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AI Intelligence Tests: Are Good Questions More Important Than Great Answers?

2025-03-27

AI Intelligence Tests: Are Good Questions More Important Than Great Answers?

The author took the "Humanity's Last Exam," a test designed to assess AI intelligence, and failed miserably. This led him to reflect on how we evaluate AI intelligence: current tests overemphasize providing correct answers to complex questions, neglecting the importance of formulating meaningful questions. True historical research begins with unique, unexpected questions that reveal new perspectives. The author argues that AI progress may not lie in perfectly answering difficult questions, but in its ability to gather and interpret evidence during research and its potential to ask novel questions. This raises the question of whether AI can ever produce valuable historical questions.

(newsletter.dancohen.org)

AI Intelligence Tests Historical Research

NZ Service Provider Pwned: A Responsible Disclosure Story

2025-03-27

A security researcher discovered a critical database vulnerability in a New Zealand app, KiwiServices, during a penetration test. By manipulating a simple HTTP request, they bypassed authentication and accessed the entire user database, exposing sensitive information like names, emails, and phone numbers. The researcher responsibly disclosed the vulnerability, and KiwiServices fixed it within 30 days. This highlights the importance of security testing and prompt patching.

(mrbruh.com)

Development

Google Maps, Search, and Hotels Get AI-Powered Travel Planning Upgrades

2025-03-27

Google Maps, Search, and Hotels Get AI-Powered Travel Planning Upgrades

Google is enhancing Maps, Search, and Hotels with AI-powered features to improve travel planning. Maps gains the ability to identify locations in screenshots and save them to a list, simplifying trip preparation. This Gemini-powered feature, rolling out to US iOS users this week (Android coming soon), detects places in screenshot text, displays them on the map, and allows saving to a sharable list. AI Overviews in Search are updated with itinerary-building tools, letting users create trips for specific regions or countries. Google Lens's AI Overviews will soon support more languages, including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. Finally, price drop alerts, already in Google Flights, are going global for Google Hotels, available on mobile and desktop.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech AI travel planning Hotel booking

Don't Let Self-Serve UIs Fool You: They Aren't Always a Silver Bullet

2025-03-27

This article explores the pros and cons of building self-serve UIs for accessing internal systems. While simplifying configuration seems appealing, for complex tasks, self-serve UIs can be counterproductive. They don't solve underlying engineering problems and can mask risks, leading to errors and security vulnerabilities. The author suggests that before building a self-serve UI, one should first delve deeper into the root cause of the problem and improve the system itself, rather than just relying on superficial simplification.

(jeremymikkola.com)

Development Engineering Efficiency

The High Cost of On-Call: How Tech Companies Exploit Their Engineers

2025-03-27

The High Cost of On-Call: How Tech Companies Exploit Their Engineers

This article examines the pervasive and detrimental effects of on-call engineer rotations in tech companies. Using the experience of an engineer named Alex as a case study, it highlights the immense stress and burnout associated with on-call duties, including constant availability, sleep deprivation, blurred work-life boundaries, and the lack of adequate compensation. The article critiques the prevailing culture that normalizes the exploitation inherent in such systems, urging companies to reconsider their on-call policies and provide fair compensation and protection for their engineers' well-being.

(www.scottsmitelli.com)

Development Work-Life Balance

Columbia Student Suspended for Leaking Disciplinary Hearing, Not AI Cheating Tool

2025-03-27

Columbia Student Suspended for Leaking Disciplinary Hearing, Not AI Cheating Tool

Columbia University suspended a student for leaking a disciplinary hearing recording and photos of Columbia staff to social media, not for creating an AI tool that helps job candidates cheat on technical interviews. The student, Chungin "Roy" Lee, created Interview Coder, an AI tool that sells for $60 a month and projects $2 million in annual revenue. While Lee argued that technical interviews are outside the university's purview, Columbia deemed his actions academic dishonesty, resulting in a one-year suspension. Lee plans to move to San Francisco.

(www.businessinsider.com)

Development Academic Dishonesty

Dish: A Tiny, One-Shot Monitoring Service

2025-03-27

Dish: A Tiny, One-Shot Monitoring Service

Dish is a minimalist Go-based, one-shot monitoring service designed for quick testing of HTTP/S and generic TCP endpoints. It supports loading target lists from local JSON files or remote JSON APIs and offers various alerting methods, including Telegram notifications, Prometheus Pushgateway updates, and webhook callbacks. Users can configure it flexibly via command-line arguments, including custom headers. Dish boasts zero dependencies and easy deployment, whether through building a binary or using a Docker image, making it ideal for rapidly setting up a monitoring system.

(github.com)

Development

Revyl: Proactive Observability for Faster, More Reliable Software Releases

2025-03-27

Revyl: Proactive Observability for Faster, More Reliable Software Releases

Revyl is a proactive observability platform that catches and triages bugs in iOS, Android, and web apps before they reach production. Their mission is to automate software reliability by providing end-to-end testing, enabling faster and more confident releases. Founded by the creators of DragonCrawl and backed by prominent investors like Felicis, General Catalyst, and Y Combinator, along with strategic angels from Meta, Nvidia, and Uber, Revyl boasts early enterprise traction and aims to become the default reliability platform.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development

Student Uses AI to Game Amazon's Interview Process, Sparks University Controversy

2025-03-27

Student Uses AI to Game Amazon's Interview Process, Sparks University Controversy

Columbia University student Roy Lee developed Interview Coder, an AI tool that solves LeetCode problems, a standard in software engineering interviews. After using it to secure an Amazon internship and posting a video online, he faced backlash from Amazon and the university. Amazon reported him, leading to an investigation, but the video's viral success and public questioning of LeetCode's relevance led to the university reopening the case. The incident sparked debate about AI's impact on education and employment, highlighting limitations of traditional interview methods. Lee advocates for assessing candidates based on real-world projects and code skills, rather than high-pressure timed tests.

(thepennpost.com)

Tech

A Comprehensive Guide to Em Dashes, En Dashes, and Hyphens

2025-03-27

This article provides a detailed explanation of the usage and differences between em dashes (—), en dashes (–), and hyphens (-). Em dashes can replace commas, colons, or parentheses to emphasize or add supplemental information; en dashes primarily indicate ranges or connections between words; hyphens are used to connect words or separate syllables. The article uses numerous examples to clearly illustrate the application of these three symbols in different contexts and points out their differences in formal and informal writing.

(www.merriam-webster.com)

Misc

The Madness of Genius: Exploring the Cost of Scientific Discovery

2025-03-27

The Madness of Genius: Exploring the Cost of Scientific Discovery

Both *When We Cease to Understand the World* and *The MANIAC* offer unique perspectives on the stories behind 20th-century scientific breakthroughs. Author Benjamín Labatut masterfully blends historical fact with fiction, portraying the madness and struggles of brilliant scientists like Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Grothendieck, and the profound impact of their discoveries—quantum mechanics, chemical weapons, and more—on the world. Filled with dreamlike scenes and unsettling details, the books explore the price of scientific discovery and humanity's relentless pursuit of knowledge.

(www.nybooks.com)

Tech History of Science Genius

Signal Downloads Soar After Trump Admin Scandal

2025-03-27

Signal Downloads Soar After Trump Admin Scandal

The accidental inclusion of The Atlantic's editor in a Signal group chat used by Trump administration officials to plan a Yemen bombing, dubbed 'SignalGate', has led to a massive surge in downloads for the encrypted messaging app. The incident, which exposed secret plans and raised concerns about security protocols, caused Signal's US downloads to double their usual rate, marking the app's largest ever US growth spurt. This surpasses even the growth seen in 2021 when WhatsApp's privacy policy changes spurred a mass exodus to Signal. Sensor Tower data confirms a 105 percent increase in US downloads compared to the previous week, and a 150 percent increase compared to the average week in 2024.

(www.wired.com)

Tech

Amazon's Global Censorship: Books Are the Biggest Target

2025-03-27

Amazon's Global Censorship: Books Are the Biggest Target

A new report exposes Amazon's regional shipping restrictions for certain products on its US storefront. Researchers found 17,050 products restricted from shipping to at least one region globally. Books were the most commonly restricted product category, often related to LGBTQ+, occult, erotica, Christianity, and health topics. Affected regions included many Middle Eastern and some African countries. Amazon uses misleading error messages to hide its censorship, violating its public commitments to human rights. The report recommends Amazon improve its censorship system and increase transparency.

(citizenlab.ca)

Tech

DIY Artificial Sunlight: A Software Engineer's Hardware Adventure

2025-03-27

DIY Artificial Sunlight: A Software Engineer's Hardware Adventure

Inspired by a YouTube video, a software engineer embarked on a project to create artificial sunlight at home. Rejecting the bulky parabolic reflector design, he cleverly employed a grid array of multiple lenses and LEDs. The article details the entire process, from 3D modeling and PCB design to CNC machining and final assembly, including challenges faced and solutions implemented. While the final product's brightness fell slightly short of expectations, it achieved a satisfying geometric effect and provided the author with valuable hardware engineering experience.

(victorpoughon.fr)

Hardware Optics

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

Tufts Grad Student's Arrest Sparks Protest

2025-03-27

Tufts Grad Student's Arrest Sparks Protest

A protest erupted at Powder House Park following the detention of Tufts graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk by federal authorities. Ozturk, a doctoral candidate, was apprehended on her way to a Ramadan Iftar. The protest, organized by various activist groups, condemned the arrest and highlighted concerns about immigration rights and the targeting of immigrant communities. Speakers urged community involvement and criticized politicians for issuing statements without taking concrete action. The event underscored the need for continued resistance against what protesters see as unjust practices.

(www.tuftsdaily.com)

Misc immigration rights community action

Inko: A New Language for Building Reliable Concurrent Software

2025-03-27

Inko: A New Language for Building Reliable Concurrent Software

Inko is a new programming language designed for building concurrent software with confidence. It simplifies concurrent software development by offering deterministic automatic memory management, move semantics, static typing, type-safe concurrency, and efficient error handling, eliminating unpredictable performance, runtime errors, and race conditions. Inko compiles to LLVM machine code. Examples showcase a simple "Hello, world!" and a concurrent factorial calculation. Visit the Inko website for more information and installation instructions.

(github.com)

Development

Clean: An Embedded DSL and Formal Verification Framework for ZK Circuits in Lean4

2025-03-27

Researchers have developed Clean, an embedded domain-specific language (DSL) and formal verification framework in Lean4 for building zero-knowledge (ZK) circuits. ZK circuits are prone to bugs, and Clean aims to improve correctness by allowing users to define circuits in Lean4, specify their desired properties, and formally prove them. This project is part of the zkEVM Formal Verification Project, aiming to provide infrastructure and tooling for formal verification of zkEVMs. Clean supports four basic operations for defining circuits: witness, assert, lookup, and subcircuit, and offers a monadic interface for enhanced usability. At its core is the FormalCircuit structure, which tightly packages—in a dependently-typed way—the circuit definition, assumptions, specification, soundness, and completeness proofs. Large circuits can be formally verified by recursively replacing subcircuit constraints with their (formally verified) specifications. The framework has successfully verified simple circuits like 8-bit addition, with future plans to add more low-level gadgets, define common hash function circuits, and build a formally verified minimal VM for a subset of RISC-V.

(blog.zksecurity.xyz)

Development zero-knowledge proof

Conquering Japanese Writing: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji

2025-03-27

Learning Japanese begins with its intricate writing system: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. This article provides a clear explanation of how these three scripts are used, their historical evolution, the Joyo Kanji list, and the JLPT. It also offers learning tips, guiding learners to master this system step-by-step, ultimately enabling fluent reading and writing in Japanese.

(www.kanjimaster.ai)

Development Japanese learning Kanji Writing System

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-03-27

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 works with partners who adhere to them. Have an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Microsoft's New Office Startup Booster: Faster Loading, But With a Catch

2025-03-27

Microsoft's New Office Startup Booster: Faster Loading, But With a Catch

Microsoft is rolling out a new Windows scheduled task called 'Startup Boost' in May to speed up Office app loading. This background task preloads performance enhancements but only runs on systems with 8GB RAM and 5GB free disk space, disabling automatically in Energy Saver mode. Users can disable it in Office settings, but the Office installer re-enables it with each update. While designed to improve launch times, its automatic re-enablement might annoy some users.

(www.bleepingcomputer.com)

Development Windows Scheduled Task

Mysterious B-2 Bomber Deployment: Iran?

2025-03-27

Mysterious B-2 Bomber Deployment: Iran?

A significant, and largely unacknowledged, deployment of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers has been tracked from Whiteman AFB to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Open-source intelligence indicates at least four or five B-2s were involved, with one diverting to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam due to an emergency. The scale of this deployment is unprecedented, exceeding typical Bomber Task Force or Global Power Missions. Accompanying the B-2s are numerous C-17 transports carrying personnel and equipment. Runway closures at Diego Garcia until May 1st suggest a prolonged stay. While official comment is lacking, the timing, coinciding with heightened tensions in the Middle East, particularly US sanctions and threats against Iran, leads many to speculate a connection to Iran. The B-2’s capability to carry the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator further fuels this theory.

(theaviationist.com)

Tech B-2 Bomber Military Deployment Middle East

Dagger Shell: Reimagining the Unix Command Line

2025-03-27

Dagger Shell: Reimagining the Unix Command Line

Dagger Shell is a bash-syntax frontend for the Dagger Engine, a state-of-the-art runtime and composition system. It combines the best ideas from Docker, Make, PowerShell, and Nix, simplifying modern software development workflows. With native support for containers, secrets, and service endpoints; typed objects; declarative execution; and content-addressed artifacts, Dagger Shell streamlines builds, tests, ephemeral environments, deployments, and more. It even facilitates AI agent orchestration. The core philosophy is modularity and composability, aiming to reduce complex tasks to simple shell scripts and code, eliminating the need for numerous DSLs.

(dagger.io)

Development

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

OpenAI's New Image Generator Ushers in 'Vibe Marketing'

2025-03-27

OpenAI's New Image Generator Ushers in 'Vibe Marketing'

OpenAI has launched a powerful new image generation model boasting photorealism and improved world knowledge. However, its text-rendering capabilities are truly groundbreaking, producing crisp, readable text instead of blurry AI artifacts. This makes AI-generated images highly viable for marketing, leading to the emergence of "vibe marketing." The article provides ten examples of vibe marketing using AI-generated images, covering various applications like social media posts, comics, infographics, and product promotions. Prompts for each example are included. The author predicts vibe marketing will become the new standard for product development.

(www.indiehackers.com)

Tech vibe marketing

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

The Philosophy of Coroutines: A Programmer's Musings

2025-03-27

This article delves into the philosophy of coroutines through the lens of the author's personal journey. From early days simulating coroutines in C with preprocessor tricks to the advent of native C++20 coroutines, the author shares insights into their use and advantages. A comparison of coroutines versus state machines and threads highlights their flexibility, debuggability, and ease of cleanup, particularly beneficial for sequential tasks like network protocols and data stream processing. The author explores various coroutine implementations, optimization techniques using queues and pre-filters, and offers a glimpse into the future of coroutines.

(www.chiark.greenend.org.uk)

Development

From 'Good Enough' to 'Emptying the Pond': How America is Facing Resource Scarcity

2025-03-27

From 'Good Enough' to 'Emptying the Pond': How America is Facing Resource Scarcity

This article explores the current resource scarcity facing America, particularly the housing shortage. The author argues that excessive regulations and approval processes lead to inefficiency and hinder the effective use of resources. This 'perfect is the enemy of good' mentality has led to widespread public discontent. The article calls for the government to improve efficiency, prioritize tangible results over cumbersome procedures, and address the increasingly severe resource scarcity.

(inpractice.yimbyaction.org)

Startup resource scarcity

Microsoft's AI Gamble: DeepSeek Sets a New Bar

2025-03-27

Microsoft's AI Gamble: DeepSeek Sets a New Bar

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella rapidly deployed DeepSeek's R1 model onto Azure, marking a strategic shift in Microsoft's AI approach. DeepSeek's efficient AI models and lean team achieved App Store success, setting a new benchmark for Microsoft's own AI development. Microsoft is significantly investing in AI, including $80 billion in datacenters and research into its own Muse model for Copilot, aiming to boost its competitive edge. However, challenges remain, including potential datacenter overcapacity and achieving its 2030 carbon-neutral goal.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech

Terraform Docker Provider: Handling Image Attribute Changes Gracefully

2025-03-27

When managing Docker containers with Terraform, the Docker provider transforms the `image` attribute into a SHA digest. This leads to subsequent Terraform refreshes incorrectly detecting image changes and forcing container rebuilds. Simply using `lifecycle { ignore_changes = [image] }` masks actual image changes, creating a potential risk. This article presents a solution: leverage a `null_resource` as a trigger. When the `image` attribute changes, the `null_resource` rebuilds, indirectly triggering a container rebuild, ensuring image updates while avoiding unnecessary container recreation.

(blog.mattsbit.co.uk)

Development

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