OpenAI's Lobbying Surge: A Sevenfold Increase in Political Influence

2025-01-22
OpenAI's Lobbying Surge: A Sevenfold Increase in Political Influence

OpenAI's government lobbying spending soared to $1.76 million in 2024, a nearly sevenfold increase from the previous year. This marks OpenAI's significant entry into the political arena, aiming to shape AI policy. Their lobbying efforts focused on legislation related to AI research centers and benchmark testing. The company hired several seasoned lobbyists, including former staff of Senator Lindsey Graham. While still less than major tech competitors, OpenAI's increased influence is evident, as they push for favorable energy policies, national security contracts, and relaxed regulations.

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The Unexpected Fusion of Cars and Cuisine: From VW Currywurst to Peugeot Pepper Mills

2025-01-19
The Unexpected Fusion of Cars and Cuisine: From VW Currywurst to Peugeot Pepper Mills

This article explores the surprising connections between car manufacturers and food. Fiat held a chocolate contest resulting in the still-sold Fiat Cremino; Volkswagen famously served its own currywurst sausages in its cafeterias and gave them as gifts, sparking controversy when replaced with vegetarian options before later returning; and Peugeot pepper mills showcase the company's evolution from steel mill to kitchenware producer. These crossovers reflect not only automotive culture but also the unique blend of food and industry.

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Gen Z's 'Career Catfishing': A Rebellion Against Endless Interviews and Ghosting

2025-01-19
Gen Z's 'Career Catfishing': A Rebellion Against Endless Interviews and Ghosting

In a competitive job market, Gen Z is employing a new tactic: 'career catfishing.' They craft idealized online personas to attract recruiters, fighting back against endless interview rounds and the frustrating experience of being ghosted by hiring managers. This trend highlights a generation's challenge to traditional job hunting and a desire for fairer, more transparent hiring practices.

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Startup Job Hunting

Build a Database in 3000 Lines of Go: From Zero Dependencies to SQL Queries

2025-01-19
Build a Database in 3000 Lines of Go: From Zero Dependencies to SQL Queries

This article details the creation of a small database in 3000 lines of Go code, starting from zero dependencies. The author walks through the core concepts, beginning with power-loss atomicity (achieved through append-only logs and checksums) and efficient indexing using data structures like B+trees. The process is explained step-by-step, covering append-only KV store creation, space reclamation, relational database operations (point/range queries, secondary indexes), concurrency control, and a simple SQL-like query language. The entire process is documented in a book, freely available online.

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Development

Stop Forcing Dark Mode!

2025-01-19

A blog post vehemently criticizes websites that force dark mode. The author points out that high-contrast dark mode (e.g., pure white text on a pure black background) causes eye strain and discomfort. The article uses contrast ratios and personal reading experiences to illustrate the problem, recommending that website designers follow WCAG guidelines and choose appropriate contrast instead of blindly pursuing dark mode. The author argues that dark mode is beneficial in specific situations (e.g., OLED screens, dark environments), but forcing it is a terrible user experience.

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Building a Website on a Raspberry Pi: A 15-Step Guide

2025-01-19
Building a Website on a Raspberry Pi: A 15-Step Guide

This comprehensive tutorial details the author's journey of building a personal website on a Raspberry Pi. It covers everything from acquiring the necessary hardware and setting up a headless Pi to installing an Apache server, obtaining an HTTPS certificate, and registering a domain name. The author walks through HTML/CSS development, virtual host configuration, backups, SEO optimization using Google Search Console, user tracking with GoatCounter, bot protection with fail2ban, automatic updates, and monitoring CPU/RAM usage. The guide culminates with a fascinating account of stress-testing the website via Hacker News and the lessons learned from community feedback, making it a valuable resource for aspiring web developers.

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Tracing Myanmar's Military Command Chains: A Data-Driven Case Study

2025-01-19

DOT • STUDIO partnered with the Security Force Monitor (SFM) to build "Under Whose Command," a platform leveraging cutting-edge technology to precisely trace Myanmar's complex military command chains. Employing sophisticated data modeling (EAV and Datalog databases) and precise handling of time and location, the platform overcomes the challenges of dynamic and overlapping command structures, providing journalists, courts, and researchers with a powerful tool for accountability. The project successfully integrated existing research workflows with new technologies, resulting in a user-friendly and sustainably maintained public platform.

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The PC is Dead: Reclaiming Personal Computing

2025-01-20

This article argues that the personal computer era has ended due to surveillance capitalism and DRM. Once a symbol of technological liberty, allowing individuals complete control, the PC has been subverted. Today's tech companies prioritize endless growth over useful products, creating an "extractive economy" that treats user data as a resource to be exploited. The author calls for legislative reform, support for open-source projects, and other measures to regain control of our digital lives and usher in a "Personal Computer 2.0" era.

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The Future of Wi-Fi: Faster, Secure, Smarter Networks

2025-01-11
The Future of Wi-Fi: Faster, Secure, Smarter Networks

The future of Wi-Fi is an exciting landscape shaped by the rise of IoT, the adoption of Wi-Fi 6E/7 and WPA3, and the ever-increasing number of devices connecting to wireless networks. This article explores the evolution of Wi-Fi technology, highlighting how Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 deliver faster speeds, improved reliability, and enhanced security, while WPA3 strengthens security measures. A key focus is Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE), providing secure encrypted connections for guest networks without passwords. With growing connectivity demands and the prevalence of BYOD devices, businesses need to adopt more secure and manageable Wi-Fi architectures to meet future challenges.

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Tech

Toyota Prius: The Hybrid Pioneer That Reshaped the Auto Industry

2025-01-18
Toyota Prius: The Hybrid Pioneer That Reshaped the Auto Industry

The 1997 launch of the Toyota Prius marked a pivotal moment in automotive history, as the world's first mass-produced hybrid vehicle. Combining an internal combustion engine with an electric motor, it dramatically reduced fuel consumption and emissions, overcoming significant technical and market challenges. These challenges included designing an efficient hybrid powertrain, managing battery technology, and addressing consumer skepticism. The Prius's success not only established a new benchmark for environmentally friendly vehicles but also spurred other automakers to accelerate hybrid development, fundamentally altering the automotive landscape. Even today, the Prius continues to set fuel efficiency records and drive innovation.

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Game Devs Revolt Against Boss's AI Schemes

2025-01-21
Game Devs Revolt Against Boss's AI Schemes

A survey reveals growing unease among game developers concerning AI's impact on the industry. Nearly half of the 3,000 respondents expressed concern about AI's negative effects, with 30% voicing outright negativity. While AI offers potential benefits in coding, art, and 3D modeling, many developers see limited practical applications and report increased workloads and job insecurity. Long hours and layoffs are rampant, leading to widespread frustration. Developers attribute these problems to post-pandemic overexpansion, unrealistic expectations, and poor management.

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Deconstructing Zork: A Deep Dive into 15,000 Lines of 80s Game Dev

2025-01-20
Deconstructing Zork: A Deep Dive into 15,000 Lines of 80s Game Dev

Rok Ajdnik, in a whimsical quest to test a Kubernetes cluster, embarked on a journey through the 15,000 lines of code that comprise the classic text adventure game, Zork. This article details Zork's evolution across different versions, its ZIL programming language, and its ingenious architecture, including the parser, game objects, syntax, and object tree. Hidden gems are unearthed, such as easter eggs (XYZZY), questionable commands (RAPE), and intentionally trollish mechanics. The author also shares progress on porting Zork to Go.

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Affordable Vision-Based GNSS-Denied Strapdown Celestial Navigation for UAVs

2025-01-20
Affordable Vision-Based GNSS-Denied Strapdown Celestial Navigation for UAVs

This paper presents a low-cost, lightweight strapdown celestial navigation solution for Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) operating in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied environments. Utilizing a modular system with a stabilized imaging system and a low-cost Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS), the algorithm achieves position estimates within 4 km accuracy. By performing an orbital maneuver through a full compass rotation and averaging position outputs, biases inherent in the strapdown system are nullified. An iterative method for in-flight geometric alignment of the camera with the AHRS, without external position input, is also presented. The results demonstrate the potential for low-cost celestial navigation as a redundant navigation modality in affordable, lightweight drones.

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Will Quantum Computers Really Work? Challenging Doubts About Quantum Attacks on RSA

2025-01-18

This blog post addresses skepticism surrounding the feasibility of quantum computers breaking RSA-2048 encryption. The author refutes arguments claiming quantum computers won't work, such as the exponential energy argument, the number of variables argument, the error correction argument, and visibility arguments. These arguments, the author contends, are largely based on wishful thinking and confirmation bias, lacking scientific rigor. While acknowledging challenges in quantum computing, the author emphasizes that based on current literature and progress, breaking RSA with quantum computers isn't far-fetched, making early preparation crucial.

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Tech

Nix@NGI: Streamlining Open Source Software

2025-01-24
Nix@NGI: Streamlining Open Source Software

The Nix@NGI team is on a mission to make running open-source software easier, both now and in the long term. Partnering with the NGI Zero consortium, they aim to integrate over 1200 NLnet-funded projects into the Nix ecosystem. The team boasts a diverse skillset, encompassing management, operations, development, and maintenance, and actively welcomes volunteers and trainees. Their work benefits NixOS contributors and enhances open-source accessibility. Future plans include improving tools, processes, and user experience, further propelling open-source software development.

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Development

EVE: A C++ SIMD Vector Engine That Goes Brrrr

2025-01-08
EVE: A C++ SIMD Vector Engine That Goes Brrrr

EVE is a C++20 reimplementation of the old EVE SIMD library (formerly Boost.SIMD), showcasing how C++20 can create efficient, low-level, high-abstraction libraries. It supports various instruction sets including Intel SSE, AVX, ARM NEON, AArch64, and partially PowerPC. Currently operational, EVE may still have some performance quirks; contributions for testing and improvement are welcome.

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Development Vector Engine

Albania's 750,000 Bunkers: A Cold War Relic

2025-01-20
Albania's 750,000 Bunkers: A Cold War Relic

Driven by paranoia of external invasion under Enver Hoxha's rule, the People's Socialist Republic of Albania built over 750,000 bunkers, averaging 5.7 per square kilometer. These bunkers, scattered across the country, are a unique landscape feature reflecting Hoxha's totalitarian regime and its impact on Albanian society and economy. Never used in combat, the bunkers drained significant resources, hindering development. Today, they serve as unusual tourist attractions and repurposed dwellings.

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Impact of Extremely Low Temperatures on 5nm SRAM Array Size and Performance

2025-01-24
Impact of Extremely Low Temperatures on 5nm SRAM Array Size and Performance

New research explores the effects of extremely low temperatures (down to 10K) on the size and performance of 5nm FinFET SRAM arrays. Researchers found that at cryogenic temperatures, the maximum array size is limited by wordline parasitics, not leakage current, and performance is governed by both bitline and wordline parasitics. This has significant implications for future low-power, high-performance computing, offering valuable insights for optimizing SRAM arrays in extremely cold environments.

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A Medieval Castle Rises: The Guédelon Construction Project

2025-01-23

Guédelon isn't just a replica; it's an ambitious experiment in building a medieval castle using only medieval techniques and materials. Rejecting modern tools, craftsmen use only those available in the era, meticulously following medieval methods from quarrying stone to laying bricks. The project is not only an architectural marvel, but a testament to medieval ingenuity and skill, offering valuable historical insights and practical knowledge.

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Intel's Skymont: A Deep Dive into the E-Core Architecture

2025-01-18
Intel's Skymont: A Deep Dive into the E-Core Architecture

Intel's latest mobile chip, Lunar Lake, features Skymont, a new E-core architecture replacing Meteor Lake's Crestmont. Skymont significantly improves both multi-threaded performance and low-power background task handling. This article provides an in-depth analysis of Skymont's architecture, covering branch prediction, instruction fetch and decode, out-of-order execution engine, integer execution, floating-point and vector execution, load/store, and cache and memory access. While Skymont excels in some benchmarks, its advantages over Meteor Lake's Crestmont cores and AMD's Zen 5c cores aren't always clear-cut. This highlights the crucial role of cache architecture in CPU performance and the challenges of designing a single core architecture to handle both low-power and high-performance multi-threaded workloads.

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Hardware E-core

Hidden Morse Code Discovered in Tubular Bells!

2025-01-23

During the 1973 recording of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells at The Manor Studio, a hidden Morse code signal from the Rugby Radio Station, 37 miles away, was inadvertently captured. The station, used for communication within the British Empire, transmitted at a frequency audible to humans. Analysis confirmed the signal, decoding to 'VVV GBR', the callsign of the Rugby station. This discovery unexpectedly connects Tubular Bells, Alan Turing (codebreaker), and a Scottish radio listening station, creating a fascinating historical mystery.

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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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Banish WFH Eye Strain: Optimizing Your Home Office Lighting

2025-01-22
Banish WFH Eye Strain: Optimizing Your Home Office Lighting

Working from home causing eye strain? Blogger Russell Baylis shares his journey to optimal lighting, emphasizing even, diffused light as key to reducing eye fatigue. He transformed his workspace with floor lamps and dimmable lights, eliminating harsh shadows and high contrast. Natural light is softened with diffusing curtains, and high-quality, flicker-free lighting is prioritized. The 20-20-20 rule and regular breaks are also stressed for eye health.

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Mid-Range Smartphone Market Collapses

2024-12-31
Mid-Range Smartphone Market Collapses

The global smartphone market is fracturing into high-end and low-end segments, with the mid-range ($200-$600) segment's market share plummeting from 35% in 2021 to a projected 23% by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs. This sharp decline contrasts with its steady 35% share in 2021-22. Analysts attribute this to a lack of revolutionary technology upgrades and more conservative spending by the middle class amid macroeconomic challenges. Conversely, the premium segment (>$600) is booming, with its share projected to reach 32% by 2027. The entry-level segment ( <$200) shows remarkable resilience, maintaining a 41-45% market share, driven by 4G to 5G migrations and cost-conscious consumers. IDC analyst Navkendar Singh highlights the significant, yet underappreciated, growth of the used phone market. Overall market growth is sluggish, with Goldman Sachs projecting just 3%, 2%, and 1% growth in 2025-27, citing a lack of innovation and longer replacement cycles. India's smartphone shipments are projected to grow 3% in 2025, mirroring global growth, and capturing 13% of the global market share by 2025-27.

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Modern JavaScript for Django Developers: A Comprehensive Guide

2025-01-15
Modern JavaScript for Django Developers: A Comprehensive Guide

This guide provides a clear path for Django developers to master modern JavaScript development. It covers organizing front-end code, modern JavaScript tooling, integrating a JavaScript pipeline, building React applications, creating JavaScript-optional websites with HTMX and Alpine.js, and improving front-end API interactions with OpenAPI. The guide is broken down into manageable parts, progressing from foundational concepts to practical applications, making it accessible to developers of all skill levels.

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Development Frontend Development

200 Investor Rejections: A Startup's Funding Nightmare

2025-01-22

A startup pitched nearly 200 investors during its pre-seed and seed rounds, only to be met with rejection after rejection. Reasons ranged from market timing and team expertise to product design and funding size, encompassing nearly every potential pitfall in the startup fundraising process. This article details the brutal reality of startup funding, highlighting the various perceived risks from an investor's perspective, offering valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Conquering Dumb LLM Search Judges with Classic ML

2025-01-24
Conquering Dumb LLM Search Judges with Classic ML

The author explores using a local LLM as a search relevance judge, a cost-effective alternative to OpenAI. Individual LLM judgments are unreliable, so the article proposes combining multiple LLMs' assessments of various product attributes (name, classification, description, etc.) using traditional machine learning (e.g., decision trees) to improve accuracy. Experiments show this approach can predict human preferences and reveal the logic behind human labels, aiding search engine optimization.

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Development

VPTERNLOG: The Surprising Efficiency of Ternary Operators

2025-01-22

Paul Khuong's blog post explores VPTERNLOG, a novel instruction using ternary operators for bitvector reduction. Compared to binary operators, ternary operators reduce two values at a time, doubling efficiency. This means half the operations are needed when processing bitvectors, without sacrificing throughput or latency. The author praises VPTERNLOG as a cute, lightweight, and highly efficient instruction.

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(pvk.ca)

Epic Games Subsidizes Developers to Bypass Apple's App Store Fees

2025-01-24
Epic Games Subsidizes Developers to Bypass Apple's App Store Fees

Epic Games is expanding its mobile game store by subsidizing iOS developers' fees for using third-party marketplaces, directly challenging Apple's App Store dominance. This move aims to attract more games to its store and combat Apple's high fees. Epic will pay the Apple Core Technology Fee (CTF) for developers in its free games program, but this is not a long-term solution. Epic hopes the EU will enforce the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to break Apple's monopoly. This is the latest maneuver in Epic's long-running battle against Apple and Google, who Epic argues create unfair restrictions and fees for developers, stifling competition in the mobile gaming market. Despite a delayed launch due to technical issues, Epic is determined to push for greater competition in the mobile app store landscape.

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Plex's 2025 Roadmap: Revamped User Experience and New Features

2025-01-22
Plex's 2025 Roadmap: Revamped User Experience and New Features

Plex kicked off 2025 with a bang, announcing updates focused on enhancing user experience and introducing exciting new features. These include a revamped review and interaction system allowing users to write and comment on reviews, enhanced profile visibility and sharing options on watch.plex.tv for increased community interaction, a preview of a redesigned Apple TV app, and the official release of HEVC hardware encoding for Plex Pass subscribers, boosting video quality while reducing bandwidth consumption. Overall, Plex aims to create a more robust streaming platform and a more vibrant community.

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Tech
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