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North American Rail System Restructuring: A 1977-2021 Chronicle

2025-06-27

This article chronicles major changes to the North American Class I railroad system from 1977 to 2021, a period marked by numerous mergers, acquisitions, and corporate restructurings. From the bankruptcies of railroads like the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific to the rise of CSX and Norfolk Southern, and the eventual merger of Burlington Northern and Santa Fe, the article details the dramatic reshaping of the North American rail landscape and the rise and fall of numerous railroad companies. These events fundamentally reshaped the North American rail transportation network, laying the groundwork for the system we see today.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Tech mergers

40-Year-Old Text Adventure Resurrected: The Plot of the Phantom

2025-06-30

40-Year-Old Text Adventure Resurrected: The Plot of the Phantom

The author started a text adventure game, The Plot of the Phantom, back in 1984 but abandoned it due to memory limitations. Fast forward to 2025, amidst a pandemic and life's pressures, the author revisited the project, recreating it using Inform 7. The new version retains the original maps and puzzles, adding personal experiences and reflections. Now playable in a web browser, this nostalgic game offers a 1-2 hour gameplay experience for fans of text adventures.

(scottandrew.com)

Game text adventure

JavaScript Required for Full Website Functionality

2025-01-05

This website requires JavaScript to be enabled for full functionality. Instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your web browser are provided.

(osf.io)

Misc Website Functionality Browser Settings

Igniting Kids' Math Passion Through Storytelling

2025-04-20

This essay recounts how storytelling can effectively engage children with mathematics. The author shares personal anecdotes, including using fictional spy stories to subtly integrate math concepts into exciting adventures, and inventing heroic tales to boost young scouts' confidence and overcome challenges. The core argument is that storytelling is far more effective than rote exercises for children, fostering a natural curiosity and deeper understanding of mathematical principles. The author advocates for more story-focused math content to bridge the gap between basic number sense and more advanced concepts.

(www.jeremykun.com)

Misc childhood education

Private Equity's Predatory Grip on Disability Services: A National Crisis

2025-08-29

Private Equity's Predatory Grip on Disability Services: A National Crisis

Private equity firms are aggressively acquiring group homes and other disability services, leading to widespread reports of abuse, neglect, and even death. Driven by profit maximization, these firms often cut costs, compromising the quality of care. While states like Florida have attempted to sanction companies like Sevita, a major player in the field, enforcement is hampered by the firms' multi-state operations and vast resources. Federal and state regulators struggle to keep pace, highlighting a systemic failure to protect vulnerable populations. Some states are enacting stricter regulations on healthcare mergers and acquisitions, but a comprehensive solution remains elusive.

(www.governing.com)

Misc disability services

Steam UK Implements Credit Card Age Verification, Bypassing VPN Workarounds?

2025-08-29

Steam UK Implements Credit Card Age Verification, Bypassing VPN Workarounds?

To comply with the UK's Online Safety Act, Steam now requires all UK users to verify their age with a credit card to access mature content and games. This has sparked controversy, as users without credit cards are locked out. Valve claims this maximizes user privacy and prevents age verification circumvention. Weeks after the UK's new age-gating rules were found easily bypassed via VPNs, and following brief exploits of Discord and Reddit's age verification, this move is significant. Microsoft is also rolling out Xbox age verification in the UK, currently optional but mandatory in early 2026.

(www.theverge.com)

Game

Cross-Compiling Raylib Lisp Bindings and Games for Windows from Linux

2025-06-30

This article details the process of cross-compiling C code and an SBCL Lisp program for Windows from Linux, using Wine to run a Windows SBCL within a Linux-based Emacs, and loading .dll files into the Lisp image to produce a .exe executable. The author outlines cross-compiling C code using mingw-w64-toolchain, configuring the Raylib library for cross-compilation to generate .dll files, installing and using SBCL within Wine, leveraging vend for dependency management, and finally using sb-ext:save-lisp-and-die to create the Windows executable.

(www.fosskers.ca)

Development

Apple Faces Criminal Investigation After Judge Rules Exec Lied Under Oath

2025-05-01

Apple Faces Criminal Investigation After Judge Rules Exec Lied Under Oath

Apple is facing a criminal investigation after a judge ruled that its VP of Finance, Alex Roman, lied under oath in the ongoing legal battle with Epic Games. The judge found Apple deliberately ignored her ruling allowing developers to use alternative payment systems, and that Roman's testimony contained multiple lies. This refusal to comply, following Apple's initial victory in court, has escalated the dispute to a criminal level, with potential jail time for Roman and significant sanctions against Apple. The case highlights Apple's attempts to circumvent the court's decision and maintain its App Store commission structure, even in the face of clear legal defeat. The judge's decision marks a serious blow to Apple's reputation and could have significant legal repercussions.

(9to5mac.com)

Tech Perjury

Shining Light Through the Head: A Breakthrough in Brain Imaging

2025-08-04

Shining Light Through the Head: A Breakthrough in Brain Imaging

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have achieved a breakthrough in brain imaging, successfully transmitting near-infrared light through an entire adult human head. This opens the door to cheaper, more portable brain imaging technology that overcomes the limitations of current methods like EEG and fMRI. The technology could enable deeper brain imaging, potentially revolutionizing diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. While still in its early stages, the potential impact on brain health diagnostics and treatment is immense.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech brain imaging optical imaging

Demystifying Markov Chain Monte Carlo: A Simple Explanation

2025-04-16

This post provides a clear and accessible explanation of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC), a powerful technique for sampling from complex probability distributions. Using an analogy of estimating probabilities of baby names, the author illustrates the core problem MCMC solves. The explanation cleverly relates MCMC to a random walk on a graph, leveraging the stationary distribution theorem to show how to construct a Markov chain whose stationary distribution matches the target distribution. The Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, a common MCMC method, is introduced and its effectiveness is demonstrated.

(www.jeremykun.com)

AI Markov Chain Monte Carlo Probability Distribution Sampling Metropolis-Hastings Algorithm

The Original INTERCAL-72 Compiler Source Code Rediscovered

2025-06-02

The Original INTERCAL-72 Compiler Source Code Rediscovered

The original source code for the INTERCAL-72 compiler, created by Don Woods and Jim Lyon at Princeton in 1972, has been rediscovered and made public. INTERCAL, a notorious esolang (esoteric programming language), intentionally subverts conventional programming practices with its bizarre syntax and counter-intuitive design. This rediscovery allows programmers to experience firsthand this legendary language and understand its significant influence on the evolution of esoteric programming languages.

(esoteric.codes)

Development programming language history

Mystery Solved: Apple II MouseCard's VBL-Synced Interrupts

2025-05-08

Mystery Solved: Apple II MouseCard's VBL-Synced Interrupts

This post delves into the synchronization mechanism between the Apple II MouseCard's IRQ interrupts and vertical blanking (VBL). The author initially observed flickering in MAME emulation but smooth rendering on real hardware. Through community interaction and analysis of the MouseCard firmware, the mystery was solved: the MouseCard doesn't directly receive the VBL signal but uses software on a 68705 microprocessor to precisely calculate and trigger interrupts, achieving VBL synchronization. This involves manipulating 6821 PIA registers and configuring the 68705's internal timer, ultimately achieving highly accurate VBL synchronization, consistent with Apple's official documentation.

(www.colino.net)

Development VBL synchronization

Birds' Brains: Convergent Evolution of Cognitive Power

2025-04-08

Birds' Brains: Convergent Evolution of Cognitive Power

New research using single-cell RNA sequencing reveals surprising similarities in the brain structures of birds and mammals, despite their distinct evolutionary paths. Scientists have long puzzled over how birds, lacking a neocortex, possess complex cognitive abilities. The study found that the avian dorsal ventricular ridge (DVR) functionally mirrors the mammalian neocortex, but its development, cell types, and generation timing differ significantly, suggesting independent evolution rather than inheritance from a common ancestor. This challenges long-held beliefs about brain evolution and suggests our understanding of 'optimal intelligence' may be too narrow.

(www.quantamagazine.org)

Tech Evolutionary Biology Avian Brain

Jane Street Summer Internship Projects: Faster JSQL, Improved Torch Bindings, and Cross-Process Memory Management

2025-08-29

Jane Street Summer Internship Projects: Faster JSQL, Improved Torch Bindings, and Cross-Process Memory Management

Jane Street highlights three standout projects from this year's summer internship program: Leo Gagnon's JSQL evaluator, achieving hundreds of times speedup through indexing; Aryan Khatri's improved OCaml Torch bindings, leveraging OxCaml for safe and efficient GPU memory management; and Anthony Li's cross-process memory management library, eliminating serialization overhead with reference counting. These projects not only boost internal tools' efficiency but also contribute valuable code to the open-source community.

(blog.janestreet.com)

Development

Deno's Future: Not Fading, but Ascending

2025-05-20

Deno's Future: Not Fading, but Ascending

Addressing recent criticism surrounding Deno, Deno Deploy, KV, and Fresh, the Deno team asserts that Deno's momentum is strong, with user numbers doubling. Regarding the reduction in Deno Deploy regions, the team explains this is an optimization for cost and performance, evolving the platform into a full-stack application hosting platform. While Deno KV won't be the central solution for all state management, stronger tools are in development. Fresh 2 is also imminent, bringing significant improvements. The Deno team emphasizes their commitment to building a complete JavaScript platform, focusing on a cohesive system rather than feature parity, and actively participating in improving and growing the JavaScript ecosystem.

(deno.com)

Development

A Leap Year Check in Three Instructions

2025-05-15

This article presents a surprisingly efficient algorithm to determine if a year (0 ≤ y ≤ 102499) is a leap year using only about three CPU instructions. It leverages bit manipulation and carefully chosen magic numbers to transform the complex leap year rules into a simple arithmetic operation and comparison. The author meticulously explains the algorithm's derivation, comparing it to traditional methods and highlighting its significant speed advantage. While slightly slower in edge cases, its efficiency in practical applications is impressive.

(hueffner.de)

Development leap year

A Beginner's Guide to Forth in JavaScript

2025-09-22

This short ebook teaches the Forth programming language, a unique language lacking type-checking and with minimal syntax. It includes a simple JavaScript implementation of Forth and guides you through core concepts like stack manipulation, word definition, conditionals, loops, and culminates in a simple Snake game implementation.

(skilldrick.github.io)

Development

OBS Studio and Fedora Flatpak Settle Dispute

2025-02-24

OBS Studio and Fedora Flatpak Settle Dispute

A conflict between the OBS Studio team and Fedora Linux developers regarding the Fedora Flatpak version of OBS Studio has been resolved. An initial legal threat escalated the situation, but both parties engaged in discussions. The OBS Studio team has dropped its request to remove IP or rebrand the Fedora Flatpak application. Going forward, they will collaborate to address remaining technical issues, including Qt runtime regressions, bug reporting mechanisms, and problems related to hardware acceleration, X11 fallback, and plugins.

(www.gamingonlinux.com)

Development

Recreating Delicious Library in 2025?

2025-01-29

The author, a long-time admirer of Delicious Library's design since the early 2000s, recounts multiple attempts to recreate its functionality as a web app. From internal tools like Code Helper to independent projects like catalog.im and various design concepts, the author's journey reflects a persistent pursuit. The article concludes with a proposal for a new web-based Delicious Library, soliciting reader feedback and sparking discussion about merging nostalgic software design with modern web applications.

(dingyu.me)

Design

Jane Jacobs: Rebellious Prophet of Urban Planning

2025-04-17

This article delves into the life and work of Jane Jacobs, a legendary figure whose book, *The Death and Life of Great American Cities*, revolutionized urban planning. Known for her insightful observations of traditional urban fabric and sharp critiques of modern urban renewal, Jacobs championed mixed-use zoning, short blocks, and other principles, successfully thwarting destructive projects in New York. However, the article also highlights limitations in Jacobs's thinking, such as an overemphasis on street layouts while neglecting socioeconomic factors. Ultimately, the piece argues that understanding the complexities of urban development requires considering diverse perspectives, including the contributions of Jacobs, Mumford, and even Moses.

(salmagundi.skidmore.edu)

Design

Dagger Cloud v3: Rewriting the Frontend in Go and WebAssembly for Superior Performance

2025-02-11

Dagger Cloud v3: Rewriting the Frontend in Go and WebAssembly for Superior Performance

The Dagger team rewrote their Dagger Cloud web interface from React to a v3 version using Go and WebAssembly. This was done to unify two UI codebases (terminal and web UI), boosting development speed and performance. Despite the non-mainstream nature of the Go and WebAssembly combination, by utilizing the Go-app framework and significant memory optimizations, they successfully built a faster, smoother, and consistent user interface mirroring their terminal UI. The project highlights challenges and opportunities of using Go and WebAssembly, such as memory limits and the lack of readily available component libraries. Ultimately, Dagger Cloud v3 delivered performance improvements and increased developer efficiency for the team.

(dagger.io)

Development

Energy Infrastructure Projects: A Shocking Truth About Massive Cost Overruns

2025-05-31

A new study from Boston University's Institute for Global Sustainability reveals that over 60% of energy infrastructure projects worldwide experience construction cost overruns. Analyzing $1.358 trillion invested in 662 projects across 83 countries between 1936 and 2024, the research encompassed diverse energy types, from wind and solar to nuclear and hydrogen. The study found that projects, on average, exceeded budgets by 40% and ran nearly two years behind schedule. Nuclear power plants were the worst offenders, with an average cost overrun of 102.5%, exceeding expectations by $1.56 billion. In contrast, solar and transmission projects performed best, often finishing ahead of schedule or under budget. Researchers suggest that smaller, modular renewable energy projects may offer lower financial risks and better budget predictability.

(www.bu.edu)

Tech

Daily Driving a Linux Phone: A Journey of Privacy and Minimalism

2025-04-24

The author documents their experiment in daily driving a Linux phone instead of Android or iOS. This isn't about convenience, but a quest for enhanced security, privacy, and a different lifestyle. While acknowledging the slower hardware of the PinePhone Pro, the author prioritizes the open-source nature and privacy benefits of Linux. The ultimate goal is to install PostmarketOS on a more powerful LGv40 Thinq for a superior experience.

(thefoggiest.dev)

Tech

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.

(huggingface.co)

AI static embeddings sentence transformers

SteamOS 3.7.8: Official Support for Legion Go and ROG Ally

2025-05-24

SteamOS 3.7.8: Official Support for Legion Go and ROG Ally

Valve's massive SteamOS 3.7.8 update is here, bringing official support for AMD-powered handhelds like the Lenovo Legion Go and Asus ROG Ally. This update fixes installation bugs on the Legion Go S, adds a "SteamOS Compatible" library tab, and improves the SteamOS recovery image. The Steam Deck also receives significant improvements, including a new battery charge limit feature, updated Linux kernel, Mesa graphics driver, and Plasma desktop.

(www.polygon.com)

Game

Japan Unveils World's First Solar Super-Panel: Outpowering 20 Nuclear Reactors

2025-04-29

Japan is revolutionizing renewable energy with its breakthrough perovskite solar cell (PSC) technology. This new solar panel boasts the power equivalent of 20 nuclear reactors. Lightweight, flexible, and adaptable, PSCs are ideal for space-constrained urban environments. Japan aims to generate 20 gigawatts of electricity from PSCs by 2040, aligning with its 2050 net-zero emissions goal. This technology leverages Japan's iodine production capabilities for an independent supply chain. While durability and cost remain challenges (projected to fall to ¥10/W by 2040), PSCs promise to transform Japan's energy landscape and lead the global renewable energy sector.

(www.japanenergyevent.com)

Tech Perovskite Solar Cells

Milky Way-Andromeda Collision Odds Slash to Just 2%

2025-06-04

New research challenges the long-held belief that the Milky Way will collide with the Andromeda galaxy in 4.5 billion years. Using data from NASA's Hubble and the European Space Agency's Gaia telescopes, scientists simulated the evolution of the Milky Way, Andromeda, and their largest satellite galaxies over the next 10 billion years. They found a mere 2% probability of a collision within the next 5 billion years, contradicting previous certainty. Most simulations showed close encounters before eventual merger due to orbital momentum loss. If a collision occurs, it's likely 7-8 billion years in the future, much later than predicted. The impact would be devastating, creating a spectacular cosmic firework display as gas funnels into a central black hole. Published in Nature Astronomy, this study highlights the power of data and supercomputers, offering new possibilities in our understanding of galactic evolution.

(www.durham.ac.uk)

Tech Galactic Collision

Build Your Own Muon Detector for Under $100

2025-02-27

Build Your Own Muon Detector for Under $100

Inspired by Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez's muon-based pyramid exploration, the author built a muon detector for around $100. Using two Geiger counters and an Arduino Nano, the device cleverly distinguishes cosmic-ray muons from lower-energy particles through a coincidence method. Experiments verified its ability to detect muon flux variations with angle and successfully measured rock thickness changes deep within a gold mine, even sensing a vertical shaft. This demonstrates the feasibility of exploring Earth's inner structure with simple equipment.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech Muon Detection Cosmic Rays DIY Science

GTA San Andreas Skimmer Plane Vanishes: A 20-Year-Old Bug Triggered by Windows 11 24H2

2025-04-23

GTA San Andreas Skimmer Plane Vanishes: A 20-Year-Old Bug Triggered by Windows 11 24H2

A long-standing bug in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has resurfaced: the Skimmer plane disappears after upgrading to Windows 11 24H2. Investigation revealed the issue stems from uninitialized variables in the game's code and a change in stack space usage by the `LeaveCriticalSection` function in Windows 11 24H2. This caused the game to unexpectedly rely on undefined behavior for two decades, until the update broke this fragile balance. The author fixed the issue by modifying the game files or using a SilentPatch, exposing a long-standing flaw in the game's code and the unexpected compatibility issues that Windows system updates can introduce.

(cookieplmonster.github.io)

Game Game Bug Windows Compatibility

Android's New Canary Channel: Continuous Early Access for Developers

2025-07-11

Android's New Canary Channel: Continuous Early Access for Developers

Google is replacing its Developer Preview program with a new Canary channel for Android, offering developers rolling updates throughout the year. This allows for earlier and more consistent access to experimental features and APIs. Unlike previous manual installations, Canary builds are delivered over-the-air and run concurrently with the beta program. While intended for testing and not daily use, Canary provides valuable early feedback, enabling developers to identify issues and test their apps continuously. Support is currently available for Pixel devices and the Android Studio Canary version.

(nerds.xyz)

Development Canary Channel Developer Preview

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