LA Wildfires: A Self-Inflicted Wound

2025-01-18
LA Wildfires: A Self-Inflicted Wound

The author recounts their personal experience with the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, arguing that the disaster wasn't a natural event but rather a consequence of long-term negligence in forest fire management. The article highlights the lack of preventative measures, such as regular brush clearing, and the excessively lengthy environmental review processes hindering fire prevention efforts, leading to massive fuel accumulation and ultimately, catastrophic wildfires. The author calls for a renewed focus on fire prevention, streamlined approval processes, and a critical examination of current policies to avert future tragedies.

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Swift Move Semantics: A Comparison with C++

2025-01-09

This article delves into the similarities and differences between move semantics in Swift and C++. Swift automatically performs move optimizations, which is beneficial for performance but can surprise C++ programmers accustomed to the RAII idiom. Swift's "non-copyable types" are similar to C++'s "move-only types," but Swift's moves are destructive, avoiding potential issues with C++'s "non-destructive moves." The article compares Swift's `consume` with C++'s `std::move`, and explains Swift's shortened variable lifetimes, parameter passing conventions (`consuming`, `borrowing`, `inout`), and the Law of Exclusivity. Finally, it discusses using non-copyable types for RAII, generics, and conditionally copyable types in Swift, and why Swift lacks perfect forwarding.

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Development Move Semantics

Hilbert Curve: A Beautiful Space-Filling Curve and its Visualization

2025-01-18

This article delves into the Hilbert curve, a space-filling curve with excellent clustering properties. The author creatively visualizes it by projecting a 3D RGB color space Hilbert curve onto a 2D plane. The visualization is aesthetically pleasing and intuitively demonstrates the clustering characteristics of the Hilbert curve. The article also explains the algorithm implementation of the Hilbert curve and provides a Python project for generating and visualizing various space-filling curves.

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WordPress in Turmoil: Mullenweg's Actions Shake the Foundation

2025-01-21
WordPress in Turmoil:  Mullenweg's Actions Shake the Foundation

A conflict between WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg and hosting company WP Engine is threatening the future of WordPress. Mullenweg's aggressive actions, including banning WP Engine, offering severance packages to dissenting employees, and drastically reducing contributions to the open-source project, have sparked community backlash and a lawsuit. This turmoil undermines WordPress's stability and raises concerns about its future direction, even pushing users and developers towards alternatives. The core issue is a clash between open-source governance and commercial interests, with far-reaching implications for the tech industry.

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Development community conflict

Stanford's Off-Grid Ammonia Generator: Powering the Future with Thin Air

2025-01-16
Stanford's Off-Grid Ammonia Generator: Powering the Future with Thin Air

Researchers from Stanford University and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals have developed a groundbreaking device that generates ammonia from ambient air and water vapor without any external power source. Utilizing a catalyst-coated mesh, the system combines atmospheric nitrogen and water vapor to produce ammonia at room temperature and pressure. This ammonia can be used directly as fertilizer or processed into a sustainable green fuel, offering a revolutionary approach to fertilizer production and energy generation. The technology promises to significantly impact both developing nations and industrial applications.

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California Wildfires Wipe Out Decades of Climate Progress

2025-01-20
California Wildfires Wipe Out Decades of Climate Progress

A University of Chicago study reveals that California's 2020 wildfires negated nearly two decades of emission reduction efforts. The fires caused billions of dollars in economic losses and fatalities, significantly jeopardizing the state's climate goals. The study shows that a single year's wildfire emissions amounted to almost half of California's 2030 emission reduction target, highlighting the critical need for wildfire prevention in state climate policy.

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GitHub Issues Major Update: Sub-issues, Issue Types, and Advanced Search

2025-01-19
GitHub Issues Major Update: Sub-issues, Issue Types, and Advanced Search

GitHub has released a major update to Issues, including sub-issues, issue types, and advanced search. Sub-issues allow breaking down problems into smaller units for better progress tracking. Issue types help teams classify and manage issues with a consistent language. Advanced search enables more complex filtering to find specific issues. The Issues UI has also been updated for improved efficiency and usability. Additionally, CodeQL Action v2 is officially retired, requiring users to upgrade to v3. Secret scanning default patterns now support more secret types, enhancing security.

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Development Update

Amurex: Simplifying LLM Deployment

2025-01-21

Amurex is an open-source project aiming to simplify the deployment of large language models (LLMs). It provides an easy-to-use framework, enabling developers to integrate powerful LLMs into their applications with ease, without needing deep knowledge of complex underlying technologies. Find the project here: https://github.com/thepersonalaicompany/amurex. This project lowers the barrier to entry for AI applications, accelerating the adoption of AI technology.

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Climate Reanalyzer: Visualizing Daily Global Temperatures

2025-01-21

The Climate Reanalyzer website, from the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, provides interactive visualizations of daily global temperatures based on ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis data. The site offers interactive charts and maps showing daily mean surface air temperature from 1940 to the present, allowing users to select different regions for analysis. Data updates are delayed by 6-7 days, and users are cautioned to treat extreme temperatures estimated by ERA5 with care. The site also provides access to other climate data, such as sea surface temperature and sea ice extent.

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isd: A TUI for Effortless systemd Unit Management

2025-01-18
isd: A TUI for Effortless systemd Unit Management

isd is a terminal-based user interface (TUI) designed to simplify systemd unit management. It offers fuzzy search, auto-refreshing previews, smart sudo handling, and a fully customizable interface for both power users and beginners. Frustrated with repetitive systemctl commands? isd streamlines the process, providing a unified interface showing only relevant information and commands. Installation is easy via AppImage, Nix, or uv, making it accessible across various Linux distributions. Even if you only use `systemctl status`, isd's auto-refreshing output enhances efficiency.

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Development

Run Local LLMs in Your Browser: Introducing BrowserAI

2025-01-22
Run Local LLMs in Your Browser: Introducing BrowserAI

BrowserAI is an open-source project enabling you to run large language models (LLMs) locally within your browser. Prioritizing privacy, all processing happens on your device, eliminating server costs and complex infrastructure. It supports multiple models, including those from MLC and Transformers, leveraging WebGPU for blazing-fast inference. A simple API allows developers to easily integrate text generation, speech recognition, and text-to-speech. Many models are already supported, with a roadmap outlining future enhancements such as advanced RAG capabilities and enterprise features.

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AI

Stratoshark: Extending Wireshark to the Cloud

2025-01-22

Stratoshark is an open-source tool bringing the power of Wireshark's network analysis capabilities to cloud environments. It captures system calls and log activity, offering advanced features for troubleshooting and analysis. Sharing the dissection engine and much of the UI with Wireshark, and supporting the same file format as Falco and Sysdig CLI, Stratoshark allows seamless workflow between tools. Available for Windows, macOS, and via source code, it provides an unprecedented view into application activity in your cloud.

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Nepenthes: A Web Crawler Tarpit

2025-01-16

Nepenthes is a tool designed to trap web crawlers, particularly those scraping data for LLMs. It generates an endless sequence of pages, each with dozens of links leading back into the tarpit. Pages are randomly generated deterministically, appearing as unchanging static files. Intentional delays prevent crawlers from bogging down your server and waste their time. Optional Markov babble can be added, giving crawlers data to hopefully accelerate model collapse. Warning: This consumes significant CPU, especially with the Markov module enabled. Use with caution.

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Development anti-crawler

Byzantine-Sasanian War (602-628 CE): The Last Great War of Antiquity

2025-01-20
Byzantine-Sasanian War (602-628 CE): The Last Great War of Antiquity

The Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628 CE was a protracted conflict that nearly destroyed both empires. Triggered by Sasanian King Khosrow II's revenge for the murder of his ally, the Byzantine Emperor Maurice, the war saw years of brutal fighting between evenly matched powers. Emperor Heraclius' military genius and shrewd diplomacy ultimately secured a Byzantine victory, but both empires emerged exhausted and vulnerable to the rising power of the Rashidun Caliphate. This war dramatically reshaped the Middle East and left a lasting impact on religious and cultural landscapes.

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Running DOOM in Microsoft Word: A VBA Hack That's Actually Impressive

2025-01-20
Running DOOM in Microsoft Word: A VBA Hack That's Actually Impressive

A developer has ported the classic game DOOM into a Microsoft Word document! Using VBA macros and base64 encoding, they embedded the DOOM engine and game data within a Word document, rendering the game in real-time by reading keyboard input. While lacking sound, this unusual project showcases the power of VBA and the developer's creativity, prompting reflection on security and the exploration of software boundaries.

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Game

Mastercard's Five-Year-Old DNS Error

2025-01-22

A security researcher, Philippe Caturegli, uncovered a nearly five-year-old error in Mastercard's domain name server settings. This misconfiguration could have allowed anyone to intercept or divert internet traffic for the company by registering an unused domain name. Caturegli spent $300 to register the domain 'akam.ne' to prevent its exploitation by cybercriminals. Mastercard acknowledged the mistake but claimed no real security risk existed. The incident highlights the potential for significant vulnerabilities in even large organizations' DNS configurations.

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Logic for Programmers: A Gentle Introduction to Sequent Calculus

2025-01-22

This post, the first in a series on logic, introduces sequent calculus as a powerful system for reasoning. Using Gentzen's notation, the author explains how to represent logical inferences symbolically, covering inference rules, derivation trees, and metavariables. The article compares sequent calculus, sequent natural deduction, and natural deduction, and touches upon one-sided sequent calculus and intuitionistic logic. Finally, it briefly introduces proof terms in intuitionistic logic and their connection to simply-typed lambda calculus.

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Iron Age Celtic Tribe Centered Around Women, DNA Reveals

2025-01-21
Iron Age Celtic Tribe Centered Around Women, DNA Reveals

A groundbreaking study using ancient DNA has revealed a surprising social structure in an Iron Age Celtic tribe in Britain. Unlike previous prehistoric societies, the Durotriges tribe, dating from 100 BCE to 100 CE, was centered around women. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA showed matrilocal residence, with men moving to their wives' communities. This provided women with strong support networks and significant influence, challenging traditional gender roles and offering a new perspective on ancient social organization. The findings suggest a widespread matrilocal custom across Britain during the Iron Age.

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National Archives Needs Your Help Deciphering Historical Handwriting

2025-01-18
National Archives Needs Your Help Deciphering Historical Handwriting

The US National Archives holds a vast collection of historical documents written in cursive, many of which are difficult to read. To increase accessibility of its digital catalog, the Archives launched the 'Citizen Archivist' program, recruiting volunteers to transcribe and organize these handwritten records. Volunteers can use simple online tools to transcribe or tag already transcribed documents, contributing even small amounts of time. This project not only aids historical research but also gives more people access to American history and even reignites interest in cursive writing, as more states mandate its teaching in schools.

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Spinning Globe on a Commodore PET: A Retro 8-bit Dev Story

2025-01-11
Spinning Globe on a Commodore PET: A Retro 8-bit Dev Story

This post details the creation of a spinning globe animation demo on a Commodore PET, written in 6502 assembly. The author cleverly uses PETSCII characters and bit vector techniques to cram a 32x32 pixel world map into 4.8KB of memory, achieving surprisingly smooth animation. The article dives into the data structure design, projection algorithm, and optimization strategies, showcasing impressive programming skills and a passion for retro game development.

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Garmin's $40B Pivot: From Car GPS to Fitness Watch King

2025-01-21
Garmin's $40B Pivot: From Car GPS to Fitness Watch King

GPS pioneer Garmin faced near-extinction from Apple and Google's rise. However, massive R&D investment allowed a dramatic pivot, transforming the company from a car navigation device firm into a leader in fitness watches and trackers. The article details Garmin's journey, from the invention of GPS and Garmin's founding to its transition from car navigation to the outdoor and fitness tracking market. Its sustained R&D spending enabled survival and growth in a fiercely competitive landscape, showcasing the importance of continuous innovation and adaptation.

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400x Faster Static Embedding Models with Sentence Transformers

2025-01-15
400x Faster Static Embedding Models with Sentence Transformers

This blog post introduces a method to train static embedding models that are 100x to 400x faster on CPU than state-of-the-art embedding models, while maintaining most of the quality. This unlocks exciting use cases like on-device and in-browser execution. Two highly efficient models are presented: sentence-transformers/static-retrieval-mrl-en-v1 for English retrieval and sentence-transformers/static-similarity-mrl-multilingual-v1 for multilingual similarity. These models achieve at least 85% of the performance of counterparts like all-mpnet-base-v2 and multilingual-e5-small, while being significantly faster on CPU.

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Memorable Primes: A Hunt for Special Numbers

2025-01-21
Memorable Primes: A Hunt for Special Numbers

Mathematicians are fascinated by the pursuit of special prime numbers, such as palindromic primes and Smarandache primes. The article recounts anecdotes about prime numbers and the quest for 'memorable primes,' like 12345678910987654321. Indian engineer Shyam Sunder Gupta discovered a massive palindromic prime with 17,350 digits, sparking a wider hunt. While these primes don't offer immediate mathematical applications, their unique properties and the search itself are captivating, attracting numerous math enthusiasts.

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Misc

GM Banned from Selling Driver Data for Five Years

2025-01-17
GM Banned from Selling Driver Data for Five Years

General Motors and its subsidiary OnStar are banned from selling customer geolocation and driving behavior data for five years following an FTC settlement. A New York Times investigation revealed GM collected detailed driving data, including acceleration, braking, and trip length, and sold it to insurers and third-party brokers without consent. The FTC accused GM of a misleading enrollment process for its OnStar service, failing to disclose data collection and sale to third parties. The settlement requires GM to obtain consent before collecting driving data and allow data deletion upon request.

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Proposal: Essential Effects for C

2025-01-20

This proposal suggests enhancing C's core type system with a type-and-effect system, requiring functions and blocks to declare the effects of their evaluation. This improves metaprogramming composability and simplifies defining MISRA-style restrictions. The system tracks and checks effects but doesn't handle dynamic effect handling. Three main effect groups are proposed: Local (e.g., local writes), Persistent (e.g., non-local writes), and Control (e.g., non-local control transfers). Static effect checking is achieved by assigning type-and-effect to each statement, expression, and function body, discarding local effects to ensure correct ordering. Best practices are suggested, like limiting the magnitude of `mut` and `vol` effects and specifying effect checks for operators and control structures. The goal is to improve C's safety, readability, and composability, especially for metaprogramming and resource management.

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Development type system

We Were Never Pure: A Long History of Globalization

2025-01-10
We Were Never Pure: A Long History of Globalization

This essay challenges the notion that globalization began in the 1990s, arguing instead that it's a continuous process throughout human history. By analyzing historical markets, the Columbian Exchange, and cultural exchanges, the author demonstrates that cultural blending isn't a modern phenomenon but a fundamental characteristic of human societal evolution. The article critiques the view of globalization as a threat, suggesting this stems from historical amnesia and a fantasy of 'pure cultures.' It calls for recognizing globalization as the driving force of human cultural evolution, not a catastrophe.

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Emulating a GPU on a CPU Using Finite Field Assembly

2025-01-17
Emulating a GPU on a CPU Using Finite Field Assembly

This article introduces Finite Field Assembly (FF-asm), a novel programming language enabling GPU emulation on CPUs. FF-asm uses a recursive computing paradigm, bypassing the need for SIMD vectorization or OpenMP parallelization. It achieves massive parallel computation on a CPU by creating a custom mathematical system based on finite field theory and congruences. The article provides step-by-step code examples demonstrating addition and multiplication in FF-asm, showcasing its potential for GPU emulation.

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Amazon's Return-to-Office Mandate Backfires: Parking Chaos, Desk Shortages, and Theft

2025-01-20
Amazon's Return-to-Office Mandate Backfires: Parking Chaos, Desk Shortages, and Theft

Amazon's mandatory five-day-a-week return-to-office policy has sparked widespread employee discontent. Staffers report insufficient parking, desk shortages, inadequate meeting rooms, and a rise in office theft and poor hygiene. Many employees are conducting video calls from the office, negating the intended benefits of in-person collaboration. While Amazon claims only a few offices are unprepared, the negative feedback highlights the risks of a poorly planned transition away from remote work and raises questions about company management.

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