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Missile Software's 'Null Garbage Collector': Memory Leaks? Not a Problem!

2025-02-07

Missile Software's 'Null Garbage Collector': Memory Leaks? Not a Problem!

A developer recounts a clever application of a 'null garbage collector' in missile software. Because of the limited flight time and ample hardware memory, memory leaks in the program weren't a concern. Engineers calculated the potential memory leakage during flight and added double that amount of memory to ensure the program wouldn't crash before mission completion. This approach cleverly leveraged the program's runtime constraints, effectively solving the memory leak issue—a kind of 'ultimate garbage collection'.

(devblogs.microsoft.com)

Development memory leaks garbage collection

Apple Scraps Advanced AR Glasses Project

2025-02-04

Apple Scraps Advanced AR Glasses Project

Apple Inc. has canceled a project to develop advanced augmented reality glasses designed to pair with its devices. This marks another setback in Apple's efforts to create a consumer-friendly AR headset. The project, shut down this week, involved glasses resembling regular eyewear but incorporating built-in displays and requiring a connection to a Mac. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment, highlighting the ongoing challenges in bringing mass-market AR glasses to fruition.

(www.bloomberg.com)

Tech

The Secret Experiment: Identical Triplets and the Nature vs. Nurture Debate

2025-01-25

The Secret Experiment: Identical Triplets and the Nature vs. Nurture Debate

In 1980, three identical triplets, separated at birth and adopted into different families, unexpectedly reunited. Their story, however, wasn't a heartwarming tale of chance encounters. It revealed a sinister secret: they were unwitting participants in a clandestine psychological experiment designed to unravel the nature versus nurture debate. Researchers, seeking to understand the impact of genetics and environment on behavior, secretly observed the triplets' lives for years. The experiment, however, caused significant emotional distress, with one triplet tragically taking his own life. The ethical implications of this secret study sparked outrage and continue to raise serious questions about the boundaries of scientific research.

(historicflix.com)

Misc psychology experiment identical triplets nature vs. nurture

Building Meshes with Spherical Embedding: A Novel Surface Reconstruction Approach

2025-01-31

This article explores a novel approach to 3D surface reconstruction: spherical embedding. This method projects a point cloud onto a sphere and then uses the convex hull to construct a mesh, addressing the hole problems that traditional methods may encounter when handling complex shapes and missing data. While this method shows some advantages when processing the Stanford Bunny model, especially in ensuring mesh integrity, there is still room for improvement in efficiency and accuracy. Compared to traditional methods such as Poisson surface reconstruction, it requires more iterations and parameter tuning to achieve ideal results. The article details the algorithm implementation process and demonstrates the performance of the algorithm under different parameters with code examples.

(andrews.wiki)

Development surface reconstruction point cloud processing

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-01-31

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations involved embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who share them. Have an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development experimental projects

Aluminum-Ion Batteries: A Revolutionary Breakthrough for Safer, Cheaper, and Longer-Lasting Energy Storage

2025-02-06

Aluminum-Ion Batteries: A Revolutionary Breakthrough for Safer, Cheaper, and Longer-Lasting Energy Storage

A team of scientists in Beijing has developed a novel aluminum-ion battery poised to revolutionize energy storage. The battery utilizes a stable solid-state electrolyte, overcoming the corrosion, safety, and short cycle-life issues plaguing previous aluminum-ion battery attempts. This solid-state electrolyte, composed of aluminum fluoride salt and a liquid electrolyte, features a porous 3D structure that absorbs and stabilizes the liquid while allowing ion mobility, increasing conductivity and preventing leakage. Tests show the battery retains 99% of its original capacity after 10,000 charge/discharge cycles, significantly outperforming lithium-ion batteries. Furthermore, it offers enhanced safety, recyclability, and lower cost, promising to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech aluminum-ion battery solid-state electrolyte

Extended Information Filter: Teaching AI Agents Smarter Guessing

2025-01-29

Extended Information Filter: Teaching AI Agents Smarter Guessing

This article explores the Extended Information Filter (EIF), an advanced algorithm for handling uncertainty in nonlinear systems. EIF leverages Gaussian distributions, using information matrices and vectors instead of means and covariances to represent uncertainty, leading to efficiency gains when dealing with large, sparse systems. Compared to the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), EIF offers superior numerical stability, especially with sparse information matrices. The article details Gaussian distributions, information matrices, information vectors, Kalman filters, information filters, and the workings of EIF, comparing their advantages and disadvantages. Ultimately, it highlights EIF's role in building reasoning agents capable of handling noisy sensor data in real-world applications like autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots.

(jdsemrau.substack.com)

AI Extended Information Filter Gaussian Filtering

Sub-100MB LLM Now Pip-installable: Introducing llm-smollm2

2025-02-07

Sub-100MB LLM Now Pip-installable: Introducing llm-smollm2

A new plugin, llm-smollm2, bundles a quantized SmolLM2-135M-Instruct LLM under 100MB, making it pip-installable. The author details the creation process, from finding a suitable sub-100MB model (limited by PyPI size restrictions) to suppressing verbose logging from llama-cpp-python and packaging for PyPI. While the model's capabilities are limited, it's presented as a valuable learning tool for understanding LLM technology.

(simonwillison.net)

Development Model Quantization

USDA Inspector General Escorted Out After Refusal to Accept Dismissal

2025-02-01

USDA Inspector General Escorted Out After Refusal to Accept Dismissal

Security personnel escorted the USDA Inspector General, Phyllis Fong, from her office this week after she refused to comply with her dismissal by the Trump administration. Fong, a 22-year veteran of the department, argued the administration hadn't followed proper procedure, citing a council that deemed the termination notices legally invalid. The White House defended the dismissals, claiming they were necessary to replace “rogue, partisan bureaucrats.” Fong oversaw a wide range of responsibilities, including investigations into Neuralink and animal abuse cases. Her dismissal was part of a larger purge of federal watchdogs, drawing criticism as a politically motivated act.

(timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

Misc US Politics Inspector General

Sub-$50 AI Reasoning Model Rivals Cutting-Edge Competitors

2025-02-06

Sub-$50 AI Reasoning Model Rivals Cutting-Edge Competitors

Researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington trained an AI reasoning model, s1, for under $50 using cloud compute. s1's performance matches state-of-the-art models like OpenAI's o1 and DeepSeek's R1 on math and coding tasks. The team leveraged knowledge distillation, using Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental as a teacher model and a dataset of 1,000 carefully curated questions. This low-cost replication raises questions about the commoditization of AI and has reportedly upset large AI labs.

(techcrunch.com)

AI knowledge distillation low-cost AI

Deconstructing Complex Systems with Mereology: Beyond Simple Causality

2025-02-06

This article presents a novel approach to understanding higher-order structure in complex systems, based on mereology, a branch of set theory. Using the Borromean rings as an example, it illustrates how the whole can be more than the sum of its parts. The author proposes that by constructing a system's mereology and applying the Möbius inversion formula, macroscopic quantities can be decomposed into sums of microscopic contributions, revealing the nature of higher-order interactions. Examples from gene interactions and mutual information in information theory demonstrate the method's application, with promising implications for machine learning and physics.

(abeljansma.nl)

AI higher-order structure Möbius inversion

Leadership: The Importance of Consistent Messaging

2025-02-04

This article explores the challenges of effective communication in large organizations. A former COO's advice to the author – that leaders must repeatedly deliver the same message to ensure its impact – is central. Even simple messages from a CEO, via email or all-hands meetings, can fail due to skimming, absences, information distortion, and the forgetting curve. Effective communication demands empathy, understanding the audience's perspective, and utilizing multiple channels for consistent messaging. The author emphasizes the need for discipline and persistence – 'beating the drum' – to ensure team alignment and understanding.

(www.dannyguo.com)

Startup communication

Building a WebAssembly VM in C: A Six-Month Side Project Retrospective

2025-02-03

Over six months, the author dedicated their spare time to building a WebAssembly virtual machine in C, called Semblance. This project provided a much-needed break from the cycle of short-lived side projects and allowed for a deep dive into the WebAssembly core specification. The article details the architecture, covering module decoding, import resolution, module instantiation, and instruction execution. The author shares challenges and learnings, culminating in a successful "Hello, World!" execution. This project not only boosted the author's skills but also provided a strong foundation for future contributions to industrial-grade runtimes.

(irreducible.io)

Development

NetChoice Sues Maryland Over Child Online Protection Law

2025-02-03

NetChoice Sues Maryland Over Child Online Protection Law

NetChoice has filed its tenth lawsuit challenging state internet regulations, this time targeting a Maryland law designed to protect children from harmful online content. NetChoice argues the law is an unconstitutional speech restriction, pointing to Maryland's existing online privacy laws. Building on previous Supreme Court victories establishing content moderation as First Amendment protected, NetChoice challenges a reporting requirement mandating platforms report their services' impact on children. They contend this allows subjective determination of 'best interests of children', leading to discriminatory enforcement. NetChoice maintains that even well-intentioned child safety measures can backfire, potentially creating data vulnerabilities. The lawsuit highlights the ongoing tension between online safety and free speech.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Leningrad's Forbidden Garden: Botanists' Sacrifice During the Siege

2025-02-04

Leningrad's Forbidden Garden: Botanists' Sacrifice During the Siege

During the brutal 900-day siege of Leningrad in WWII, a group of botanists at the All-Union Institute of Plant Breeding made a harrowing choice: starve rather than consume their invaluable seed bank. Facing unimaginable hunger and death, they prioritized preserving the world's most comprehensive collection of plant specimens, a potential lifeline for future generations. Their story raises profound questions about the ethics of scientific progress versus immediate human needs, the value of preservation, and the complex legacy of sacrifice during wartime. Their actions ultimately contributed to the development of high-yield crops, but their decision to prioritize the future over present survival remains ethically complex and deeply moving.

(www.lrb.co.uk)

Tech Leningrad Siege Seed Bank Botany

I Tracked Myself Using Leaked Geolocation Data: A Shocking Experiment

2025-02-02

I Tracked Myself Using Leaked Geolocation Data: A Shocking Experiment

A recent geolocation data leak from Gravy Analytics exposed over 2000 apps secretly collecting location data, often without developers' knowledge. To investigate, I installed a single game and used Charles Proxy to monitor network traffic. Even with location services disabled, the game leaked my approximate location and IP address via Unity Ads, Facebook, and other ad platforms. The data included surprisingly granular details like screen brightness and memory usage. Further investigation revealed the ease of purchasing datasets linking identifiers to personal information, enabling precise location tracking. This experiment highlights the alarming scale of data leakage in the mobile advertising ecosystem and the significant risks to user privacy.

(timsh.org)

Tech geolocation leak ad tracking

16TB Archive of US Federal Public Datasets Released

2025-02-07

16TB Archive of US Federal Public Datasets Released

Harvard Law School researchers have released a 16TB archive containing over 311,000 datasets, a complete archive of data.gov from 2024 and 2025. The project aims to preserve the integrity and authenticity of data by maintaining detailed metadata and digital signatures, making it easier for researchers and the public to cite and access this information over time. Open-source software and documentation are also released to enable others to replicate the work and create similar repositories. The project is supported by the Filecoin Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

(lil.law.harvard.edu)

Tech data archiving public datasets

MillenniumDB: A Novel Graph-Oriented Database Management System

2025-01-31

MillenniumDB: A Novel Graph-Oriented Database Management System

MillenniumDB is a graph-oriented database management system developed by the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD). It supports multiple graph models, offering fairly complete RDF/SPARQL support and a custom property graph query language. While still under active development and not yet production-ready, it provides substantial functionality and plans to add GQL support soon. Detailed installation, configuration, and usage instructions, including Docker deployment, are provided.

(github.com)

Development graph database database management system

Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS): Another Threat to Your Computing Freedom

2025-02-06

This article explores the concept of "Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS)", which refers to using someone else's service as a replacement for running your own program. Richard Stallman argues that SaaSS deprives users of control over their computing because the process is handed over to servers controlled by others. This is similar to proprietary software, both presenting security risks such as data leaks and backdoors. The author calls for users to reject SaaSS and choose to use free software and programs running on computers they control to maintain their computing freedom.

(www.gnu.org)

Development computing freedom

Interconnecting the World's Grids: A Cheaper, Greener Power Future?

2025-01-25

Interconnecting the World's Grids: A Cheaper, Greener Power Future?

Norway's decision to curb electricity exports due to price spikes caused by neighboring countries importing power highlights the need for global grid interconnection. Currently, less than 3% of the world's power is internationally traded, representing a huge untapped opportunity. Interconnected grids can significantly reduce electricity costs and facilitate the use of renewable energy sources. However, national interests and energy security concerns pose challenges to international cooperation.

(www.economist.com)

Tech global grid electricity trade

Efficiently Detecting Enclosed Spaces in a Browser Game

2025-02-07

Efficiently Detecting Enclosed Spaces in a Browser Game

In a browser game, players place obstacles to hinder enemies. To prevent players from cheating by enclosing themselves or enemies, the author designed an efficient algorithm to detect enclosed spaces. The initial brute-force approach—flood filling from every cell—proved too slow. The author devised an improved algorithm that leverages a cache of "open-faced" cells (cells not surrounded by obstacles) to prune the flood fill search space. When obstacles are added or removed, the algorithm updates the open-faced cell set and recalculates legal placement locations. While the worst-case time complexity remains the same as brute-force flood fill, in practice, this algorithm significantly reduces lag. The author also discusses other optimization tricks, such as iterative updates and checking only cells adjacent to multiple obstacles. Finally, the author mentions another possible solution: a cycle detection-based algorithm.

(www.holm.dog)

Game Enclosed Space Detection

Musk's DOGE and a $400M Armored Tesla Deal: A Conflict of Interest?

2025-02-13

Musk's DOGE and a $400M Armored Tesla Deal: A Conflict of Interest?

Elon Musk's self-proclaimed "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) is aggressively cutting government spending, yet his own companies continue to rake in lucrative federal contracts. A recent report revealed a $400 million State Department plan to purchase "armored Tesla" vehicles, raising significant conflict-of-interest concerns. While a State Department spokesperson denies any contract has been awarded to Tesla, the procurement plan initially mentioned Tesla before being amended. This incident highlights Musk's influence within government and potential favoritism, sparking questions about the true efficiency of his DOGE.

(www.rollingstone.com)

Tech Conflict of Interest

Modest: A Lua Library for Musical Harmony

2025-02-02

Modest: A Lua Library for Musical Harmony

Modest is a robust Lua library for musical harmony, offering Chord, Note, and Interval objects that handle a wide range of chords, from simple major/minor to complex jazz chords. It features flexible string parsing for chord identification, transposition capabilities, and individual note retrieval. Easily installable via LuaRocks or manual compilation, Modest supports Lua 5.4 and LuaJIT and avoids polluting the global namespace. Its core functionality, including chord identification, transposition, note extraction, and interval calculations, provides efficient tools for music software development.

(github.com)

Development Music

Swedish Scientists Achieve Control Over Novel Magnetism, Potentially Revolutionizing Electronics

2025-02-05

Swedish Scientists Achieve Control Over Novel Magnetism, Potentially Revolutionizing Electronics

A Swedish experiment has demonstrated control over a new type of magnetism, called 'altermagnetism'. Researchers used X-rays to manipulate nanoscale magnetic vortices in a thin manganese telluride wafer. This altermagnetism, existing between ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism, holds immense potential for applications in spintronics and high-temperature superconductor research, promising breakthroughs in memory storage and energy efficiency.

(www.sciencealert.com)

Tech altermagnetism spintronics nanomagnetism

Massive Healthcare Data Breach at Medusind Impacts 360,000+

2025-02-02

Massive Healthcare Data Breach at Medusind Impacts 360,000+

Medusind, a healthcare billing provider, disclosed a data breach affecting over 360,000 individuals. The December 2023 breach exposed sensitive information including health insurance details, payment information, medical records, government IDs, and personal data. Medusind is offering two years of free identity monitoring services to affected individuals and urging them to monitor their accounts for suspicious activity. This incident follows proposed HIPAA updates by HHS aimed at bolstering healthcare cybersecurity in response to a recent surge in major data breaches.

(www.bleepingcomputer.com)

Tech

Dan Brown's Inferno: A Bestselling Author's Worries and Triumphs

2025-02-02

Dan Brown's Inferno: A Bestselling Author's Worries and Triumphs

Bestselling author Dan Brown calls his agent, John, worried about the critical reception of his new book, Inferno. John reassures him, focusing on the millions of fans and the vast wealth his success has brought. Dan reflects on his accomplishments, including his prized Van Gogh painting and Shakespeare first edition. He returns to writing the Robert Langdon series, inspired by Dante's Inferno, with sequels already planned. He ends the day happily with his wife, even contemplating a future foray into romantic poetry.

(onehundredpages.wordpress.com)

Misc Dan Brown Inferno Bestseller

EA Origin Shutdown: Secure Your Games!

2025-01-25

EA Origin Shutdown: Secure Your Games!

EA is shutting down its Origin platform on April 17, 2025. All Origin users must migrate to the EA app to keep playing and preserve their game data. While the transition is relatively straightforward, it requires a 64-bit system, potentially necessitating an upgrade for some users. Alternatively, players can add their games to their Steam library to avoid using the EA app entirely.

(www.pcworld.com)

Game

Red Hat's Minimum Viable Open Source AI

2025-02-06

Red Hat's Minimum Viable Open Source AI

Red Hat defines the minimum criteria for open-source AI as open-source-licensed model weights combined with open-source software components. This article details Red Hat's vision for open-source AI, emphasizing the importance of open licensing for model weights to facilitate community contributions and improvements. They highlight their contributions through projects like InstructLab and the Granite model family, and their commitment to building open-source AI platforms on technologies like Kubernetes and KubeFlow. Their ultimate goal is to democratize and broadly deploy open-source AI across hybrid cloud environments.

(www.redhat.com)

Tech Open Source AI Model Weights

HYTRADBOI: The Async Database & Programming Language Conference

2025-02-02

HYTRADBOI is a unique online conference exploring the intersection of databases and programming languages. All talks are pre-recorded and captioned, delivered asynchronously via a persistent chat room. This allows participants to join from anywhere, anytime, fostering rich discussion. Attendees rave about its asynchronous format, the depth of the talks, and the forward-thinking nature of the content, making it a highly recommended event.

(www.hytradboi.com)

Development asynchronous conference

Memfault is Hiring: Android SDK Engineer ($100k-$180k)

2025-02-06

Memfault is Hiring: Android SDK Engineer ($100k-$180k)

Memfault, an IoT reliability platform, is seeking an Android (AOSP) SDK Engineer. You'll collaborate with SDK leads (Linux, MCU) and cross-functional teams to shape the future of Android at Memfault. Expect a diverse tech stack spanning microcontroller SDKs, large-scale backend data processing, and complex frontend charting. The company encourages broad contribution across its technology and offers flexible work arrangements with regular team gatherings and annual off-sites.

(jobs.lever.co)

Development

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