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Society for Technical Communication (STC) Files for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

2025-01-29

The Society for Technical Communication (STC), a long-standing organization, has announced its closure due to insurmountable financial liabilities and declining membership. Despite years of cost-cutting measures and revenue generation attempts, the organization's debt and operational expenses exceeded its income. STC will cease all operations, including membership renewals, educational programs, certification courses, and all chapter and SIG activities. A bankruptcy trustee will manage the closure process and communicate with creditors.

(www.stc.org)

Misc Technical Communication Organization Closure

Game-Changing 90°C Hydrogen Battery Developed in Japan

2025-09-20

Game-Changing 90°C Hydrogen Battery Developed in Japan

Researchers in Japan have developed a hydrogen battery operating at a groundbreaking 90°C, overcoming previous limitations of high temperatures and low capacity. The battery utilizes a solid electrolyte to move hydride ions, enabling efficient charging and discharging of the magnesium hydride anode. Achieving near-theoretical hydrogen storage capacity (7.6 wt.%), this innovation promises a practical solution for hydrogen storage, paving the way for hydrogen vehicles and clean energy systems.

(www.isct.ac.jp)

Tech hydrogen battery hydrogen storage

Trump's 'Gold Card': A Million-Dollar Visa?

2025-09-20

Trump's 'Gold Card': A Million-Dollar Visa?

A new executive order from the Trump administration introduces a 'Gold Card' immigration visa program. Individuals donating $1 million (individuals) or $2 million (corporations) to the Department of Commerce receive expedited visa processing. Funds will be used to promote commerce and American industry. While aiming to attract high-net-worth individuals and generate revenue, the program sparks debate regarding fairness and potential risks.

(www.whitehouse.gov)

Misc gold card program high net worth immigration

mutool: A Swiss Army Knife for PDF Manipulation

2025-02-02

mutool, built on the MuPDF library, is a powerful command-line tool offering a wide array of subcommands for manipulating PDF files. From converting pages to PNGs and extracting text to merging multiple PDFs and extracting embedded images and fonts, mutool handles a diverse range of tasks. It's a versatile tool for both simple conversions and complex PDF operations.

(www.mankier.com)

Development PDF manipulation

FPGA-Powered Retro Console Recreates the PlayStation Experience

2025-01-28

FPGA-Powered Retro Console Recreates the PlayStation Experience

Retro Remake's SuperStation One, a $180 FPGA-based PlayStation clone, is set to launch in Q4 2025. This console boasts compatibility with original PlayStation accessories and supports other MiSTer FPGA cores, offering versatility beyond PlayStation games. Featuring modern connectivity like HDMI and USB-C, the SuperStation One also offers an optional SuperDock for playing original PlayStation discs. Its FPGA emulation ensures accurate game performance and low latency.

(arstechnica.com)

Game

The Barefoot Running Craze of 2010: A Short-Lived Trend with a Lasting Impact

2025-03-25

The Barefoot Running Craze of 2010: A Short-Lived Trend with a Lasting Impact

In 2010, a barefoot running craze swept the running world. Fueled by books like "Born to Run" and minimalist shoes like Vibram FiveFingers, people believed barefoot running offered performance improvements and injury prevention. However, the craze eventually faded, leaving behind altered running shoe designs and a reevaluation of running philosophies. While the benefits of barefoot running remain debated and injury risks exist, the movement pushed shoe manufacturers to develop lighter, more natural shoes, profoundly impacting modern running shoe design.

(runningshoescore.com)

Tech barefoot running running shoes running

Bluesky's Trending Topics: A Curated Overview

2025-01-23

Bluesky social media platform showcases a vibrant array of trending feeds, categorized into diverse interests such as science, pets, books, music, gaming, art, Black culture, and sports. These curated feeds, organized by keywords and hashtags, offer users streamlined access to engaging content. The platform also provides tools for users to create and manage their own thematic feeds.

(www.bskyinfo.com)

Tech Curated Feeds

Systemd: Red Hat's Stealth Takeover of the Linux Ecosystem?

2025-01-20

This article delves into the true motivations behind systemd, revealing how Red Hat leveraged its business interests in embedded devices to transform systemd from a simple init system into a core component of the Linux operating system. The author alleges that Red Hat used various tactics, including lobbying open-source projects to depend on systemd and poaching developers from other distributions, to exert control over the Linux ecosystem, sparking a backlash within the open-source community and leading to the resignation of several Debian developers. Systemd is described as a monolithic system with privacy concerns, and Red Hat's ambition is portrayed as creating the next Windows. The article concludes by advocating a return to community-driven development and recommending alternatives to systemd, such as runit and s6.

(unixdigest.com)

Development

Resurrecting the 1972 UNIX V2 'Beta'

2025-02-19

A researcher successfully recovered a working 1972 UNIX V2 beta system from magnetic tapes. This version differs from its predecessors in kernel size and a.out format support, considered an early beta of V2. While bootable on aap's PDP-11/20 emulator, it fails on others. Through a series of clever steps, the researcher created a bootable disk image and shared it publicly. This discovery provides invaluable material for researching the evolution of early UNIX systems.

(www.tuhs.org)

Tech UNIX history

Budget Watch Survives Deep Sea Test, Reveals History of Underwater Espionage

2025-01-31

Budget Watch Survives Deep Sea Test, Reveals History of Underwater Espionage

A $15 Casio F91W watch, after a simple oil-filling modification, was successfully taken to nearly 5,000 meters underwater by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and returned intact. This incredible feat highlights the surprising pressure resistance of inexpensive equipment and underscores the long and secretive history of deep-sea espionage. From Cold War submarine recovery operations to modern-day sabotage of undersea cables, the deep ocean has served as a critical—and often unseen—battleground for intelligence gathering and covert actions. The article explores both historical incidents like Operation Ivy Bells and recent events, emphasizing the growing sophistication of underwater warfare and the challenges of attribution.

(www.watchesofespionage.com)

Tech Deep Sea Exploration Espionage

A Stunning Display of Multilingual Support: A Mysterious Code Snippet

2025-02-14

A Stunning Display of Multilingual Support: A Mysterious Code Snippet

This code snippet showcases an impressive multilingual support, containing the names of almost all known languages. This has sparked speculation about the purpose behind the code; is it an art installation, or a fragment of code from a mysterious project? The simple code structure also raises curiosity about how its function is implemented, and where it will be applied in the future.

(www.langturbo.com)

Misc multilingual

My Vim Workflow: A Decade of Productivity Hacks and Automation

2025-02-13

This article details a decade's worth of Vim (specifically GVim on Windows) usage, culminating in a collection of productivity tips and custom configurations. The focus isn't on specific Vim scripts, but rather on the importance of identifying and optimizing one's workflow. The author showcases custom key mappings for streamlined actions: using `` instead of ``, automating buffer saving with error handling, and quick system clipboard copying. Techniques for automatically creating directories before saving files and running Git commands within the :terminal are also explored. The article encourages readers to explore Vim's help pages and iterate on their own workflow optimization.

(sharats.me)

Development

The Rise of AI Slop: How to Fight Back and Profit

2025-01-26

The Rise of AI Slop: How to Fight Back and Profit

Blogger Ben Congdon observes the proliferation of low-quality AI-generated content, which he terms "AI slop," across the internet. While seemingly convincing at first glance, closer inspection reveals its formulaic nature and lack of originality. He argues against directly copying and pasting AI-generated content, suggesting creators should use AI tools for assistance but meticulously edit and maintain a unique personal voice. He further proposes that creating high-quality content and building a personal brand are key to remaining competitive in the age of AI, and that influencing AI training datasets can even shape the future direction of AI.

(benjamincongdon.me)

AI

F-Droid Secures Major Funding to Ensure Long-Term Sustainability

2025-02-05

F-Droid Secures Major Funding to Ensure Long-Term Sustainability

F-Droid, a platform providing free and open-source Android apps, has received a $396,044 grant from the Open Technology Fund. This funding will address critical challenges to F-Droid's long-term sustainability, including code refactoring, improving legal strategies for handling government takedown requests, streamlining localization workflows, strengthening donation infrastructure, and enhancing hosting and infrastructure. This ensures F-Droid can continue delivering privacy-focused, open-source apps to users worldwide, even in areas with limited internet access.

(f-droid.org)

Development Funding

Mysterious Squares in Windows Filenames: A UTF-16 Surrogate Pair Adventure

2025-02-26

This article describes a curious phenomenon in Windows: many small executables with strange squares in their names appearing in Task Manager. These files are not malicious; the issue stems from the use of UTF-16 surrogate pairs in filenames. UTF-16, to accommodate extended Unicode characters, uses surrogate pairs to represent characters beyond the Basic Multilingual Plane. When string manipulation produces isolated or malformed surrogate pairs, filenames become unrenderable. The article explains surrogate pairs and provides a Python script to generate files with unrenderable filenames, reproducing the phenomenon.

(zaferbalkan.com)

Development Surrogate Pairs

AMD RDNA4: Efficiency Reigns Supreme in New GPU Architecture

2025-09-14

AMD RDNA4: Efficiency Reigns Supreme in New GPU Architecture

AMD's latest RDNA4 architecture prioritizes efficiency over raw performance. The RX 9000 series GPUs featuring RDNA4 boast significant efficiency improvements in ray tracing and machine learning, while also enhancing rasterization. Improvements include enhanced compression, a faster media engine (supporting H.264, H.265, and AV1 codecs with reduced latency), and an upgraded display engine (integrating Radeon Image Sharpening). RDNA4 excels in power consumption, particularly multi-monitor idle power. Further performance and efficiency gains come from an improved workgroup processor, larger L2 cache, and optimized Infinity Fabric architecture. In short, RDNA4 marks a significant leap in AMD's GPU design, prioritizing efficiency to deliver a more balanced and power-efficient experience for gamers and professionals alike.

(chipsandcheese.com)

Hardware

Building a TPU from Scratch: A Fool's Errand?

2025-08-19

A team of hardware novices, driven by a desire to prove their capabilities, embarked on the ambitious project of building a TPU from the ground up. Rejecting the easy route of research, they adopted a 'hacky' approach, starting with a fundamental understanding of neural network mathematics. They constructed a systolic array for matrix multiplication, cleverly incorporating double buffering, pipelining, and a vector processing unit to achieve both inference and training on the XOR problem. Their success in building a fully functional TPU showcases remarkable ingenuity and perseverance.

(www.tinytpu.com)

Hardware

Giant 'Naked' Black Hole in Early Universe Rewrites Textbook Cosmology

2025-09-14

Giant 'Naked' Black Hole in Early Universe Rewrites Textbook Cosmology

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has uncovered a colossal black hole, QSO1, in the early universe, a discovery that challenges existing theories of galaxy formation. Weighing in at 50 million solar masses, QSO1 exists almost in isolation, with few orbiting stars. This solitary leviathan contradicts the established model, which posits that black holes form within galaxies. The find suggests black holes may have originated in the primordial soup of the Big Bang, existing as independent structures, leading to heated debate and offering fresh insights into the universe's chaotic infancy.

(www.quantamagazine.org)

Tech early universe

Go Error Handling Syntax Sugar Proposal: A Trade-off Between Brevity and Clarity

2025-01-28

Go Error Handling Syntax Sugar Proposal: A Trade-off Between Brevity and Clarity

The Go community is debating a new error handling syntax proposal aimed at reducing boilerplate code. The proposal introduces a new '?' operator to handle function return errors more concisely while preserving readability. The proposal has sparked extensive community discussion, primarily focusing on whether the new syntax is clear enough and if it might encourage developers to neglect error handling. Some argue it efficiently reduces boilerplate, improving readability; others worry the new syntax is too implicit, potentially leading to harder-to-debug errors.

(github.com)

Development syntax sugar

FreeBSD as a High-Fidelity Audio Server: A Deep Dive

2025-02-06

FreeBSD as a High-Fidelity Audio Server: A Deep Dive

This comprehensive guide details configuring FreeBSD as an audiophile-grade audio server. It covers system and audio subsystem parameter tuning, real-time operation, bit-perfect signal processing, and optimal methods for enabling and configuring the system's graphic equalizer and high-quality audio equalization using FFmpeg filters. A comparison with Linux is included, along with numerous commands and configuration examples to help build a superior audio system. Linux users will also find valuable insights, particularly regarding MPD player and filter configuration.

(m4c.pl)

Hardware Audio Server High-Fidelity Audio

XMonad Seeks Wayland Port Developer

2025-09-20

The XMonad development team has been collecting contributions for two years to fund a developer to port XMonad to Wayland. They now have sufficient funds but lack a suitable developer. The existing port is badly rotted, using an outdated and buggy version of wlroots. A key challenge is that Wayland programs lack unique identifiers for window management hooks. The team is seeking help on their Discourse forum, welcoming proposals from interested developers.

(xmonad.org)

Development

Great Question is Hiring a Lead Product Designer

2025-01-30

Great Question is Hiring a Lead Product Designer

Great Question, a seed-stage startup backed by Y Combinator and Funders Club, is hiring a Lead Product Designer. They're building an all-in-one customer research platform used by companies like Gusto, Experian, Canva, and Brex. The role requires 7-12 years of experience in software product design, with a focus on B2B SaaS and enterprise clients. The ideal candidate will be a strong leader with excellent UX design skills, capable of independently leading the design of complex product areas from conception to launch.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Design Product Design

GitHub's UI: Past, Present, and a 10x Frontend Cost

2025-01-24

This is a retrospective by GitHub engineer Joel Hawksley on the evolution of GitHub's UI architecture. He recounts GitHub's journey from simpler beginnings to its current focus on usability and accessibility, highlighting the challenges encountered along the way. He emphasizes that mobile is the new baseline, and building and maintaining design systems (like Primer) comes with unforeseen costs, with frontend code complexity being 10 times that of backend. Hawksley advises developers to avoid reinventing the wheel, leverage existing design systems, and carefully budget for frontend complexity to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

(hawksley.org)

Development UI Architecture

Intensional Programming in Joy: Introspection with a Single Operator

2025-02-12

This article explores intensional programming in Joy, a stack-based functional programming language. Joy itself is extensional, lacking the ability to 'dissect' code blocks. The author proposes two intensional operators: 'map' and 'quota', proving their mutual expressibility. While behaviorally equivalent, intensional programs can distinguish a single operator from a subprogram with multiple commands. This opens avenues for exploring weaker notions of equivalence in intensional languages and demonstrates a robust approach to introducing intensionality in minimalist languages like Joy.

(pithlessly.github.io)

Development Joy language intensional programming

Solving Computational Science Problems with AI: Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs)

2025-01-22

This article explores the use of Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) to solve challenging problems in computational science, particularly partial differential equations (PDEs). PINNs overcome limitations of traditional numerical methods by incorporating physical laws directly into the neural network's loss function. This addresses issues like insufficient data, high computational cost, and poor generalization. The article explains PDEs, partial derivatives, and demonstrates PINNs' implementation using the 2D heat equation, covering network architecture, loss function definition, and training. Results show PINNs accurately and efficiently model heat diffusion, offering a powerful tool for various scientific and engineering challenges.

(mertkavi.com)

AI PDEs

Maxing Out Alpine Package Installs: An NP-Hard Challenge

2025-01-21

This article details an experiment to determine the maximum number of Alpine Linux packages installable simultaneously. The author parsed Alpine's APKINDEX files, extracting package dependencies, conflicts, and provides relationships. These were translated into constraints for a PuLP solver. The experiment successfully installed 98.5% of packages from the main repository and 97.8% from main + community. This showcases algorithmic optimization of package installation, offering insights into building leaner container images.

(www.naff.dev)

Development Package Management Constraint Solving

Tracing the Ancestry of Common Unix Commands

2025-01-22

This article explores the origins of key commands within the Unix/Linux command-line hierarchy. From foundational Unix utilities like `cat`, `ls`, and `grep` to contributions from BSD, GNU, and other projects, the author meticulously traces the lineage of numerous tools. This provides a fascinating historical perspective on the evolution of these essential systems and will appeal to command-line enthusiasts and system developers alike.

(darwinsys.com)

Development command-line tools

Trump Halts TikTok Ban for 75 Days: A High-Stakes Gamble

2025-01-21

Trump Halts TikTok Ban for 75 Days: A High-Stakes Gamble

President Trump issued an executive order temporarily halting enforcement of the TikTok ban for 75 days. This move aims to prevent penalties against American companies like Apple and Google for working with TikTok, but its legal standing is questionable. The ban stemmed from a law demanding TikTok divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and Trump's action effectively circumvents this legislation. While the reprieve may offer temporary relief, the decision carries significant legal and political risks, with massive fines still a possibility and its effectiveness highly debated.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Unit Testing Reimagined: Beyond the Dogma

2025-02-15

Traditional unit testing often falls into dogma, leading to wasted time and ineffective tests. This article challenges the very definition of a 'unit', advocating for user-centric integration and end-to-end tests instead of rigidly testing every class or method. The author suggests reducing reliance on code isolation and mocks, leveraging real databases and tools like Docker for increased efficiency and meaningful tests. TDD is presented as not a silver bullet, with software architecture design prioritizing non-functional requirements. Ultimately, the key decision in choosing a testing strategy is balancing quality assurance, refactoring resilience, and speed of feedback; often, modern tools make fast e2e or integration tests feasible.

(linkedrecords.com)

Development unit testing

Converge Careers: Redefining Career Development

2025-01-24

Converge Careers isn't your average job board. It's a personalized career development platform leveraging AI to help users understand their skills, identify career paths, and access relevant learning resources and opportunities. Think of it less as a job search engine and more as a career navigation system guiding users through the ever-evolving professional landscape.

(jobs.gem.com)

Startup talent matching

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