A 1920s Art Party with Tamara de Lempicka: A Glimpse into Decadence

2025-01-26
A 1920s Art Party with Tamara de Lempicka: A Glimpse into Decadence

Imagine a glamorous 1920s party hosted by the iconic Tamara de Lempicka. This article vividly portrays the era through descriptions of Lempicka's art and the party's attendees. From Lempicka herself, arriving in her green Bugatti, to fashionable flappers in loose dresses, a guitarist in a blue satin gown, gossiping ladies in red hats, and androgynous figures like the Duchess de la Salle, the piece captures the unique fashion, art, and social atmosphere of the 1920s. Lempicka's artistic style is woven into the narrative, highlighting her use of classical references and her distinctive portrayal of modern women.

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Optimizing League of Legends Builds with Linear Programming: A Kai'Sa Case Study

2025-01-26

A League of Legends player used linear programming to optimize item builds for the champion Kai'Sa. By defining an objective function (minimizing total gold cost) and constraints (meeting stat requirements for Kai'Sa's ability evolutions and inventory limits), the player, using Rust and a linear programming solver, found the optimal build. The article also details fetching item data from Riot's Data Dragon API and considers practical in-game factors like item components and movement speed, leading to refined strategies.

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Did Private Equity Worsen the L.A. Fires?

2025-01-26
Did Private Equity Worsen the L.A. Fires?

The recent devastating Los Angeles wildfires were exacerbated by a shortage of operational fire trucks, over half the LAFD's fleet being out of service. This isn't solely due to budget cuts, but rather the result of a private equity roll-up. American Industrial Partners (AIP) consolidated fire truck manufacturers into REV Group, creating a near-monopoly that jacked up prices and delivery times. This left the LAFD struggling to replace aging vehicles, hindering their ability to fight the fires. The article argues this situation highlights the need for stronger antitrust enforcement to prevent similar crises.

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SigNoz Hiring: Backend Engineers Wanted for Open-Source Observability

2025-01-26
SigNoz Hiring: Backend Engineers Wanted for Open-Source Observability

SigNoz, an open-source observability startup, is looking for a Backend Engineer. Ideal candidates will have 3-6 years of backend engineering experience in Go, a passion for open-source with a history of contributions, a deep understanding of the observability domain, and familiarity with Go's locks/channels/concurrency. Responsibilities include owning the product R&D lifecycle, driving OSS adoption of SigNoz, managing the product roadmap and feature development to improve open-source user experience, writing technical content, building an integration marketplace, and more.

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Development GoLang

Bayesian-Powered AI Agent Achieves Breakthrough in Atari 10k Challenge

2025-01-26
Bayesian-Powered AI Agent Achieves Breakthrough in Atari 10k Challenge

VERSES' Genius AI engine achieved a significant breakthrough in the Atari 10k challenge. Outperforming leading AI models based on deep reinforcement learning, Genius matched or exceeded human-level performance on several Atari games using only 10% of the data and drastically less compute. This hyper-efficiency stems from its unique Bayesian inference and active inference framework, showcasing superior sample efficiency and continuous learning capabilities. This marks a significant step towards highly efficient, reliable, and explainable AI.

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The Graphics Codex: Your Ultimate Guide to Computer Graphics

2025-01-26

The Graphics Codex is an interactive learning resource for computer graphics, featuring 400+ cross-referenced equations and diagrams, 14 chapters on physically-based shading and rendering, and multi-platform programming projects with links to external API documentation. It serves as a reference, textbook supplement, or standalone learning guide, updated monthly. Topics range from ray tracing and shadow map shaders to the rendering equation and Fresnel equations, making it ideal for students and professionals alike.

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Open-Source R1 Shakes Up the AI World: Accelerated Development!

2025-01-26
Open-Source R1 Shakes Up the AI World:  Accelerated Development!

The AI landscape is exploding with new models. DeepSeek's open-source reasoning model, R1, matches the performance of OpenAI's closed-source o1, but at a fraction of the cost, sending shockwaves through the industry. R1 validates OpenAI's o1 and o3 approaches and reveals new trends: pretraining's diminished importance and the emergence of inference time scaling laws, model downsizing, reinforcement learning scaling laws, and model distillation scaling laws, all accelerating AI development. R1's open-source nature intensifies US-China competition, highlighting the massive geopolitical implications of AI's rapid progress.

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AI

Bacteria Build Living Gels in Polymers: A New Twist on Biofilms

2025-01-26
Bacteria Build Living Gels in Polymers: A New Twist on Biofilms

Caltech and Princeton University scientists have discovered that bacteria growing in polymer solutions, like mucus, form long, intertwined cables—a kind of ‘living Jell-O.’ This is significant for understanding diseases like cystic fibrosis, where thickened lung mucus fosters dangerous bacterial infections. The discovery also has implications for studying biofilms (the slimy coatings on surfaces) and their industrial impacts. The researchers found that external pressure from the polymers forces the bacterial cells together. A theoretical model accurately predicts when these cable structures will form. The reason for cable formation remains a mystery: it may be a bacterial defense mechanism or conversely, a way for the body to expel the infection more easily. This unexpected finding opens up new avenues of research into bacterial growth and biofilm control.

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The Rise of AI Slop: How to Fight Back and Profit

2025-01-26
The Rise of AI Slop: How to Fight Back and Profit

Blogger Ben Congdon observes the proliferation of low-quality AI-generated content, which he terms "AI slop," across the internet. While seemingly convincing at first glance, closer inspection reveals its formulaic nature and lack of originality. He argues against directly copying and pasting AI-generated content, suggesting creators should use AI tools for assistance but meticulously edit and maintain a unique personal voice. He further proposes that creating high-quality content and building a personal brand are key to remaining competitive in the age of AI, and that influencing AI training datasets can even shape the future direction of AI.

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AI

Vinyl's Revival: A Heideggerian Look at Music in the Spotify Age

2025-01-26
Vinyl's Revival: A Heideggerian Look at Music in the Spotify Age

In 2023, vinyl record sales surpassed CDs for the first time since 1987, prompting reflection on the nature of musical experience. Drawing on Heidegger's concept of 'de-severance' from *Being and Time*, the article explores the 'de-presence' inherent in streaming services like Spotify: music consumption becomes fragmented, personalized, and lacks the tactile, visual, and social engagement associated with vinyl. Vinyl's resurgence signifies a yearning for a more experiential and communal approach to music.

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Prolog: The Elegance of Declarative Programming

2025-01-26

This article delves into the simplicity and power of Prolog, a logic programming language. Unlike popular imperative languages (like Python, Java), Prolog employs a declarative paradigm, focusing on describing the problem rather than specifying the solution steps. The author demonstrates Prolog's advantages in conciseness and adaptability by comparing Prolog and Kotlin implementations of an authorization system. The Prolog code is significantly more compact, and modifications are easier when requirements change (e.g., adding a time dimension). While Prolog has a steeper learning curve, mastering it broadens programming perspectives and helps maintain system simplicity.

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Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace

2025-01-26
Notion: Your All-in-One Workspace

Notion is a powerful all-in-one workspace that integrates notes, task management, wikis, and databases into a single platform. Its flexible, modular design allows users to customize their workflows, making it suitable for personal note-taking, team collaboration, and knowledge base management. Its clean interface and powerful customization options make it ideal for boosting productivity and managing knowledge.

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Development

Building Artificial Synapses with LEDs: A Hardware Approach

2025-01-26
Building Artificial Synapses with LEDs: A Hardware Approach

The Global Science Network demonstrates how to build artificial synapses on a breadboard using LEDs as optocouplers. The article details the components of an artificial synapse: an inverter, an optocoupler made with two LEDs, an output buffer, a diode, and a variable resistor. Inhibitory synapses require an additional discharge transistor. Each synapse adds or removes charge from the postsynaptic neuron. For functional equivalence to biological cells, a proportional number of states must be transferred compared to the biological network. The accompanying video provides a more detailed explanation.

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Asahi Linux M3 Chipset Support Status

2025-01-26
Asahi Linux M3 Chipset Support Status

The Asahi Linux project's wiki page details its support for Apple's M3 series chips (M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max). The page presents a table outlining the status of various hardware features across different Asahi Linux releases (like linux-asahi, asahi-edge, etc.), including stable support, features under development, and unsupported features. Notably, since the M3 series chips haven't been officially released yet, much of the support status is predictive, based on Apple's past update patterns. The page also highlights implementation details and upstream merging difficulties for certain features (e.g., cpuidle).

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Development Apple M3 chip

White House Seeks Oracle's Help to Save TikTok from US Ban

2025-01-26
White House Seeks Oracle's Help to Save TikTok from US Ban

To prevent a nationwide ban, the White House is negotiating with Oracle and other investors to transfer control of TikTok's algorithm, data collection, and software updates to American companies. While ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, would retain a minority stake, US investors would hold a majority. This aims to comply with US law mandating TikTok's separation from its Chinese parent company. However, the deal faces hurdles, including TikTok's high valuation and securing congressional approval. Recent signals from Chinese regulators suggest they won't block a majority US ownership, but uncertainties remain about the long-term commitment of the Trump administration and the cooperation of Apple and Google.

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Tech

Unlock AI Innovation: Risk-Free Vector Search for Existing Apps

2025-01-26
Unlock AI Innovation: Risk-Free Vector Search for Existing Apps

This blog post demonstrates how to seamlessly integrate vector search into existing applications without the need for complete re-platforming. The author uses a simple recommendation engine example, combining cat image embeddings with TPCC purchase history data to recommend products based on visually similar cats. This showcases how AI functionalities can be added to existing apps using enhanced SQL syntax and APIs, highlighting the importance of testing database engines, vector indexes, and I/O subsystems under heavy concurrent workloads. The author emphasizes the low-hanging fruit of adding AI to existing infrastructure.

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Development database performance

Apache Iceberg: A Reliable Table Format for Big Data Analytics

2025-01-26

Apache Iceberg is a high-performance format for massive analytic tables. It allows engines like Spark, Trino, Flink, and more to safely work with the same tables concurrently. Iceberg supports flexible SQL commands for merging data, updating rows, and targeted deletes, optimizing read and write performance through data file rewriting or delta updates. Furthermore, it offers hidden partitioning, time travel, and rollback capabilities for efficient querying and data management.

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Development table format

Desperate Escape: A South Vietnamese Pilot's Daring Flight

2025-01-26
Desperate Escape: A South Vietnamese Pilot's Daring Flight

As South Vietnam crumbled in 1975, Air Force Major Buang-Ly, his wife, and five children, risked everything by fleeing in a small, overloaded plane. Facing enemy fire and lacking navigation, fuel, and radio, they flew towards the sea, searching for US Navy ships. Miraculously, they landed on the USS Midway, a feat made possible by the courageous decision of the carrier's captain to clear the deck despite enormous risks and potential consequences. The daring landing saved the family's lives, a testament to human resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.

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Chimera Linux: A Minimalist Linux Distro Ditching systemd

2025-01-26

Chimera Linux is a new distribution aiming for a "simple, transparent, and easy to pick up" desktop experience. Built from scratch, its first beta release boasts a usable desktop with helpful software, primarily leveraging BSD tools. Rejecting systemd for its complexity, Chimera uses Dinit and musl, reducing dependencies. While installation is manual, its simplicity and support for GNOME/KDE appeal to experienced users. The focus is on a streamlined, usable system, not software debates.

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Development Linux distro

Base-Rate Blindness: When Rare Events Surprise Us (and How AI Might Exploit It)

2025-01-26

This essay uses the astonishing feats of pickpocket Apollo Robbins to illustrate the concept of 'base-rate blindness'. The author argues that we underestimate the probability of rare events because we tend to ignore base rates – the prior probability of an event. Using personal anecdotes, like a surprising moose encounter in Colorado, and the academic world's underestimation of deception, the author shows how ignoring base rates can lead to dangerous consequences. The essay concludes with a provocative question: Are we base-rate blind to the potential risks of AI, distracted by the hype and pleas for regulation?

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Self-Proclaimed 'First AI Software Engineer' Fails Miserably in Real-World Tests

2025-01-26
Self-Proclaimed 'First AI Software Engineer' Fails Miserably in Real-World Tests

Devin, marketed as the first AI software engineer, has fallen short of expectations in recent evaluations. Despite claims of building and deploying apps end-to-end and autonomously fixing bugs, Devin succeeded in only 3 out of 20 tasks. Testers found Devin struggled with straightforward tasks, getting stuck in technical dead-ends and pursuing impossible solutions. While offering a polished user experience, its infrequent success and tendency to waste time on unachievable goals highlight the limitations of current AI technology and raise concerns about the hype surrounding AI tools.

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SQLook: A Nostalgic SQLite Database Manager

2025-01-26
SQLook: A Nostalgic SQLite Database Manager

SQLook is a modern web-based SQLite database manager with a nostalgic Windows 2000 interface. It blends contemporary web technologies with the classic aesthetics of a computing icon. Features include database management, a visual database structure viewer, an interactive SQL query editor, a table generator, data export, sample data generation, and more. Created by Ralph Barendse, inspired by the Windows 2000 UI, and built using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and SQL.js.

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Texas Data Privacy Lawsuit: Allstate Accused of Illegally Collecting Driver Data

2025-01-25
Texas Data Privacy Lawsuit: Allstate Accused of Illegally Collecting Driver Data

The Texas Attorney General's office filed its first lawsuit under the Texas Data Privacy and Security Act (TDPSA), targeting Allstate Corporation for allegedly sharing driver location and other driving data without user consent. Allstate and its subsidiary, Arity, are accused of secretly collecting and selling "trillions of miles" of driving behavior data through a software development kit (SDK) embedded in third-party apps like Life360. This violates Texas' privacy law, which mandates notice and consent for processing sensitive data. While the Texas law has shortcomings, such as limiting lawsuits to the Attorney General, this case highlights the need for stronger data privacy enforcement and sets a precedent for other states.

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Tech

Puck v0.18 Released: New Drag-and-Drop Engine with CSS Grid & Flexbox Support

2025-01-25
Puck v0.18 Released: New Drag-and-Drop Engine with CSS Grid & Flexbox Support

The open-source visual page builder Puck has released v0.18, featuring a brand-new drag-and-drop engine with full CSS Grid and Flexbox support for advanced layouts. This release also includes dynamic DropZone height adjustment, an interactive hotkey, a parent selector, and removes restrictive styling for easier embedding. Improvements and deprecations to components and properties are also included; see the changelog for details.

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Tesla Roadster Mistaken for Asteroid

2025-01-25
Tesla Roadster Mistaken for Asteroid

An object initially identified as a newly discovered asteroid, 2018 CN41, was quickly revealed to be Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster launched into space in 2018 during a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket test. This humorous incident highlights the growing challenge of tracking space debris. An amateur astronomer initially mistook it for a near-Earth object, and the Minor Planet Center initially listed it as a new asteroid. While the issue was swiftly resolved, it underscores the increasing number of untracked space objects that could hinder efforts to protect Earth from potentially hazardous asteroids.

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Steam Deck Gets 'Bricked': A Minimalist Handheld Mod

2025-01-25

A developer has created a radical modification of the Steam Deck, removing the screen and controllers to create a minimalist handheld dubbed the 'Steam Brick'. This involved a complete teardown and rebuild, leaving only the motherboard, power button, and a USB port. The motivation? Portability. The resulting device is about a third the size of the original and significantly lighter, easily fitting into a backpack. While functionality is reduced – accessing the BIOS is currently impossible – for users who primarily connect their Steam Deck to AR glasses or a TV, this could be a worthwhile trade-off.

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Object-Oriented Python Enigma Machine Implementation

2025-01-25

This blog post details an object-oriented Python implementation of the Enigma cipher machine. Based on the description in 'The Code Book', the author models each component (rotors, plugboard, reflector, etc.) as a class, simulating the encryption/decryption process. This simplified implementation includes three rotors, a plugboard, and a reflector, omitting the ring setting. The author highlights the ease of simulating the Enigma machine in code compared to physically building one, underscoring the power of modern computing.

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Development Enigma Machine

Ellison: AI-Powered Surveillance Will Keep Citizens in Line

2025-01-25
Ellison: AI-Powered Surveillance Will Keep Citizens in Line

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison envisions a future where AI powers a massive surveillance system, constantly monitoring citizens to ensure "good behavior." This system would analyze data from various sources, including police body cameras, security cameras, and even doorbell cameras. Ellison also predicts AI drones replacing police cars in high-speed chases. While highlighting potential improvements in policing, his comments raise significant concerns about privacy and the potential for societal control.

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