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Penn Cuts Grad Admissions Amidst Federal Research Funding Cuts

2025-02-23

Penn Cuts Grad Admissions Amidst Federal Research Funding Cuts

The University of Pennsylvania has slashed graduate admissions across its School of Arts and Sciences due to federal research funding cuts, prompting outrage from faculty. Departments were instructed to drastically reduce admissions, even rescinding offers to students already accepted. Professors criticized the lack of transparency and warned of severe impacts on research and education. The cuts are linked to a proposed $240 million reduction from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but speculation also includes possible connections to graduate student unionization efforts or decreased support for humanities. The situation highlights the precarious financial situation facing higher education institutions.

(www.thedp.com)

Tech graduate admissions university funding

LLVM Static Analyzer Integrates Z3 Solver: Eliminating False Positives

2025-02-23

LLVM's static analyzer now supports the Z3 constraint solver, significantly improving its ability to filter out false positives. The article demonstrates two methods of using Z3: as an external solver and for refuting false positives. The first method, while completely eliminating false positives, is significantly slower (approximately 15x). The second method, using Z3 for refutation, is faster and more efficient in reducing false positives. Experiments show that enabling Z3 allows the LLVM static analyzer to accurately identify and avoid false positives caused by bitwise operations, resulting in more reliable analysis.

(www.cambus.net)

Development static analysis

42: A Powerful Spacecraft Attitude Control System Simulator

2025-01-06

42: A Powerful Spacecraft Attitude Control System Simulator

42 is a comprehensive general-purpose simulation of spacecraft attitude and orbit dynamics, primarily used to support the design and validation of attitude control systems throughout their lifecycle, from concept studies to integration and test. It accurately models multi-body spacecraft attitude dynamics (rigid and/or flexible bodies), and both two-body and three-body orbital flight regimes, simulating environments from low Earth orbit to throughout the solar system. 42 simulates multiple spacecraft concurrently, facilitating studies of rendezvous, proximity operations, and precision formation flying. It also features spacecraft attitude visualization.

(github.com)

Development spacecraft attitude control simulation

The Programmer's Pastoral Dream: Escaping Code, Embracing the Soil?

2025-03-24

Many programmers dream of putting down their keyboards and taking up manual labor, such as carpentry or farming. This article explores the reasons behind this phenomenon, suggesting it stems from burnout in modern software work practices and a re-examination of the "self-made man" ideal in American culture. The author, drawing on personal experience, analyzes the complexities of this longing, acknowledging both the romantic idealization of rural life and its harsh realities. Ultimately, the author argues that finding meaning in work lies not solely in economic output but also in community building and a spirit of service.

(tjmorley.com)

Development programmers rural life

OAuth 2.0: Unlocking the World's Most Popular Authorization Framework

2025-01-28

OAuth 2.0: Unlocking the World's Most Popular Authorization Framework

This article provides a clear explanation of the OAuth 2.0 protocol. Using the example of building a code deployment platform, the author illustrates how OAuth 2.0 solves the security issues of sharing user credentials, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of using plain user credentials and Personal Access Tokens (PATs). The article details the three core roles in OAuth 2.0 (Resource Server, Resource Owner, and Authorization Server), and various authorization flows (Authorization Code, Implicit, Client Credentials, Resource Owner Credentials, and Device Code flows), analyzing the security and applicability of each. Key concepts such as access tokens, refresh tokens, scopes, and PKCE are also explored.

(www.romaglushko.com)

Development Authorization Framework

Intel Adjusts Ohio Chip Plant Timeline

2025-03-04

Intel Adjusts Ohio Chip Plant Timeline

Intel announced a revised timeline for its Ohio One chip manufacturing facility. Mod 1 is now slated for completion in 2030, with operations beginning between 2030 and 2031. Mod 2 completion is projected for 2031, commencing operations in 2032. The adjustment, Intel explains, prioritizes financial responsibility and allows for flexibility based on market demand. Despite the revised timeline, Intel reaffirms its long-term commitment to Ohio, continuing investments and hiring efforts in the state.

(newsroom.intel.com)

Tech Ohio

SmolGPT: A Minimal PyTorch Implementation for Training Small LLMs

2025-01-29

SmolGPT: A Minimal PyTorch Implementation for Training Small LLMs

SmolGPT is a minimal PyTorch project designed for educational purposes, allowing users to train their own small language models (LLMs) from scratch. It features a modern architecture incorporating Flash Attention, RMSNorm, and SwiGLU, along with efficient sampling techniques. The project provides a complete training pipeline, pre-trained model weights, and text generation examples, making it easy to learn about and experiment with LLM training.

(github.com)

Development LLM training

Pixel 4a Battery Update Disaster: Old Firmware Gone, Users Trapped

2025-01-29

Pixel 4a Battery Update Disaster: Old Firmware Gone, Users Trapped

Google's Pixel 4a battery performance update has turned into a disaster. The update is causing extreme battery drain for many users, and worse, Google removed the older firmware, making it impossible to roll back. Intended to improve battery life, the update has instead made things significantly worse. Affected users are left with Google's compensation offer: a free battery replacement, $50 cash, or a $100 credit towards a new Pixel. This incident highlights the risks of software updates and Google's shortcomings in handling updates for older devices.

(www.androidcentral.com)

Tech Battery Update Software Glitch

Ledger Co-founder Kidnapped: Massive Investigation Underway in France

2025-01-23

Ledger Co-founder Kidnapped: Massive Investigation Underway in France

David Balland, a co-founder of the cryptocurrency wallet company Ledger, has been kidnapped, prompting a large-scale investigation by French authorities. The incident unfolded in the Cher department of France, involving a significant police deployment including helicopters and searches of multiple locations. The motive behind the kidnapping remains unclear, and whether a ransom is involved has not been publicly disclosed. This event highlights the security risks within the cryptocurrency industry.

(www.leberry.fr)

Tech kidnapping

PlayAI's Dialog: A New Text-to-Speech Model Outperforming ElevenLabs

2025-02-07

PlayAI's Dialog: A New Text-to-Speech Model Outperforming ElevenLabs

PlayAI has released its Dialog text-to-speech model, boasting multilingual capabilities and exceptional performance. In third-party benchmark tests, Dialog significantly outperformed ElevenLabs v2.5 Turbo and ElevenLabs Multilingual v2.0 in terms of emotional expressiveness and naturalness. Dialog's low latency makes it ideal for applications such as voice agents, contact centers, and gaming. Beyond English, Dialog supports numerous languages including Chinese, French, and German. Its superior voice quality and low latency represent a breakthrough in voice AI.

(play.ht)

AI voice AI

Chinese Hospitals Lead in Retraction Rates: A Shocking Look at Academic Fraud

2025-02-20

Chinese Hospitals Lead in Retraction Rates: A Shocking Look at Academic Fraud

A global analysis of institutional retraction rates reveals alarmingly high numbers for certain Chinese hospitals, some exceeding the global average by more than 50 times. This surge is largely attributed to young physicians purchasing fabricated papers to meet job promotion requirements. While the Chinese government has implemented measures to combat academic misconduct, the high retraction rates highlight weaknesses in research integrity and the negative consequences of overemphasizing publication numbers. The study underscores vast disparities in research integrity across countries and institutions, and the potential of data analytics in identifying and addressing academic fraud.

(www.nature.com)

Tech academic fraud retraction rates

Ken Thompson's Sneaky C Compiler Backdoor: A Reflection on Trust

2025-02-16

In his paper "Reflections on Trusting Trust," Ken Thompson, co-creator of UNIX, recounts a chilling tale of a self-replicating backdoor he inserted into the C compiler. This backdoor would automatically inject itself into the login program during compilation, granting him unauthorized access. The insidious part? Even removing the backdoor from the source code wouldn't stop the compiler from re-inserting it during compilation. This story serves as a stark reminder of the limitations of trusting software and the inherent difficulty in ensuring complete security, even with source code review.

(aeb.win.tue.nl)

Development C compiler backdoor

Txeo: A Modern C++ Wrapper for TensorFlow Achieving Near-Native Performance

2025-02-21

Txeo: A Modern C++ Wrapper for TensorFlow Achieving Near-Native Performance

Txeo is a lightweight and intuitive C++ wrapper for TensorFlow designed to simplify TensorFlow C++ development while maintaining high performance and flexibility. Built entirely with Modern C++, Txeo enables developers to use TensorFlow with the ease of a high-level API, eliminating the complexity of its low-level C++ interface. Benchmarks show negligible performance overhead compared to native TensorFlow, ranging from 0.65% to 1.21%. Currently supports Linux, with Windows and macOS support planned.

(github.com)

Development

DeepSeek-R1: A Reasoning Model Trained with Reinforcement Learning, No Supervised Fine-tuning Needed

2025-01-20

DeepSeek-R1: A Reasoning Model Trained with Reinforcement Learning, No Supervised Fine-tuning Needed

The DeepSeek team open-sourced its first-generation reasoning models, DeepSeek-R1, and a suite of distilled models. DeepSeek-R1-Zero, trained via large-scale reinforcement learning (RL) without supervised fine-tuning (SFT), demonstrates remarkable reasoning capabilities, though it has some flaws. DeepSeek-R1 addresses these issues by incorporating cold-start data before RL, achieving performance comparable to OpenAI-o1. Six distilled models based on Llama and Qwen are also open-sourced, with DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-32B outperforming OpenAI-o1-mini on various benchmarks. The project supports commercial use and provides an online chat website and an OpenAI-compatible API.

(github.com)

AI reasoning

Tattoos and Cancer Risk: A Twin Study Reveals Increased Hazard

2025-03-04

Tattoos and Cancer Risk: A Twin Study Reveals Increased Hazard

A study using the Danish Twin Tattoo Cohort reveals a heightened risk of lymphoma and skin cancer among tattooed individuals compared to their non-tattooed counterparts. Employing both twin cohort and case-cotwin study designs, the research indicates a stronger association with larger tattoos. The researchers hypothesize that ink deposits may interact with surrounding tissue, triggering an immune response and increased cell proliferation, thus raising cancer risk. However, limitations include a lack of sun exposure data and detailed tattoo type classification. Further research is urged to clarify the etiological pathway of tattoo ink-induced carcinogenesis and inform public health policy.

(bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com)

Tech tattoos cancer risk twin study

Hiding Secrets in Emojis: Exploiting Unicode Variation Selectors

2025-02-12

Hiding Secrets in Emojis: Exploiting Unicode Variation Selectors

A Hacker News comment sparked a discussion about hiding information using Unicode variation selectors. This article demonstrates that arbitrary data can be encoded into a single emoji by converting data into a sequence of Unicode variation selectors, remaining invisible after rendering. This method can bypass human content filters or be used for text watermarking, enabling covert information transmission and tracking. While this technique has potential for abuse, it also highlights the complexity and potential security challenges of Unicode.

(paulbutler.org)

Tech Data Hiding Information Security

Ebenezer Clifford: Revolutionary War Veteran, Master Joiner, and Underwater Explorer

2025-03-05

Ebenezer Clifford: Revolutionary War Veteran, Master Joiner, and Underwater Explorer

Ebenezer Clifford, a remarkable 18th-century figure, was an architect, master joiner, bell diver, cabinetmaker, and quartermaster sergeant in the Revolutionary War. His exceptional woodworking skills are evident in surviving planes and buildings he designed or helped construct that still stand today. In his later years, he took up underwater salvage, using a diving bell to recover treasures from shipwrecks, adding another layer of adventure to his already extraordinary life.

(workingwoodenplanes.com)

Misc historical figure woodworking

Uppercut: One-Click Access to Xbox Homebrew's Xbins in OS X Tiger

2025-01-26

Uppercut is a nostalgic throwback to the early 2000s, offering one-click access to the Xbins Xbox homebrew FTP server, specifically designed for OS X Tiger (10.4). This eliminates the cumbersome IRC and FTP configurations of the past. Inspired by the modern Xbins connector Pandora, Uppercut recreates the experience of accessing homebrew resources as it might have been in 2005. For modern OS users, Pandora is recommended. The developer also live streams the development process on Twitch.

(uppercut.chadbibler.com)

Game Retro Software Xbox Homebrew

Building a Silicon Brain: The Future of Neuroscience

2025-01-25

Building a Silicon Brain: The Future of Neuroscience

Researchers at UCSF are using AI and cutting-edge neuroimaging technologies to build a 'silicon brain' that mimics human brain activity. By integrating data from various brain scanning techniques (like fMRI and neuropixel probes), along with text, speech, and behavioral data, they're creating an artificial neural network that replicates human brain activity patterns. This research promises to revolutionize brain-computer interfaces, enabling devices that restore speech or movement without extensive calibration and opening new avenues for diagnosing and treating neuropsychiatric disorders. Ethical considerations, such as data privacy and potential misuse, are also being addressed.

(magazine.ucsf.edu)

AI Brain-Computer Interfaces

Code Colocation: The Secret to Maintainable Codebases

2025-02-19

This article champions code colocation as a key to maintainable software. The author argues that keeping code comments, templates, CSS, unit tests, and application state close to their related code significantly improves maintainability, applicability, and ease of use. Compared to scattering these elements across various directories, colocation avoids synchronization issues, makes finding things easier, reduces context switching, and thus lessens technical debt. Examples from modern frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular illustrate the practice, highlighting how colocation boosts readability and simplifies codebase management. The article also addresses strategies for utility functions and resource files, recommending placing them as close as possible to their usage to minimize maintenance overhead and cognitive load.

(kentcdodds.com)

Development code maintainability code colocation

Multiply's AI Platform Escapes Database Constraints with Rama

2025-03-05

Multiply's AI Platform Escapes Database Constraints with Rama

Multiply, an AI-powered platform for collaboration and co-creation, initially used Datomic and XTDB, but faced challenges with understandability, performance bottlenecks, and fault tolerance. Switching to the Rama platform, they leveraged custom PStates (partitioned states) for flexible data modeling and efficient querying, drastically improving development speed and scalability. Rama's event-sourcing architecture and powerful dataflow API enabled Multiply to implement complex business logic with cleaner code, easily building previously impossible features. The result: a highly productive team despite its small size.

(blog.redplanetlabs.com)

Development

News Overload: How Do I Process Information Effectively?

2025-03-09

The author canceled all daily newspaper subscriptions, keeping only a cooperatively-owned weekly and a French magazine. He finds that more and more online news sites have paywalls, ads, and intrusive scripts, leading him to abandon online news reading. He reflects on the changing attention economy and questions current payment models, finding per-article payments or multiple subscriptions too expensive and impractical. He considers subscribing to the Swiss digital newspaper Republik to support media diversity but struggles to process the vast amount of information effectively. The article concludes with a question about how to process news, reflecting the common dilemma of information overload.

(alexschroeder.ch)

Misc paywalls media ecosystem

Thread Safety Nightmare: A Mysterious Crash on ARM64, Even with Safe Rust

2025-01-22

Thread Safety Nightmare: A Mysterious Crash on ARM64, Even with Safe Rust

While porting network I/O code from Python to Rust in EdgeDB, a mysterious crash on ARM64 platforms emerged. Initially suspected to be a deadlock, the root cause turned out to be thread-unsafe behavior in the `setenv` and `getenv` functions. On ARM64, the `openssl-probe` library uses `setenv` to set environment variables, while another thread concurrently calls `getenv`. This reallocates the `environ` array, leading to a crash. The solution involved switching reqwest's TLS backend from rust-native-tls to rustls. This highlights how even in memory-safe Rust, interactions with the C standard library can still introduce thread safety issues.

(www.edgedb.com)

Development C standard library thread safety

Conquering Doomscrolling: A Digital Detox Experiment

2025-01-22

The author details their struggle with endless scrolling and their experiment to break free. They deleted numerous apps, installed restrictive ones, and faced unexpected challenges like some apps malfunctioning after removing the browser and Google apps. Ultimately, by deleting entertainment apps, limiting browser access, employing a minimalist launcher, and other strategies, they successfully reduced distractions, improved focus, and gained more time for reading. While procrastination remains, their devices no longer lure them into the rabbit hole, resulting in a calmer and more mindful experience.

(allthatjazz.me)

Misc digital detox

Meelo: A Self-Hosted Music Server for Collectors

2025-01-28

Meelo: A Self-Hosted Music Server for Collectors

Meelo is a self-hosted personal music server and web app, similar to Plex or Jellyfin, but with a focus on flexibility and browsing experience. Designed for music collectors, it identifies B-sides, rare tracks, automatically detects duets and features, supports various formats and metadata parsing, and fetches information from MusicBrainz and more. Meelo supports music videos, differentiating them from interviews or behind-the-scenes content. It's available now via Docker images.

(github.com)

Development music server music collection

IPv6 Isn't Hard, It's Just Different: A GitHub Case Study

2025-02-16

IPv6 Isn't Hard, It's Just Different: A GitHub Case Study

A Mastodon post lamented the difficulty of IPv6 configuration. The author uses GitHub as an example to show that the problem isn't IPv6 itself, but inadequate configuration and monitoring. Many websites, while having IPv6 address records (AAAA), are actually inaccessible via IPv6 because the browser's Happy Eyeballs mechanism prioritizes faster IPv4. In one case, a customer's split VPN tunnel blocked IPv6 connections. In another, traceroute showed that IPv6 routing terminated earlier than IPv4, indicating a possible firewall rule or routing issue. The author concludes: take IPv6 seriously, or don't use it. Lack of IPv6 monitoring and automation makes problems difficult to detect and resolve.

(techlog.jenslink.net)

Tech network configuration

The Definitive Guide to Jens Quistgaard's Dansk Peppermills

2025-01-21

This website is a comprehensive guide to the collection of peppermills designed by Jens Quistgaard for Dansk Designs. Each mill is meticulously documented, detailing its unique shape, model number, grinder type, and production history. The site unravels the stories behind these iconic designs, revealing the evolution of their forms and manufacturing processes. From the earliest all-metal grinders to later plastic variations, this resource is a must-have for collectors and design enthusiasts alike.

(www.quistgaardpepper.com)

Design Danish Design Mid-Century Modern

Israel's Nuclear Arsenal: The Hidden Doomsday Clock?

2025-06-22

Israel's Nuclear Arsenal: The Hidden Doomsday Clock?

While US politicians repeatedly warn against Iran developing nuclear weapons, they remain silent about Israel's existing and far larger nuclear arsenal. The article reveals Israel possesses at least 90 warheads, possibly hundreds more, operating under a veil of secrecy and violating international law. Israel's aggressive actions and bellicose rhetoric, including the Gaza assault and nuclear threats against Iran, escalate regional tensions. The author calls for the US to abandon its double standard, advocating for a nuclear-free Middle East to prevent catastrophic war.

(www.currentaffairs.org)

Tech Nuclear Weapons Middle East Conflict

Go's Error Handling: A Blessing or a Curse?

2025-03-09

Go's error handling, characterized by the ubiquitous `if err != nil` check, has sparked considerable debate. Critics find it verbose and cumbersome, while proponents argue it's a cornerstone of Go's philosophy, treating errors as first-class citizens. This article delves into the pros and cons, comparing Go's approach to exception handling in languages like JavaScript. It highlights best practices, such as creating actionable error chains using `fmt.Errorf` and leveraging libraries like `github.com/pkg/errors` for enhanced clarity and stack traces. While not without flaws, Go's explicit error handling empowers developers with full control over program flow, emphasizing simplicity and proactive failure planning.

(rauljordan.com)

Development

The Tyranny of the Ever-Present Smartphone: Reclaiming Our Autonomy

2025-02-26

The Tyranny of the Ever-Present Smartphone: Reclaiming Our Autonomy

The author recounts a visit to a friend's apartment building in Washington, D.C., where every aspect, from entry to elevators to apartment access, required a smartphone app. This experience highlights the pervasive nature of digital technology in modern life, creating inconveniences (for the author, an Orthodox Jew observing Shabbat) and raising concerns about digital addiction and its negative impact on mental and physical well-being. The author argues that over-reliance on smartphones blurs the lines between work and leisure and calls for a movement to provide analogue alternatives – physical membership cards, app-free services, etc. – to reclaim autonomy and resist technological dependence.

(www.thepublicdiscourse.com)

Misc digital addiction

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