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NASA Revives Voyager 1's Decades-Old Thrusters in a High-Stakes Gamble

2025-05-16

NASA Revives Voyager 1's Decades-Old Thrusters in a High-Stakes Gamble

NASA engineers successfully restarted Voyager 1's primary thrusters, deemed inoperable for over two decades. The nearly 50-year-old spacecraft faced imminent failure due to clogged fuel lines in its backup thrusters. The risky maneuver involved powering up dormant heaters, with the potential for a small explosion if the heaters were still dead. The success buys Voyager 1 more time to explore interstellar space, a testament to human ingenuity and perseverance.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

Teal: A Statically-Typed Lua Dialect

2025-05-16

Teal is a statically-typed dialect of Lua, extending Lua with type annotations for arrays, maps, records, interfaces, union types, and generics. It aims to fill a niche similar to TypeScript in the JavaScript world, but maintaining Lua's minimalism, portability, and embeddability. The Teal compiler, `tl`, compiles `.tl` source code into `.lua` files. Installation is via LuaRocks, with pre-compiled binaries available for Linux and Windows. A build tool, Cyan, is recommended for larger projects. VS Code and NeoVim extensions are also available. The project is open source under the MIT license.

(teal-language.org)

Development

FBI Warns of AI-Powered Voice Phishing Targeting US Officials

2025-05-16

FBI Warns of AI-Powered Voice Phishing Targeting US Officials

The FBI issued a warning about cybercriminals using AI-generated audio deepfakes to impersonate high-ranking US officials in voice phishing attacks since April. Attackers employ smishing and vishing tactics, sending text and AI-generated voice messages to build rapport before tricking victims into clicking malicious links. This compromises accounts, granting access to contact information of other officials, leading to further social engineering attacks for sensitive data theft or fund transfers. This follows previous warnings and incidents highlighting the increasing use of sophisticated deepfakes in cybercrime.

(www.bleepingcomputer.com)

Tech

gkrellm: A Robust Linux System Monitor

2025-05-16

gkrellm is a powerful system monitoring tool for Linux, displaying hostname, CPU usage, temperature, fan speed, voltage, disk usage, network connections, memory usage, and much more. It offers customizable alarms and warnings, and boasts plugin capabilities for extended monitoring. gkrellm also supports remote system monitoring via client/server mode, providing various charts and display modes for intuitive system status understanding.

(gkrellm.srcbox.net)

Development

Microsoft Quietly Kills Surface Laptop Studio 2: End of an Era for Hybrid Laptops?

2025-05-15

Microsoft Quietly Kills Surface Laptop Studio 2: End of an Era for Hybrid Laptops?

Microsoft has ceased production of its powerful foldable laptop, the Surface Laptop Studio 2. This hybrid laptop, unique for its dedicated GPU, is quietly being discontinued, reflecting a broader streamlining within Microsoft's hardware lineup. The move follows recent layoffs, the departure of former Surface chief Panos Panay, and a reported shift in focus towards AI and core products. While praised for performance and design, the high price and relatively low-power GPU of the Surface Laptop Studio 2 may have limited its success.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Hardware

Floating-Point Comparisons: Pitfalls and Practical Solutions

2025-05-15

Floating-Point Comparisons: Pitfalls and Practical Solutions

This article delves into the complexities of comparing floating-point numbers. The author highlights the unreliability of simple equality checks due to inherent precision limitations and accumulated rounding errors. Two comparison methods are detailed: relative error (epsilon) and ULP (Units in the Last Place), along with their strengths and weaknesses. The article emphasizes the failure of relative error comparisons near zero, proposing a solution combining absolute error. A compelling example using `sin(π)` demonstrates catastrophic cancellation and how floating-point representation errors can improve π's accuracy.

(randomascii.wordpress.com)

Development precision

Easel: Multiplayer Game Development Made Easy

2025-05-15

Easel: Multiplayer Game Development Made Easy

Easel is a 2D game programming language that simplifies multiplayer game development to the level of single-player games. Whether beginner or expert, you'll enjoy creating games with Easel! Its hierarchical programming language, behaviors model, and reactive style allow for expressing complex game logic with surprising simplicity. Easel handles the complexities of networking and synchronization automatically, even incorporating advanced rollback netcode for a smooth experience. A complete 2D game development system, from graphics and audio to physics and UI, Easel offers an online editor and server hosting for easy deployment and sharing.

(easel.games)

Game multiplayer

C++ Initialization Gotcha: The Subtleties of `=default`

2025-05-15

This article delves into the perplexing world of C++ initialization. A simple example reveals the significant impact of the placement of `=default` on the initialization of struct members: struct members with `=default` in the declaration are zero-initialized (value 0), while those with `=default` in the definition have indeterminate values, leading to undefined behavior if read. The article thoroughly explains the differences between default, value, and zero initialization, and emphasizes the importance of explicitly initializing variables to avoid potential bugs and security risks.

(blog.tartanllama.xyz)

Development Initialization

Anthropic's Claude AI Generates Erroneous Citation in Copyright Lawsuit

2025-05-15

Anthropic's Claude AI Generates Erroneous Citation in Copyright Lawsuit

In an ongoing legal battle with music publishers, a lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using a faulty citation generated by the company's Claude AI chatbot. The citation, containing an inaccurate title and authors, was missed by Anthropic's manual check. Anthropic apologized, calling it an "honest mistake," not a fabrication. This incident highlights the risks of using AI in legal settings and adds to the growing concerns surrounding copyright issues in generative AI. Similar incidents involving AI-generated legal research have occurred recently, yet AI-powered legal tech startups continue to attract massive funding.

(techcrunch.com)

Tech Copyright disputes

Google Boosts Developer Productivity with Hybrid Semantic ML Code Completion

2025-05-15

Google Boosts Developer Productivity with Hybrid Semantic ML Code Completion

Google researchers have developed a novel Transformer-based hybrid semantic machine learning code completion system that combines machine learning (ML) and rule-based semantic engines (SEs) to significantly improve developer productivity. The system integrates ML and SEs in three ways: 1) re-ranking SE's single-token suggestions using ML; 2) applying single and multi-line completions using ML and checking correctness with the SE; and 3) using single and multi-line continuation by ML of single-token semantic suggestions. A three-month study with 10,000+ Google internal developers showed a 6% reduction in coding iteration time with single-line ML completion. Currently, over 3% of new code is generated from accepting ML completion suggestions. The system supports eight programming languages and incorporates semantic checks to ensure code correctness, significantly boosting developer trust and efficiency.

(research.google)

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

Is Stack Overflow Dying Thanks to LLMs?

2025-05-15

Stack Overflow, the programmer's haven, is facing an unprecedented crisis. The article reveals a steady decline in questions asked since 2014, dramatically accelerated by the advent of ChatGPT. The platform, once a lifeline for countless developers, now sees question volumes plummet to levels last seen in 2009. While stricter moderation policies and the rise of LLMs likely contributed, the rapid advancement of AI is undeniably reshaping how developers seek help.

(blog.pragmaticengineer.com)

Development

Beyond REST: Why State Synchronization is the Future of Web Apps

2025-05-15

Building web apps with React, Typescript, and a Rust/Axum REST backend, the author encountered significant challenges with REST's state transfer approach for what are essentially state synchronization problems. Using a simple text input example, the article highlights issues like race conditions from concurrent requests, inaccurate loading indicators, and inconsistencies across multiple app instances. The author argues for a shift towards state synchronization protocols, such as those based on CRDTs, to improve efficiency and eliminate common REST-related bugs.

(www.mbid.me)

Development State Synchronization

Curl's Dotted Disaster: Two CVEs and a Never-Ending Chase

2025-05-15

Curl's Dotted Disaster: Two CVEs and a Never-Ending Chase

The curl team has had a persistent struggle with trailing dots in hostnames within URLs. Initially ignoring them, curl later reinstated support for websites requiring trailing dots. However, this change inadvertently introduced two security vulnerabilities (CVE-2022-27779 and CVE-2022-30115) affecting cookie handling and the HSTS mechanism respectively. These vulnerabilities stemmed from improper handling of trailing dots leading to incorrect domain matching. curl 7.83.1 addresses these issues, but the author suspects this may be just the beginning of a long-running battle.

(daniel.haxx.se)

Development

The Renaissance of Small and Old Tech: Simplicity and Privacy Reimagined

2025-05-15

This article explores the concept of 'small tech,' emphasizing its compactness, ease of use, privacy, and environmental friendliness. Unlike the bloated technologies dominated by large tech companies, 'small tech' advocates decentralization, peer-to-peer communication, zero-knowledge proofs, and a reevaluation of older technologies like UUCP, Gopher, and Usenet. These older technologies boast low resource consumption, easy operation on low-power devices, are more environmentally friendly, and better protect user privacy. The article also introduces modern 'small tech' projects such as NNCP and Gemini, and organizations dedicated to the small tech ethos, aiming to promote a return to simpler, privacy-focused technology.

(www.complete.org)

Tech small tech old tech

Telegram Takes Down $35 Billion Cybercrime Marketplaces

2025-05-15

Telegram Takes Down $35 Billion Cybercrime Marketplaces

Telegram announced the takedown of two massive darknet marketplaces, Xinbi Guarantee and Huione Guarantee, which allegedly generated over $35 billion since 2021 for cybercriminals and scammers. This surpasses the notorious Silk Road's estimated $3.4 billion valuation. The shutdown, following US Treasury sanctions against Huione Group for money laundering, represents a significant blow to online fraudsters, cutting off their access to stolen data, money laundering services, and telecoms infrastructure. This action highlights a major victory in the global fight against cybercrime.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech darknet markets

Refactoring Clojure: Crafting an Elegant Markov Text Generator

2025-05-15

Refactoring Clojure: Crafting an Elegant Markov Text Generator

This article details refactoring Clojure code that generates a first-order word-level Markov text. Instead of directly modifying the original, the author starts by characterizing its behavior with comprehensive tests. The refactored code uses clearer functions and a more understandable structure, employing `reduce` and recursive function calls for efficient text generation. The result is significantly improved readability and maintainability while preserving the original functionality.

(www.orsolabs.com)

Development

Tengri Audio Software Development Log: A Glimpse into Recent Progress

2025-05-15

Tengri Audio Software Development Log: A Glimpse into Recent Progress

The open-source audio software Tengri's development team recently updated its GitHub project log, detailing activities since May. This includes a significant refactoring of the arranger, re-enabling LV2 support, improvements to the build process (such as Docker containerized builds), documentation updates, and bug fixes. The log reflects an iterative development process, actively addressing issues and showcasing the project's active development status.

(codeberg.org)

Development

Beyond Scalar Select: Batching Event Streams for Efficiency

2025-05-15

The author describes the inefficiency of the scalar select anti-pattern in stateful service design, exemplified by an LSP server. Processing events one at a time leads to delays and resource waste. The proposed solution is to batch process event streams. A `batch_stream` function merges incoming events into batches, significantly improving efficiency. Under low load, it behaves like single-event processing, but under high load, it dramatically reduces overhead, boosting performance.

(matklad.github.io)

Development

The Surprisingly Simple Power of LLM Agent Loops with Tool Use

2025-05-15

The author and their team built an AI programming assistant called Sketch, whose core is a surprisingly simple loop: the LLM receives user input, performs actions (potentially involving tool calls like bash), and outputs results. This simple loop, combined with powerful LLMs like Claude 3.7 Sonnet, allows Sketch to efficiently handle many programming tasks such as git operations, code modifications, and error handling. The author believes this LLM agent loop approach will find widespread use in everyday automation, drastically improving efficiency.

(sketch.dev)

Development AI programming assistant LLM agent loop tool use

Revolutionizing Mac Design: An Interview with Jef Raskin

2025-05-15

Revolutionizing Mac Design: An Interview with Jef Raskin

This 1986 interview features Jef Raskin, an early Macintosh designer. Raskin sharply criticizes complex UI design, sharing his philosophy behind SwyftCard (an Apple II application). Central to his approach are 'modelessness' and 'monotony': each action has one result, and each result has one action, fostering user habits and efficiency. He criticizes the Mac's eventual adoption of a traditional OS and mouse, arguing that good UI design prioritizes speed and user experience over technical complexity. Raskin's insights remain relevant to modern UI/UX design.

(computeradsfromthepast.substack.com)

Design

The Institute of September the Thirtieth: A Singular Obsession

2025-05-15

The Institute of September the Thirtieth: A Singular Obsession

This article details the fascinating and quirky Institute of September the Thirtieth, a New Orleans-based institution dedicated to archiving every conceivable artifact from September 30th, 1939. Founded by the enigmatic Vincent Rosier, a multifaceted entrepreneur, the Institute's collection ranges from newspapers and diaries to menus and children's toys, even encompassing meteorological and astronomical data. While seemingly disparate, these items provide invaluable insights for historians, linguists, and sociologists, offering a unique lens on time and memory. The Institute's journey isn't without internal conflict and challenges, including debates on its focus and digitization. Yet, its singular dedication draws researchers from around the globe, making it a captivating testament to human curiosity and the preservation of the past.

(gwern.net)

Misc

A New Paradigm for Psychology: The Mind as a Stack of Control Systems

2025-05-15

A New Paradigm for Psychology: The Mind as a Stack of Control Systems

This article tackles the long-standing issue of psychology's lack of a unifying paradigm, proposing a new framework based on control systems – cybernetic psychology. It argues the mind is a collection of control systems, each regulating a specific human need (e.g., nutrition, temperature), with error signals representing emotions. This approach offers a novel perspective on personality and mental illness, shifting psychology from symptom-based descriptions to exploring underlying mechanisms, potentially revolutionizing treatment approaches.

(www.experimental-history.com)

AI cybernetics

Revitalizing TLA⁺: A Call to Arms for Tool Development

2025-05-15

Revitalizing TLA⁺: A Call to Arms for Tool Development

The 2025 TLA⁺ Community Event highlighted the current state and future direction of TLA⁺ tooling. The author argues that ease of development within the TLA⁺ ecosystem is paramount. Existing parsers, interpreters, and model checkers are reviewed, alongside challenges such as legacy code and documentation gaps. Strategies to overcome these hurdles include test-driven development, developer onboarding, and grants. Future directions include generative testing and syntax simplification, culminating in an ambitious goal: boosting TLC's throughput to 1 billion states per minute.

(ahelwer.ca)

Development

US Navy Shipbuilding: A Case for Simpler Designs

2025-05-15

US Navy Shipbuilding: A Case for Simpler Designs

US Navy shipbuilding is plagued by cost overruns and schedule delays. This policy proposal argues that this stems from the Navy's reliance on complex, multi-role ship designs and outsourced design processes. The authors recommend a return to simpler, single-purpose ship designs and in-house design capabilities to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and ultimately build more ships for less. Case studies of the Ford-class carrier, Burke-class destroyer, and Littoral Combat Ship illustrate the problems of complex designs. The proposal offers alternative, more cost-effective ship designs, focusing on streamlined capabilities and efficient production.

(www.construction-physics.com)

Tech Navy shipbuilding cost overruns

NumPy: A Love-Hate Relationship with Python's Array Library

2025-05-15

NumPy: A Love-Hate Relationship with Python's Array Library

This article delves into the pain points of using NumPy, Python's popular array computation library, when dealing with multi-dimensional arrays. While NumPy excels with its simplicity and efficiency for lower-dimensional arrays, its broadcasting mechanism and indexing become incredibly complex and hard to understand when tackling more intricate multi-dimensional operations. The author argues that NumPy's core issue stems from its broadcasting mechanism replacing indices, resulting in limited expressiveness. The article uses multiple examples to highlight NumPy's struggles with complex array computations, comparing the pros and cons of using loops and np.einsum, ultimately expressing frustration with NumPy and a desire for a more user-friendly array language.

(dynomight.net)

Development multi-dimensional arrays

Demystifying Ruby Concurrency: Processes, Ractors, Threads, and Fibers

2025-05-15

Ruby, known for its elegance and readability, presents a concurrency model that can be initially confusing. This article delves into the four concurrency mechanisms in Ruby: processes, Ractors, threads, and fibers. Processes offer complete memory isolation, ideal for tasks requiring absolute separation; Ractors, introduced in Ruby 3, provide parallelism within a single process, employing message passing to prevent race conditions; threads, being lightweight, are limited by the GIL to concurrency, not true parallelism; and fibers, the lightest mechanism, offer cooperative multitasking through manual control yielding. Code examples and clear explanations illuminate the differences and use cases, providing a comprehensive understanding of Ruby's intricate concurrency landscape.

(blog.papey.fr)

Development

The Gateway Books: A Generation's Ambivalent Relationship with Literary Classics

2025-05-15

The Gateway Books: A Generation's Ambivalent Relationship with Literary Classics

This article explores the author's personal journey and a broader generational experience with a specific set of literary works—often dubbed the 'white male middlebrow canon.' These books, including works by Salinger, Vonnegut, and Heller, initially provided a sense of belonging and rebellion for young readers, offering an escape from the mundane and a path to intellectual self-discovery. However, as the author matured, they critically examined these books' inherent flaws, particularly misogyny and racism, leading to a complex and ambivalent relationship. Through surveys and personal reflections, the author investigates the lasting impact of these books and their limitations in the contemporary context, questioning whether they serve as helpful stepping stones to other literature or represent a limited and ultimately problematic perspective.

(thepointmag.com)

Misc Youth Culture Rebellion

Browser Blocking Port 6000? Cross-Protocol Scripting Vulnerability Strikes!

2025-05-15

While working on a Docker and Flask project, the author encountered an issue where port 6000 was inaccessible, while port 8000 functioned correctly. Investigation revealed that browsers actively block certain ports, including 6000, as a security measure against Cross-Protocol Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Chrome displays an ERR_UNSAFE_PORT error, Safari shows a blank page, and Firefox provides a more informative "This address is restricted" message. The browser cancels requests to these ports before they are even sent. The author confirmed the server was functioning correctly using curl, isolating the issue to browser security policies. The article lists Firefox's blocked ports and their services, explaining how this protection works.

(www.keenformatics.com)

Development Browser Security

ARB Assembly Shaders: A Deep Dive Before GLSL

2025-05-15

This article delves into ARB assembly shaders, a shading language used in OpenGL before the advent of GLSL. It details ARB shader integration, language features, instruction sets, and comparisons with GLSL. While now largely obsolete, understanding ARB assembly provides valuable insight into the evolution of modern graphics programming and the underlying mechanisms of lower-level graphics technologies.

(mid.net.ua)

Development graphics programming

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