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Tramway SDK: A Lightweight Game Engine Defying Turbobloat

2025-01-07

Tramway SDK is a lightweight game engine challenging the 'Turbobloat' of mainstream engines like Unity and Godot. Developed over three years, it aims to bring 3D game development to older hardware. Using software rasterization, it eschews the need for a graphics card and runs on 15-year-old hardware, lowering the barrier to entry and reducing e-waste. It ditches node-based systems in favor of entity class inheritance and streamlined coding. Optional editors and whitespace-separated value configuration files simplify the workflow. Tramway SDK also includes an RPG framework, supporting level streaming and Quake/Source style entity interaction for easy open-world RPG creation. While still early in development, its lightweight nature and ease of use hold immense potential.

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(racenis.github.io)
Game lightweight low-spec

Zaha Hadid's Bergisel Ski Jump: From Paper Architect to Pritzker Laureate

2025-01-12
Zaha Hadid's Bergisel Ski Jump: From Paper Architect to Pritzker Laureate

This article details Zaha Hadid's Bergisel Ski Jump, completed in 2002, a pivotal project that marked a turning point in her career. Previously known as a 'paper architect' for her stunning but unrealized designs, the Bergisel jump proved her ambitious visions could be built. This landmark structure, combining a ski jump, cafe, and viewpoint, seamlessly integrates into Innsbruck's landscape, showcasing Hadid's unique design sensibility. Its completion launched Hadid into a period of prolific building, solidifying her reputation and paving the way for future iconic projects.

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(www.dezeen.com)
Design Zaha Hadid Bergisel Ski Jump Architecture

Warning: Several Email Clients with Critical Privacy Flaws

2025-07-19

A blog post highlights several email clients with serious privacy vulnerabilities, including Evolution Mail, Balsa, and Geary. These clients suffer from linkPreConnect and dnsLink vulnerabilities, with developers showing a lack of response and even refusing to warn users. The author urges developers to prioritize user privacy, promptly fix these issues, and advises against using these clients until the problems are resolved.

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(www.emailprivacytester.com)
Tech email clients privacy vulnerabilities

Samsung's Breakthrough: Next-Gen Peltier Cooling Tech for Refrigerant-Free Future

2025-07-21
Samsung's Breakthrough: Next-Gen Peltier Cooling Tech for Refrigerant-Free Future

Samsung Electronics, collaborating with Johns Hopkins APL, unveiled a revolutionary thin-film semiconductor Peltier device in Nature Communications. This nano-engineered technology achieves refrigerant-free cooling, boasting a 75% efficiency boost over conventional methods. Already integrated into Samsung's Bespoke AI Hybrid Refrigerator, the technology intelligently switches between Peltier and compressor cooling for optimal performance and energy savings. The long-term vision? A completely refrigerant-free refrigerator.

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(news.samsung.com)
Hardware Peltier cooling

Decoding METAR, TAF, and Pilot Reports: A Comprehensive Guide

2025-01-07

This article provides a comprehensive guide to decoding METAR (Aviation Routine Weather Report), TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast), and pilot reports. METARs, issued hourly, provide real-time airfield weather conditions; SPECI reports are issued for significant changes. TAFs are issued every few hours and updated as needed. The article meticulously explains the codes and abbreviations within these reports, covering wind, visibility, weather phenomena, cloud cover, temperature, and altimeter settings, with examples and interpretations. Mastering these decoding skills is crucial for pilots to understand their flight environment and ensure safety.

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(met.nps.edu)
Tech Aviation Meteorology

The Non-Deterministic Nightmare of React UI Testing

2025-01-31

Testing React UIs presents a unique challenge due to its asynchronous update mechanism. Unlike direct DOM manipulation, React's renderer updates the UI asynchronously, making it difficult for tests to precisely capture the timing of UI state updates. Testing utilities like `act` and `waitFor` offer workarounds, but essentially boil down to 'eventually, something will happen'. Minor UI changes (like animation delays, state update order) can easily break tests, requiring extensive modifications to existing test suites. This results in high maintenance costs for React UI testing, a common pain point for many development teams.

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(blog.bennett.ink)
Development UI testing asynchronous rendering

Jevons Paradox: Efficiency Gains Lead to Increased Consumption?

2025-01-29
Jevons Paradox: Efficiency Gains Lead to Increased Consumption?

The Jevons paradox, in economics, describes how technological advancements increasing resource efficiency can paradoxically lead to higher overall consumption. In 1865, Jevons noted that improvements in steam engine efficiency actually increased coal consumption. Modern economics identifies a 'rebound effect' where efficiency lowers costs, boosting demand. The Jevons paradox occurs when this rebound effect outweighs efficiency gains. Debate exists on the rebound effect's size and relevance to conservation policy; some suggest pairing efficiency improvements with policies limiting consumption.

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(en.wikipedia.org)
Tech Jevons Paradox Resource Efficiency Rebound Effect

Web3 Insider Confesses: I Barely Use Web3

2024-12-27
Web3 Insider Confesses: I Barely Use Web3

A Web3 veteran since 2018 confesses to rarely using crypto, highlighting the industry's stagnation. Despite billions invested, Web3 products fail to meet the needs of non-crypto users, largely offering volatility and online entertainment. The author reflects on the industry's focus on developer tools over consumer products, noting the shortcomings of traditional finance—high fees, inefficiency—without driving mass crypto adoption. Personal concerns about compliance, wallet management, time constraints, and risk aversion lead him to prioritize simpler investment strategies. He suggests Web3 might be better suited for a future generation.

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(research.auditless.com)
Development cryptocurrency industry development

Calculator Forensics: Uncovering Chip Design Secrets

2025-01-19

This article introduces 'calculator forensics,' a technique that analyzes the results of embedded algorithms in calculators to identify the origins and evolution of different calculator chip designs. The author devised a standardized algorithm and compiled results from numerous calculators, creating comparison tables to trace the design history and technological lineage of calculator chips. This technique is significant for studying calculator history and chip design, particularly useful when official documentation is scarce, enabling researchers to understand the relationships between different calculators.

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(www.rskey.org)
Hardware chip design

Let's Encrypt to Offer 6-Day Certificates and IP Address Support in 2025

2025-01-16
Let's Encrypt to Offer 6-Day Certificates and IP Address Support in 2025

Let's Encrypt announced plans to introduce two new certificate options in 2025: short-lived certificates with a six-day lifetime and support for IP addresses. Six-day certificates significantly enhance security by minimizing the window of vulnerability. IP address support enables secure TLS connections for IP-accessible services using publicly trusted certificates, eliminating the need for domain names. The rollout will be phased, with general availability expected by the end of 2025. Users will need an ACME client supporting certificate profiles to obtain the short-lived certificates.

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(letsencrypt.org)
Tech SSL Certificates

Meta's Llama 3.1 Community License: Not Free Software

2025-01-26

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has released an evaluation concluding that Meta's Llama 3.1 Community License is not a free software license. The license not only denies users their freedoms but also attempts to grant licensors powers that should only be exercised through democratically-elected governments. Furthermore, its application to a machine learning application fails to address inherent software freedom challenges. The FSF urges the free software community to avoid using this license and any software released under it.

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(www.fsf.org)
Development

SQL or Death? CMU Seminar Series Explores the Future of Databases

2025-02-02
SQL or Death? CMU Seminar Series Explores the Future of Databases

Carnegie Mellon University's Database Research Group is hosting a seminar series, "SQL or Death?", exploring ways to either dramatically improve SQL's performance or replace it altogether. The online talks feature experts discussing advancements in query optimization and alternative query languages. Topics range from TypeScript stored procedures to innovative languages like PRQL and OxQL, promising a fascinating look at the future of database technology.

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(db.cs.cmu.edu)
Development query language

Microsoft Open-Sources Document Database Built on PostgreSQL

2025-01-27
Microsoft Open-Sources Document Database Built on PostgreSQL

In a surprising move, Microsoft has launched an open-source document database platform built on a relational PostgreSQL backend. The fully open-source platform, requiring no commercial licensing fees, suggests using the open-source FerretDB as a front-end. This signifies Microsoft's increased embrace of open source and offers a new option for the NoSQL database community. The database leverages two PostgreSQL extensions: pg_documentdb_core (optimizing BSON) and pg_documentdb_api (implementing CRUD and query operations). FerretDB 2.0 integrates with it, boasting a significant performance boost, with up to 20x speed improvements for certain workloads. This move is poised to challenge existing document databases like MongoDB.

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(www.theregister.com)
Development

Batteries Included vs. No Batteries: A Framework Conundrum

2025-07-04

This article explores the trade-offs between 'batteries-included' and 'no-batteries' software frameworks. 'Batteries-included' frameworks, like Express, offer ease of use and high integration, but lack flexibility. 'No-batteries' frameworks, such as Flask, demand more configuration but provide greater control. The author argues that the ideal framework balances both approaches, offering core functionality with plugin extensibility to meet diverse needs. The example of Vim's lazyvim distribution highlights the potential downsides of excessive 'batteries-included' features, leading to bloat.

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(mtende.blog)
Development batteries included

Laser Fault Injection on a Budget: RP2350 Edition

2025-01-18
Laser Fault Injection on a Budget: RP2350 Edition

This article details how a custom-built, low-cost laser fault injection platform was used to successfully bypass the secure boot mechanism of Raspberry Pi's RP2350 microcontroller. Using an infrared laser, the platform cleverly circumvented the RP2350's glitch detectors. A single laser pulse injected a fault, altering the boot ROM's instruction flow, ultimately revealing hidden data. The author provides detailed explanations of the platform's hardware design, software architecture, and the attack process, including manufacturing files and source code.

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(courk.cc)
Hardware Laser Fault Injection

Open Source Projects Could Monetize SBOM Fragments

2025-02-17
Open Source Projects Could Monetize SBOM Fragments

Scanning source code for licensing information is a laborious and often duplicated effort due to a lack of resource pooling among companies. This article proposes a solution: Open Source projects could sell SBOM fragments (components in CycloneDX or packages in SPDX with accurate licensing details). By sponsoring the project on GitHub, companies would gain access to continuously updated SBOM information, avoiding redundant work and ensuring licensing accuracy.

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(www.thomas-huehn.com)
Development Open Source Licensing Software Supply Chain

xorq: Simplifying Multi-Engine ML Pipelines

2025-03-27
xorq: Simplifying Multi-Engine ML Pipelines

xorq is a deferred computation framework bringing the reproducibility and performance of declarative pipelines to the Python ML ecosystem. It lets you write pandas-style transformations that never run out of memory, automatically caches intermediate results, and seamlessly moves between SQL engines and Python UDFs—all while maintaining reproducibility. Built on Ibis and DataFusion, xorq features declarative expressions, multi-engine support, built-in caching, serializable pipelines, portable UDFs, and an Arrow-native architecture. It offers both an interactive library and a CLI for a smooth transition from exploratory research to production-ready artifacts.

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(github.com)
Development

Medieval Italian Towers: A Legacy of Factional Feuds and Urban Planning

2025-03-25

Remnants of medieval towers dot the Italian landscape, testaments to a tumultuous past. Initially built by wealthy families as mini-fortresses and status symbols, these structures sometimes led to devastating tactics like burning down rivals' homes. Florence, grappling with the ensuing chaos and fire hazards, implemented height restrictions, leaving behind distinctive stone stubs as a legacy. These truncated towers, now a unique part of the cityscape, whisper tales of medieval family feuds and urban evolution.

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(www.exurbe.com)
Misc Medieval Architecture Italian History

K-12 School Shooting Database: A Chilling Account

2025-02-23
K-12 School Shooting Database: A Chilling Account

The K-12 School Shooting Database tracks all school shootings in the US, regardless of casualties, time, or day. Data includes gang shootings, domestic violence, shootings at sporting events and after-school activities, suicides, fights escalating to shootings, and accidents. This database aims to document the number of school shootings and the full scope of gun violence on school campuses. All uses must cite the source.

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(k12ssdb.org)
Misc school shootings gun violence campus safety

Zero-Downtime PostgreSQL Major Version Upgrade

2025-01-29
Zero-Downtime PostgreSQL Major Version Upgrade

The Instant team shares their experience upgrading PostgreSQL from version 13 to 16 with zero downtime. They tried in-place upgrades and blue-green deployments, but both failed. Their manual approach involved creating a new PostgreSQL 16 replica, gradually switching subscriptions and writes, and cleverly designing an algorithm to ensure zero data loss by briefly pausing new transactions. They encountered challenges like custom function search path issues and sequence data replication problems, sharing valuable lessons learned along the way.

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(www.instantdb.com)
Development PostgreSQL upgrade zero downtime database migration

CSS Hover Animation: Clever Use of Inverted Radius Shape

2025-02-02
CSS Hover Animation: Clever Use of Inverted Radius Shape

This article demonstrates a method for creating a cool hover animation effect using CSS. By cleverly combining an inverted radius shape, CSS variables, and `@property`, a smooth reveal animation is achieved where text gradually appears on hover. The code is concise and efficient, leveraging CSS masks and gradients for a visually stunning effect. This is a valuable CSS technique worth learning, suitable for developers with some CSS experience.

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(css-tip.com)
Design CSS tricks

Serbia: A Digital Prison – State Surveillance and the Suppression of Civil Society

2025-01-03
Serbia: A Digital Prison – State Surveillance and the Suppression of Civil Society

Amnesty International's report reveals Serbia's use of surveillance technology and digital repression to control and suppress civil society. The report details widespread use of spyware, including NSO Group's Pegasus and a newly disclosed domestically-produced Android spyware, NoviSpy, along with Cellebrite's UFED tools against environmental activists and protest leaders. This constitutes a serious human rights violation and attack on freedom of expression.

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(www.amnesty.org)
Tech digital repression surveillance technology human rights

From Vinyl to Streaming: A Music Lover's Nostalgic Journey Through Audio Formats

2025-02-18

A seasoned music enthusiast shares their nostalgic perspective on various physical music formats, ranking them based on sound quality, convenience, and durability. CDs top the list for their pristine audio, though somewhat sterile; Minidiscs follow closely, offering portability and recordability despite limited capacity. Vinyl enjoys a nostalgic appeal and artistic value, but suffers from inherent sound quality limitations. The journey then descends through MP3 players, shellac records, pianola rolls, wax cylinders, and ultimately to the notoriously poor quality of cassette tapes, highlighting the evolution of music formats and their respective strengths and weaknesses.

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(www.sicpers.info)
Misc audio formats

Alibaba Unveils Qwen2.5-Max: A Massive MoE Language Model

2025-01-28
Alibaba Unveils Qwen2.5-Max: A Massive MoE Language Model

Alibaba has released Qwen2.5-Max, a large-scale Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model pre-trained on over 20 trillion tokens and further refined with supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning from human feedback. Benchmarks like MMLU-Pro, LiveCodeBench, LiveBench, and Arena-Hard show Qwen2.5-Max outperforming models such as DeepSeek V3. The model is accessible via Qwen Chat and an Alibaba Cloud API. This release represents a significant advancement in scaling large language models and paves the way for future improvements in model intelligence.

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(qwenlm.github.io)
AI MoE Model Alibaba

Complete Decompilation of LEGO Island (1997)

2024-12-23
Complete Decompilation of LEGO Island (1997)

The isle project has achieved a functionally complete decompilation of the classic game LEGO Island (Version 1.1, English) released in 1997. The goal is to create an accurate representation of the original game's code, matching recompiled instructions to the original machine code. Both ISLE.EXE and LEGO1.DLL are fully decompiled and functionally identical to the originals. Further work focuses on improving code accuracy, naming, documentation, and structure. While some bugs may remain, the game is playable. The project uses CMake and recommends Microsoft Visual C++ 4.2 for compiling for optimal accuracy.

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(github.com)
Game game decompilation LEGO Island reverse engineering

cppyy: Seamless Python-C++ Interoperability

2025-07-16

cppyy is a runtime Python-C++ bindings generator that allows calling C++ from Python and vice-versa. It achieves high performance, low memory usage, cross-inheritance, and callbacks without language extensions or intermediate languages. Features include runtime template instantiation, automatic object downcasting, and exception mapping. Based on the Cling C++ interpreter, cppyy enables dynamic, interactive mixing of C++ and Python features and even supports modern C++ libraries like Boost. It works with CPython and PyPy, and is optimized for large-scale projects, excelling in performance and memory management.

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(cppyy.readthedocs.io)
Development Bindings

Temporal API: Revolutionizing Date and Time Handling in JavaScript

2025-01-30
Temporal API: Revolutionizing Date and Time Handling in JavaScript

The Temporal API simplifies date and time manipulation in JavaScript. It supports various calendar systems (like the Chinese Lunar calendar), handles time zone conversions seamlessly, and offers intuitive comparison methods. For example, it can calculate the next Chinese New Year or determine the duration until a future Unix timestamp. While `toLocaleString` behavior varies slightly across browser implementations, the Temporal API offers robust date and time operations, making it a boon for developers.

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(developer.mozilla.org)
Development Date Time

Ory Hydra: The Open-Source OAuth2 Server Powering ChatGPT

2025-03-20
Ory Hydra: The Open-Source OAuth2 Server Powering ChatGPT

Ory Hydra, initially a Go-based Keycloak alternative, evolved from a less flexible initial design to become a robust OAuth2 server. Focusing on building Ory Fosite, a library for OpenID Connect-compliant OAuth2 servers, and simplifying by removing user management, Ory Hydra now boasts impressive performance, reaching thousands of auth flows per second. The project's success is highlighted by its use in OpenAI's OAuth2 infrastructure, showcasing the importance of choosing clear, scalable technology and continuous optimization. This open-source project demonstrates a compelling journey from a student project to powering web-scale services.

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(www.ory.sh)
Development

Unmasking I/Q Signals: The Mystery of Wireless Communication

2025-07-30
Unmasking I/Q Signals: The Mystery of Wireless Communication

This article unveils the mystery behind I/Q signals, crucial in wireless communication but absent in traditional audio processing. It delves into the relationship between I/Q signals, sinusoidal waves, and the Fourier Transform. Using vector mathematics and the dot product, the article explains the orthogonality of I/Q signals and how they enable efficient modulation and demodulation. Finally, it clarifies why complex numbers are a more efficient way to represent I/Q signals in digital signal processing.

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(wirelesspi.com)
Tech I/Q signals complex numbers
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