of its XR products, but will continue long-term R&D. This follows reports that the XR market's growth hasn't met LG's expectations, leading them to refocus on HVAC and robotics. Despite this, LG's partnership with Meta on next-gen XR devices remains, although the project has faced reported delays and cancellation rumors. This has fueled speculation that Meta may have sought alternative partners, such as Asus and Lenovo, to bolster its Horizon OS ecosystem.

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(www.uploadvr.com)
Tech

Bacteria Build Living Gels in Polymers: A New Twist on Biofilms

2025-01-26
Bacteria Build Living Gels in Polymers: A New Twist on Biofilms

Caltech and Princeton University scientists have discovered that bacteria growing in polymer solutions, like mucus, form long, intertwined cables—a kind of ‘living Jell-O.’ This is significant for understanding diseases like cystic fibrosis, where thickened lung mucus fosters dangerous bacterial infections. The discovery also has implications for studying biofilms (the slimy coatings on surfaces) and their industrial impacts. The researchers found that external pressure from the polymers forces the bacterial cells together. A theoretical model accurately predicts when these cable structures will form. The reason for cable formation remains a mystery: it may be a bacterial defense mechanism or conversely, a way for the body to expel the infection more easily. This unexpected finding opens up new avenues of research into bacterial growth and biofilm control.

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(www.caltech.edu)
Tech polymers biofilms

Coccinelle: A Powerful Tool for Linux Kernel Development

2024-12-26

Coccinelle is a powerful tool for Linux kernel development, used for pattern matching and text transformation. It enables the application of complex, tree-wide patches and detects problematic coding patterns. This document details Coccinelle's installation, usage, various modes (patch, report, context, org), and advanced features such as parallelization, using a single semantic patch, controlling processed files, debugging, and .cocciconfig support. Coccinelle leverages Semantic Patch Language (SmPL) and offers multiple modes for generating patches, reports, context information, and Org-mode reports, catering to diverse needs.

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(docs.kernel.org)
Development

Major Polar Vortex Disruption Imminent: Early End to Winter?

2025-03-22
Major Polar Vortex Disruption Imminent: Early End to Winter?

For months, strong polar vortex winds have been circulating the stratospheric polar region. However, forecasts predict a major disruption this weekend, with wind speeds dramatically decreasing and potentially reversing. This could lead to a sudden stratospheric warming, with temperatures potentially rising 25°C in just days. This event may displace the polar vortex or split it, potentially impacting spring weather with colder-than-normal Arctic air. The extent to which this affects the troposphere remains uncertain. This could signal a premature end to the polar vortex season, a phenomenon observed in past years.

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(www.climate.gov)
Tech polar vortex sudden stratospheric warming

Ruff: A Blazingly Fast Python Linter and Formatter

2025-01-21
Ruff: A Blazingly Fast Python Linter and Formatter

Ruff is an extremely fast Python linter and code formatter written in Rust. It's 10-100x faster than existing tools like Flake8 and Black, offering drop-in parity with popular tools while boasting built-in caching and automatic fix capabilities. With over 800 built-in rules and support for pyproject.toml, Ruff is used by major open-source projects like FastAPI and Pandas, making it a game-changer for Python development.

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(github.com)
Development Linting

The Arithmometer's Rocky Road to Success: From Obscurity to Industry Standard

2025-03-22

This paper tells the story of Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar's arithmometer. While not the first calculating machine, its robust design and mass production capabilities led to its eventual success. The paper traces the machine's journey from its first public appearance in 1820 to its widespread adoption in the 1870s, examining its mechanical development, marketing strategies, and user experiences. The arithmometer underwent significant redesigns, with its design and market positioning continually adjusted. Despite initial slow adoption and setbacks against competitors in exhibitions, consistent improvements and promotional efforts ultimately led to widespread acceptance and its crucial role in the computing industry.

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(www.mhs.ox.ac.uk)
Tech mechanical engineering

Leaving 18F: A Designer's Exit Amidst Political Turmoil

2025-02-18
Leaving 18F: A Designer's Exit Amidst Political Turmoil

A designer recounts their departure from 18F, a US digital services agency, due to the increasingly hostile political climate and restructuring under the new administration. The author details the positive work culture and collaborative spirit at 18F, contrasting it with the new leadership's thinly veiled attempts to downsize the workforce under the guise of evaluating 'technical wins'. Facing potential dismissal as a probationary employee, the author chose to resign. The narrative transcends a personal account, highlighting the political infighting within the US government, its impact on public services, and the implicit threat to federal employees.

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(ethanmarcotte.com)
Misc government layoffs political pressure

Coffee Shops and the Anti-Schelling Point: The Rise of Personalization

2025-03-09
Coffee Shops and the Anti-Schelling Point: The Rise of Personalization

This article explores how the variety in coffee orders avoids a 'Schelling point' – a solution that allows coordination without communication. The wide range of coffee options previously prevented everyone from ordering the same drink. However, the popularity of the flat white disrupted this balance. The author argues this diversity extends beyond coffee, reflecting trends in fashion, software development, and more. The decline of Normcore, the rise of personalized micro-apps, and the fragmentation of social media all point towards an era of increased personalization and decentralization.

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(interconnected.org)
Misc Schelling point

Seven Years Post-Google: Selling My Company & Becoming a Dad

2025-02-04
Seven Years Post-Google: Selling My Company & Becoming a Dad

Seven years ago, Michael Lynch left his job at Google to bootstrap his own software company. This year's update covers the sale of his million-dollar-revenue remote computer control device company, TinyPilot, for $600k, and the arrival of his first child. The sale allowed for better work-life balance; he's since refined a previous blogging course, started a book on writing for developers, and explored new technologies like Nix, htmx, and Zig, improving his fuzz testing workflow with Nix. He remains enthusiastic about independent founding.

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(mtlynch.io)
Startup

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.

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(github.com)
Development

Apache Hudi: Upserts, Deletes, and Incremental Processing for Big Data

2025-01-23
Apache Hudi: Upserts, Deletes, and Incremental Processing for Big Data

Apache Hudi is an open-source data lakehouse platform built on a high-performance open table format for ingesting, indexing, storing, serving, transforming, and managing data across multiple cloud data environments. It supports various data formats and sources, offers atomic commits with rollback/restore, and boasts fast upsert/delete capabilities. A scalable indexing subsystem accelerates queries, while support for snapshot, incremental, and time-travel queries provides flexibility. Integration with metadata stores like Apache Hive Metastore is also included.

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(github.com)
Development big data data lakehouse incremental processing

Building Artificial Synapses with LEDs: A Hardware Approach

2025-01-26
Building Artificial Synapses with LEDs: A Hardware Approach

The Global Science Network demonstrates how to build artificial synapses on a breadboard using LEDs as optocouplers. The article details the components of an artificial synapse: an inverter, an optocoupler made with two LEDs, an output buffer, a diode, and a variable resistor. Inhibitory synapses require an additional discharge transistor. Each synapse adds or removes charge from the postsynaptic neuron. For functional equivalence to biological cells, a proportional number of states must be transferred compared to the biological network. The accompanying video provides a more detailed explanation.

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(www.gsnetwork.com)
Hardware artificial synapse

WordPress Parent Company Sued for Blocking Third-Party Service Provider

2025-02-27
WordPress Parent Company Sued for Blocking Third-Party Service Provider

Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, is accused of breaching its promise of 'forever free' access by blocking the third-party service provider, WPE, leading to significant losses for WPE's clients. WPE alleges that Automattic abused its trademark rights by cutting off access to software updates, security patches, and plugins, and attempted to poach its customers. This has caused a major controversy, with WPE filing a lawsuit claiming Automattic's actions constitute fraud and unfair competition, harming the internet ecosystem.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech Lawsuit

Control Your iTerm from LLMs with iterm-mcp

2025-01-30
Control Your iTerm from LLMs with iterm-mcp

iterm-mcp is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server providing LLM access to your iTerm session. It features efficient token usage by only reading the output the model needs; natural integration allowing LLMs to interact with iTerm, answering questions or performing tasks; and full terminal control with REPL support. Easy to install via npx and integrate with clients like Claude Desktop, it prioritizes simplicity. However, it lacks built-in safety restrictions, requiring users to monitor model activity and exercise caution.

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(github.com)
Development

Dell Axes XPS Brand in Major PC Lineup Restructuring

2025-01-06
Dell Axes XPS Brand in Major PC Lineup Restructuring

Dell is dropping the XPS, Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision brands, streamlining its PC lineup to Dell, Dell Pro, and Dell Pro Max. This move aims to simplify product identification and better target the growing AI PC market. While nostalgic for long-time users, Dell claims the new branding will offer clearer product segmentation, improved durability, and enhanced performance. The change follows a controversial redesign of the XPS line and a shift toward emphasizing AI capabilities in its new offerings.

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(arstechnica.com)
Tech Dell rebranding

The Alchemy of Efficient LLM Training: Beyond Compute Limits

2025-02-04

This article delves into the efficient training of large language models (LLMs) at massive scale. The author argues that even with tens of thousands of accelerators, relatively simple principles can significantly improve model performance. Topics covered include model performance assessment, choosing parallelism schemes at different scales, estimating the cost and time of training large Transformer models, and designing algorithms that leverage specific hardware advantages. Through in-depth explanations of TPU and GPU architectures, and a detailed analysis of the Transformer architecture, readers will gain a better understanding of scaling bottlenecks and design more efficient models and algorithms.

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(jax-ml.github.io)
AI Efficient Training

A 300 IQ AI: Omnipotent or Still Bound by Reality?

2025-03-30
A 300 IQ AI: Omnipotent or Still Bound by Reality?

This article explores the limits of a super-intelligent AI with an IQ of 300 and a thought speed 10,000 times faster than a normal human. While the AI could rapidly solve problems in math, programming, and philosophy, the author argues its capabilities might be less impressive than expected in areas like weather prediction, predicting geopolitical events (e.g., predicting Trump's win), and defeating top chess engines. This is because these fields require not only intelligence but also vast computational resources, data, and physical experiments. Biology, in particular, is heavily reliant on accumulated experimental knowledge and tools, meaning the AI might not immediately cure cancer. The article concludes that the initial impact of super-AI might primarily manifest as accelerated economic growth, rather than an immediate solution to all problems, as its development remains constrained by physical limitations and feedback loops.

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(dynomight.substack.com)
AI Intelligence Limits

Google TPUs: A Deep Dive into Hardware-Software Co-design for Extreme Performance and Efficiency

2025-06-22

This article delves into the architecture of Google's TPUs, from single-chip to multi-pod levels, detailing how they achieve extremely high throughput and energy efficiency through systolic arrays, ahead-of-time compilation, and a unique interconnect network. The TPU design philosophy centers on hardware-software co-optimization, where the XLA compiler pre-plans memory accesses, minimizing cache usage and thus power consumption. The article also analyzes the impact of different topologies on training performance and how Google uses OCS to enable flexible TPU slice configurations, improving resource utilization.

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(henryhmko.github.io)
Hardware

Hand-rolled JSON Parser in Rust: A 800-line Side Project

2025-02-19
Hand-rolled JSON Parser in Rust: A 800-line Side Project

Inspired by a university compilers course, the author built a JSON parser in Rust as a side project. The article details the design and implementation, covering handling various JSON data types (strings, numbers, arrays, objects), error handling, and performance testing. The final parser clocks in at around 800 lines, including improved error messages for easier debugging. Performance tests, though not optimized, showed decent parsing speeds.

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(www.krish.gg)
Development JSON parser

GitHub Open Source Project: epub-tts Converts eBooks to Audio

2024-12-22
GitHub Open Source Project: epub-tts Converts eBooks to Audio

An open-source project on GitHub called epub-tts converts EPUB ebooks into audio files. Written in Go, it relies on ffmpeg and MacOS's `say` command to parse the EPUB into sections (chapters) and convert each section to an audio file. Currently an alpha release, it provides a simple alternative for when eyes are tired but the mind isn't. Future plans include code optimization, batch conversion, smaller audio file sizes, and support for more languages.

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(github.com)
Development ebook audio conversion

Math Academy: From the Valley of Despair to Math Mastery

2025-03-05
Math Academy: From the Valley of Despair to Math Mastery

This is a personal story about learning math, from initial overconfidence to hitting rock bottom in high school, and finally achieving math mastery through the Math Academy platform. The author uses the five stages of the Dunning-Kruger effect to illustrate the complexities of confidence and competence during the learning journey. Math Academy's AI-powered adaptive learning system provided an efficient and structured approach, ultimately leading the author to transition from teaching to a career in machine learning.

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(mikelikejordan.bearblog.dev)
Development math learning

A Hilariously Wrong History of Robotics

2025-06-20
A Hilariously Wrong History of Robotics

This humorous article recounts the history of robotics, from Da Vinci's mechanical knight to today's humanoid robots, covering the rise and fall of artificial intelligence. It's peppered with anecdotes, such as Westinghouse's Elektro robot and the cutthroat competition following Google's robotics acquisitions. It boldly predicts the future of robotics, including robots replacing programmers and AI's eventual dominance.

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(generalrobots.substack.com)
Tech

We Misjudge What the Opposite Sex Finds Attractive, Leading to Body Image Issues

2025-02-23
We Misjudge What the Opposite Sex Finds Attractive, Leading to Body Image Issues

A new study reveals that both men and women overestimate the opposite sex's preference for exaggerated gender characteristics. Participants created faces they believed the opposite sex would find attractive, revealing men overestimated women's preference for masculinity, and women overestimated men's preference for femininity. This misperception contributes to body dissatisfaction. The stronger the discrepancy between perceived self and ideal self, the greater the dissatisfaction. This suggests misjudging others' preferences not only skews our view of potential partners but also distorts self-image, potentially leading to negative behaviors like steroid use or eating disorders. Future research should explore these consequences.

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(www.bps.org.uk)
Misc body image gender

Revolutionizing the Moon Phase Watch Mechanism: The Lunase Approach

2025-01-18

This article delves into the accuracy issues of moon phase displays in watches. Traditional mechanisms use simple occluding disks, failing to accurately simulate the elliptical terminator and its varying speed during the lunar cycle. The author presents Lunase, a novel mechanism using multiple semi-circular gears working in concert to more precisely mimic the waxing and waning moon. A clever cam mechanism resets the phase automatically. The article also explores alternative moon phase display solutions, analyzing their feasibility and accuracy. The Lunase project culminated in a working prototype desk clock, proving the mechanism's viability.

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(genuineideas.com)
Design watch design mechanical design moon phase display

Danish Study Links Diabetes Drug Ozempic to Increased Risk of Severe Eye Condition

2024-12-17
Danish Study Links Diabetes Drug Ozempic to Increased Risk of Severe Eye Condition

Two independent studies from the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) reveal that patients with type 2 diabetes treated with Ozempic have a significantly higher risk of developing non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION), a condition causing severe and permanent vision loss. These large-scale studies, based on Danish registries, found Ozempic more than doubles the risk of NAION. Researchers recommend doctors and patients discuss the benefits and risks of Ozempic, suggesting treatment cessation if NAION is detected in one eye.

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(www.sdu.dk)
Tech Type 2 Diabetes NAION
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