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London Met Police to Deploy Permanent Facial Recognition Cameras

2025-03-27

London Met Police to Deploy Permanent Facial Recognition Cameras

The Metropolitan Police will install two permanent live facial recognition (LFR) cameras in Croydon town center this summer to combat crime. This move has sparked privacy concerns, as the system is prone to errors and could be used to monitor individuals beyond suspected criminals, including vulnerable people and victims. While police claim high accuracy, the legality remains contested, with critics calling it a dystopian surveillance nightmare.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

Plato's Music: Outsmarting Aristotle in Nizami's Khamsa

2025-03-27

Plato's Music: Outsmarting Aristotle in Nizami's Khamsa

A 16th-century Mughal painting depicts Plato playing an instrument surrounded by seemingly sleeping animals. This unusual scene originates from Nizami's Khamsa, specifically Alexander the Great's section. Alexander holds a contest of wisdom among philosophers. Aristotle initially dominates, but Plato's unique instrument, capable of mimicking the sounds of all creatures, lulls animals to sleep and then awakens them, demonstrating a deeper wisdom. The story reflects medieval Islamic perspectives on Plato and Aristotle, showcasing Plato as a mystic.

(www.willbuckingham.com)

Misc Nizami Plato Aristotle

Rediscovering Piranesi's Perspective Trick: A Forgotten Artistic Technique

2025-03-27

Rediscovering Piranesi's Perspective Trick: A Forgotten Artistic Technique

This article delves into the unique perspective technique employed by 18th-century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Unlike traditional perspective, Piranesi's trick uses a near-large, far-small ratio when depicting a series of similar objects, rather than true perspective convergence. This technique, while violating perspective rules, enhances image readability and comprehension. The article analyzes the mathematical principles of this technique and, through comparison with traditional perspective, demonstrates its potential applications in image processing and mapmaking. The author even developed an algorithm to apply this technique to image editing software, offering a fresh perspective on image manipulation.

(medium.com)

Design

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.

(github.com)

Development

California Takes Aim at Ultra-Processed Foods in School Meals

2025-03-27

California Takes Aim at Ultra-Processed Foods in School Meals

California has introduced Assembly Bill 1264, the first US bill to phase out certain ultra-processed foods from school meals by 2032. The bill defines ultra-processed foods and tasks scientists with identifying and removing harmful products. This initiative, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, addresses concerns about the health impacts of these foods, including obesity and ADHD. It follows California's previous bans on certain food dyes and chemicals, and mirrors similar legislation emerging in other states, reflecting a growing national focus on food safety and children's health.

(www.thenewlede.org)

Tech ultra-processed foods

Dissecting NSO's BLASTPASS: A Zero-Click iOS Exploit

2025-03-27

Dissecting NSO's BLASTPASS: A Zero-Click iOS Exploit

Ian Beer of Google Project Zero details the analysis of NSO Group's BLASTPASS iMessage exploit. This zero-click attack chain leveraged a maliciously crafted WebP image disguised as a PassKit attachment to bypass the iMessage sandbox. Exploiting a Huffman coding vulnerability in the lossless WebP format, the attackers triggered memory corruption. A sophisticated 5.5MB bplist heap groom within a MakerNote EXIF tag facilitated memory overwriting during TIFF image rendering. This triggered a forged CFReadStream's destructor, executing malicious code. The attack cleverly exploited vulnerabilities in ImageIO and Wallet, bypassing BlastDoor sandbox and Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC). HomeKit traffic may have been used for ASLR disclosure. The analysis reveals the complex techniques used, highlighting the need for robust sandbox mechanisms and a reduced remote attack surface.

(googleprojectzero.blogspot.com)

Tech iOS vulnerability zero-click exploit NSO Group

Restate: A Database-less Durable Execution Engine

2025-03-27

Restate: A Database-less Durable Execution Engine

Restate is a newly built durable execution engine requiring no database or log system. Built from first principles, it boasts a complete self-contained stack centered around a command log and event processor, competing with the best logs in durability and operations. This article details Restate's architecture, including its bidirectional service connections, partitioned scaling model, embedded RocksDB state storage, and virtual log abstraction. Restate cleverly balances low latency and high durability through log design and storage tiering, supporting SDKs in multiple programming languages.

(restate.dev)

Development

Andalusian Interest Groups' Digital Communication Strategies: A Silent Lobby?

2025-03-27

This paper investigates the digital communication strategies of Andalusian interest groups on social media. The study finds that these groups, primarily composed of companies and business associations, exhibit extremely low interactivity, rarely engaging in dialogue with the public. While employing some political communication and propaganda techniques, their communication activities lack clear political objectives, focusing instead on maintaining a positive self-image rather than active lobbying. The results suggest that the digital communication strategies of Andalusian interest groups may not primarily serve lobbying purposes but rather a more passive approach.

(www.frontiersin.org)

Misc interest groups lobbying

Niobium Phosphide: A New Ultrathin Conductor Outperforming Copper

2025-03-27

Niobium Phosphide: A New Ultrathin Conductor Outperforming Copper

Stanford researchers have discovered a novel 1.5-nanometer-thick niobium phosphide (NbP) film exhibiting superior conductivity to copper. Unlike traditional metals, whose resistance increases at the nanoscale, NbP's resistance decreases with decreasing thickness due to its surface being more conductive than its bulk. This 'topological semimetal' behavior promises energy-efficient integrated circuits. However, challenges remain for commercialization, including precise film thickness control.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech integrated circuits

Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet: AI Planning Skills on Display in Pokémon

2025-03-27

Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet: AI Planning Skills on Display in Pokémon

Anthropic's latest language model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, demonstrates impressive planning capabilities while playing Pokémon. Unlike previous AI models that wandered aimlessly or got stuck in loops, Sonnet plans ahead, remembers its objectives, and adapts when initial strategies fail. While Sonnet still struggles in complex scenarios (like getting stuck on Mt. Moon), requiring improvements in understanding game screenshots and expanding the context window, this marks significant progress in AI's strategic planning and long-term reasoning abilities. Researchers believe Sonnet's occasional displays of self-awareness and strategy adaptation suggest enormous potential for solving real-world problems.

(arstechnica.com)

AI strategic planning

The UK's National AI Institute: A Case Study in University-Led Failure

2025-03-27

The UK's National AI Institute: A Case Study in University-Led Failure

The Alan Turing Institute (ATI), intended to be the UK's leading AI institution, is in crisis due to mismanagement, strategic blunders, and conflicts of interest among its university partners. The article details the ATI's origins and how it became a university-dominated, profit-driven consultancy rather than a true innovation hub. The ATI neglected cutting-edge research like deep learning, focusing excessively on ethics and responsibility, ultimately missing the generative AI boom. This reflects common issues in UK tech policy: unclear goals, over-reliance on universities, and a reluctance to abandon failing projects. The defense and security arm, however, stands as a successful exception due to its industry and intelligence agency ties.

(www.chalmermagne.com)

AI AI Institute UK Tech Policy University Domination

Glider Returns: A Classic Apple II Game Reimagined

2025-03-27

Glider Returns: A Classic Apple II Game Reimagined

The classic Apple II game, Glider, has been resurrected by a developer who painstakingly recreated it using 6502 assembly. Requiring an Apple ][+ or later model (mouse required on the ][+), this reimplementation offers both mouse and keyboard control and is best enjoyed on a monochrome display (by design). The developer has also shared a detailed development log detailing the journey of learning 6502 assembly and bringing the project to life. This free, playable version is a treat for retro gaming enthusiasts.

(www.colino.net)

Game

Himalayan 'Sprite Fireworks': A Century's Most Impressive Red Sprite Outbreak

2025-03-27

Himalayan 'Sprite Fireworks': A Century's Most Impressive Red Sprite Outbreak

On May 19, 2022, astrophotographers captured an extraordinary display of over 100 red sprites above the Himalayas, including rare secondary jets and Asia's first recorded 'ghost sprites'. A study in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences reveals these sprites were triggered by powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning within a massive storm system. This unprecedented event highlights the Himalayan region's capacity to generate intensely complex upper-atmospheric electrical discharges, rivaling those seen in the US Great Plains and offshore European storms. Innovative satellite and star field analysis was used to synchronize the video, enabling precise timing and linking sprites to their parent lightning strikes.

(phys.org)

Tech red sprites Himalayas atmospheric discharge

Postel's Law: The Open Source Evolutionary Dead End

2025-03-27

Postel's Law, advocating "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept," has ironically led to an evolutionary dead end for open-source software. Because closed-source producers often violate specifications, open-source consumers are forced to constantly compromise, leading to specifications becoming meaningless, hindering new projects, and reducing competitiveness. The author urges open-source maintainers to strictly adhere to specifications, reject unreasonable user requests, and direct issues to the offending closed-source vendors, avoiding the "three-ring circus" and maintaining specification integrity.

(alexgaynor.net)

Development Postel's Law Software Specifications

US Space Force Certifies Vulcan Centaur Rocket for National Security Missions

2025-03-27

US Space Force Certifies Vulcan Centaur Rocket for National Security Missions

The US Space Force has certified United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket for national security missions, following a rigorous certification process involving two test launches in 2024. Despite a nozzle malfunction during the second test, the rocket successfully completed its mission, and corrective actions have been implemented. ULA plans to launch a dozen rockets this year, aiming for a launch cadence of two per month by year's end. This certification adds to the nation's space launch capabilities.

(spacenews.com)

Tech

Paralyzed Man Walks Again After Stem Cell Injection

2025-03-27

Paralyzed Man Walks Again After Stem Cell Injection

A groundbreaking trial in Japan has shown promising results in treating paralysis using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neural stem cells. One of four participants, a paralyzed man, can now stand independently after receiving injections. Another participant regained some arm and leg movement, while two others showed no significant improvement. While the results, which haven't undergone peer review, suggest the treatment is safe, larger trials are needed to confirm its efficacy and rule out natural recovery.

(www.nature.com)

Tech

Ratomic: Mutable Data Structures for Ruby Ractors

2025-03-26

Ratomic: Mutable Data Structures for Ruby Ractors

Ratomic provides mutable data structures for Ruby's Ractors, allowing Ruby code to scale beyond the Global VM Lock (GVL). This early-stage project seeks contributors with Rust and Ruby C extension experience. Ratomic offers Ractor-safe structures like counters, object pools, maps, and queues, designed as class-level constants for sharing among multiple Ractors. The project is licensed under MIT.

(github.com)

Development

AMA's CPT Code Monopoly: An Economic Termite in Healthcare

2025-03-27

AMA's CPT Code Monopoly: An Economic Termite in Healthcare

This article exposes the American Medical Association's (AMA) lucrative monopoly on Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, used for medical billing. The AMA charges hefty royalties to software companies using these codes, a cost ultimately passed on to doctors and patients. This practice burdens physicians and influences healthcare politics, shifting AMA focus from its members' interests to its own profit maximization. The author calls for government intervention, such as invalidating CPT code copyrights or developing alternatives, to restore fair competition and the public good. The AMA's silence on Robert Kennedy Jr.'s nomination as Secretary of HHS hints at this power dynamic.

(www.thebignewsletter.com)

Tech healthcare monopoly CPT codes

Craniometrix: $7M+ in Revenue and Hiring a Chief of Staff to Scale

2025-03-27

Craniometrix: $7M+ in Revenue and Hiring a Chief of Staff to Scale

Craniometrix, a healthcare startup, has secured over $7 million in revenue and is seeking a Chief of Staff to help scale its operations. Leveraging Medicare's new GUIDE program, they provide innovative care for dementia patients while generating additional income for physicians. The company uses a software and services model, with payments starting July 1st, and has already signed a significant number of doctors. The ideal candidate will be highly detail-oriented, work across all aspects of the business, and manage multiple projects simultaneously. Responsibilities include onboarding customers, building processes (AI-powered outbound calling, etc.), translating operations into product requirements, assisting with investor decks, responding to sales inquiries, and identifying expansion opportunities. The position requires 3+ years of healthcare experience, strong operations management skills, and a commitment to working 60+ hours per week. Craniometrix is building the world's first one-stop-shop care platform for Alzheimer's disease, focusing on optimizing care monitoring, management, and intervention.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Startup Healthcare Tech Healthcare Startup

Blend2D's Blazing-Fast PNG Codec: Outperforming C/C++

2025-03-26

Blend2D library introduces a new high-performance PNG codec that significantly outpaces other C/C++ implementations. Optimized for the DEFLATE algorithm's inherent limitations, this decoder achieves speed improvements through fast decode table construction, optimized decoding loops, and clever use of literal pair techniques. Benchmarks demonstrate superior performance in PNG image decoding, even surpassing the speed of some QOI decoders in certain cases. The project is fully open-source and welcomes contributions.

(blend2d.com)

Development Codec

Rivulet: A Flowing Strand Programming Language

2025-03-27

Rivulet: A Flowing Strand Programming Language

Rivulet is a novel programming language that uses semigraphic characters representing 'strands' to write code. Programs consist of tightly packed code blocks called glyphs, each containing several types of strands that execute together. Rivulet avoids traditional control flow mechanisms, instead using a rollback mechanism to implement conditional branching and loops. Data is organized as lists, and commands operate on single cells or entire lists. While its syntax may seem complex at first glance, it's actually quite easy to learn.

(github.com)

Development graphical programming novel programming paradigm

arXivLabs: Community-Driven Experiments on arXiv

2025-03-27

arXivLabs is a platform enabling collaborators to build and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Participants, both individuals and organizations, share arXiv's commitment to openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv only partners with those who uphold these values. Got an idea to improve the arXiv community experience? Explore arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

The Gang of Four Got Delegation Wrong (and so did everyone else)

2025-03-26

This article challenges the common understanding of delegation as presented in the Gang of Four's *Design Patterns* and various Ruby libraries. The author argues that many examples cited as 'delegation' are simply message forwarding, not true delegation. True delegation, as defined by Henry Lieberman, requires that 'self' always refers to the original message recipient throughout the delegation process. Using JavaScript and Ruby examples, the article clarifies the correct meaning of delegation, highlighting the widespread misunderstanding caused by incorrectly labeling message forwarding as delegation. The author urges developers to understand the true meaning of delegation to write cleaner, more maintainable code.

(www.saturnflyer.com)

Development Delegation

Model Context Protocol (MCP): A USB-C for AI

2025-03-26

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open protocol standardizing how applications provide context to LLMs. Think of it as a USB-C port for AI: it connects AI models to various data sources and tools. The Agents SDK supports MCP, enabling the use of diverse MCP servers to equip Agents with tools. MCP servers come in two types: stdio servers (local) and HTTP over SSE servers (remote). Caching the tool list minimizes latency. Complete examples are available in the examples/mcp directory.

(openai.github.io)

AI

Rust Trait Objects with Multiple Bounds: A Surprising Limitation

2025-03-27

Rust Trait Objects with Multiple Bounds: A Surprising Limitation

This article delves into the reasons behind the limitations of multiple trait bounds in Rust trait objects. The author discovers a compilation error when attempting to use multiple trait constraints (e.g., `Mammal + Clone`) simultaneously within a trait object. The article explores the underlying mechanisms of dynamic dispatch in Rust and C++, comparing their vtable implementations. It examines using trait inheritance to circumvent this limitation and its inherent restrictions. Ultimately, the author suggests that allowing multiple trait bounds requires multiple vtable pointers, although this introduces some redundancy, it efficiently solves type conversion issues.

(alschwalm.com)

Development Trait Objects Dynamic Dispatch

Google Docs Fatal Error: The Bizarre Math.abs() Bug

2025-03-27

Google Docs Fatal Error: The Bizarre Math.abs() Bug

The Google Docs team encountered a bizarre fatal error: in a specific Chrome version, the Math.abs() function unexpectedly became an identity function at the super-optimized level, causing the document editor to crash after extensive text manipulation. After two days of intense debugging, the team finally traced the issue to an optimization change in the V8 engine, which caused Math.abs() to return negative values under specific conditions. This was a low-probability, non-deterministic error that was ultimately resolved with a temporary fix and assistance from the V8 team. The entire process revealed the complexity and challenges of debugging large software systems.

(www.clientserver.dev)

Development V8 engine

AirPods Max USB-C Gets Lossless Audio, But Is Apple Overhyping It?

2025-03-26

AirPods Max USB-C Gets Lossless Audio, But Is Apple Overhyping It?

Apple announced that AirPods Max (USB-C) will gain support for lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio via a firmware update next month, alongside iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, and macOS 15.4. However, Apple's own support documents claim that AAC audio is already virtually indistinguishable from original studio recordings, contradicting marketing chief Greg Joswiak's claim of an "ultimate" audio upgrade. While the improvement from lossless audio alone is minimal, the combination with ultra-low latency will make AirPods Max the only headphones allowing musicians to create and mix in Personalized Spatial Audio with head tracking.

(www.macrumors.com)

Hardware Lossless Audio Ultra-Low Latency Audio

Groundbreaking Discovery: First Organometallic Molecule Containing Berkelium Synthesized

2025-03-27

Groundbreaking Discovery: First Organometallic Molecule Containing Berkelium Synthesized

A team at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has successfully synthesized "berkelocene," the first characterized organometallic molecule containing the heavy element berkelium. This breakthrough challenges long-held theories about the chemistry of elements following uranium in the periodic table. The synthesis was incredibly challenging due to berkelium's high radioactivity and air sensitivity. The researchers overcame these hurdles using specialized equipment and a mere 0.3 milligrams of berkelium-249. This discovery provides new insights into the chemical behavior of berkelium and other actinides, opening doors for future research.

(newscenter.lbl.gov)

Tech organometallic chemistry actinides radioactive element

Arroyo: A Blazing Fast JSON Decoder Built on Arrow

2025-03-26

Arroyo: A Blazing Fast JSON Decoder Built on Arrow

Arroyo stream processing engine faces the core challenge of efficiently handling massive JSON data streams. This article details how Arroyo leverages Arrow's columnar in-memory format and a two-pass JSON decoding strategy to dramatically improve JSON deserialization speed. The first pass constructs a flattened "tape" data structure, while the second pass builds Arrow arrays concurrently based on the schema. This approach is up to 2.3x faster than Jackson-based deserializers in benchmarks. Furthermore, Arroyo extends support for raw JSON and bad data handling, enabling more flexible processing of real-world streaming data.

(www.arroyo.dev)

Development JSON decoding

AI Predicts Dendritic Growth in Thin Films, Paving the Way for Next-Gen Communication

2025-03-27

AI Predicts Dendritic Growth in Thin Films, Paving the Way for Next-Gen Communication

Researchers at Tokyo University of Science have developed a novel AI model that predicts dendritic growth in thin films. Dendritic structures, which negatively impact thin-film device performance, were analyzed by combining persistent homology and machine learning. This allowed researchers to quantify dendritic morphology and link it to Gibbs free energy, revealing specific conditions and hidden growth mechanisms affecting dendritic branching. This research promises to optimize thin-film growth processes, advance beyond-5G high-speed communication technologies, and lead to breakthroughs in sensor technology and high-performance materials.

(www.tus.ac.jp)

Tech Thin Film Growth

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