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WhatsApp Now a Default Messaging and Calling App on iPhone

2025-03-27

WhatsApp Now a Default Messaging and Calling App on iPhone

Following a WhatsApp update (version 25.8.74), iPhone users can now set WhatsApp as their default app for calls and texts. Apple initially announced this feature for EU users, later extending it to all users with iOS 18.2. To change the default, go to Settings > Apps > Default Apps, then select Messaging and Calling. After making the change, tapping phone numbers on webpages or in contacts will automatically open WhatsApp.

(www.theverge.com)

Tech Default App

Your Mic Could Be Sabotaging Your Career: The Hidden Bias of Zoom Calls

2025-03-27

Your Mic Could Be Sabotaging Your Career: The Hidden Bias of Zoom Calls

A new Yale study reveals that a tinny-sounding microphone during video conferences can significantly impact how people perceive a speaker's intelligence, credibility, and attractiveness, even affecting job prospects. Researchers conducted experiments demonstrating that poor audio quality, independent of the message content, leads to negative judgments. This highlights a potential source of unconscious bias and discrimination, especially considering the correlation between microphone quality and socioeconomic status. The study emphasizes the importance of testing microphone quality before video interviews to avoid unintentional career setbacks.

(phys.org)

Misc microphone quality

London Met Police to Deploy Permanent Facial Recognition Cameras

2025-03-27

London Met Police to Deploy Permanent Facial Recognition Cameras

The Metropolitan Police will install two permanent live facial recognition (LFR) cameras in Croydon town center this summer to combat crime. This move has sparked privacy concerns, as the system is prone to errors and could be used to monitor individuals beyond suspected criminals, including vulnerable people and victims. While police claim high accuracy, the legality remains contested, with critics calling it a dystopian surveillance nightmare.

(www.theregister.com)

Tech

AMA's CPT Code Monopoly: An Economic Termite in Healthcare

2025-03-27

AMA's CPT Code Monopoly: An Economic Termite in Healthcare

This article exposes the American Medical Association's (AMA) lucrative monopoly on Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, used for medical billing. The AMA charges hefty royalties to software companies using these codes, a cost ultimately passed on to doctors and patients. This practice burdens physicians and influences healthcare politics, shifting AMA focus from its members' interests to its own profit maximization. The author calls for government intervention, such as invalidating CPT code copyrights or developing alternatives, to restore fair competition and the public good. The AMA's silence on Robert Kennedy Jr.'s nomination as Secretary of HHS hints at this power dynamic.

(www.thebignewsletter.com)

Tech healthcare monopoly CPT codes

AI-Generated Creative Works: The Surprising Gap Between Bias and Consumer Behavior

2025-03-27

AI-Generated Creative Works: The Surprising Gap Between Bias and Consumer Behavior

A recent study reveals a surprising gap between people's stated preferences and their actual consumption behavior regarding AI-generated content. Participants, while expressing a preference for human-created short stories, invested the same amount of time and money reading both AI-generated and human-written stories. Even knowing a story was AI-generated didn't reduce reading time or willingness to pay. This raises concerns about the future of creative industry jobs and the effectiveness of AI labels in curbing the flood of AI-generated work.

(theconversation.com)

AI Creative Industries Consumer Behavior

Niobium Phosphide: A New Ultrathin Conductor Outperforming Copper

2025-03-27

Niobium Phosphide: A New Ultrathin Conductor Outperforming Copper

Stanford researchers have discovered a novel 1.5-nanometer-thick niobium phosphide (NbP) film exhibiting superior conductivity to copper. Unlike traditional metals, whose resistance increases at the nanoscale, NbP's resistance decreases with decreasing thickness due to its surface being more conductive than its bulk. This 'topological semimetal' behavior promises energy-efficient integrated circuits. However, challenges remain for commercialization, including precise film thickness control.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech integrated circuits

Paralyzed Man Walks Again After Stem Cell Injection

2025-03-27

Paralyzed Man Walks Again After Stem Cell Injection

A groundbreaking trial in Japan has shown promising results in treating paralysis using induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived neural stem cells. One of four participants, a paralyzed man, can now stand independently after receiving injections. Another participant regained some arm and leg movement, while two others showed no significant improvement. While the results, which haven't undergone peer review, suggest the treatment is safe, larger trials are needed to confirm its efficacy and rule out natural recovery.

(www.nature.com)

Tech

Nintendo's Virtual Game Cards: Sharing Digital Switch Games Made Easy

2025-03-27

Nintendo's Virtual Game Cards: Sharing Digital Switch Games Made Easy

Nintendo unveiled Virtual Game Cards for the Nintendo Switch, launching late April. This new feature allows sharing digital games across multiple Switch consoles. Purchased digital games are stored as Virtual Game Cards, virtually loaded and ejected like physical cartridges. A single game can be played on up to two Switches simultaneously, and family sharing is enabled via local wireless, with a two-week lending period. This enhances digital game flexibility and convenience.

(venturebeat.com)

Game Nintendo Switch Virtual Game Cards Digital Game Sharing

Stoffel VM: A Virtual Machine Optimized for Multi-Party Computation

2025-03-27

Stoffel VM: A Virtual Machine Optimized for Multi-Party Computation

Stoffel Virtual Machine is a work-in-progress virtual machine designed for optimizing multi-party computation (MPC). Currently, it boasts basic functionality, supporting various data types (integers, booleans, strings, objects, arrays, etc.) and a rich instruction set including arithmetic, bitwise operations, control flow, and function calls. It also supports Rust FFI for easy integration of high-performance features. Future plans include adding MPC support and garbage collection.

(github.com)

Development multi-party computation

Plato's Music: Outsmarting Aristotle in Nizami's Khamsa

2025-03-27

Plato's Music: Outsmarting Aristotle in Nizami's Khamsa

A 16th-century Mughal painting depicts Plato playing an instrument surrounded by seemingly sleeping animals. This unusual scene originates from Nizami's Khamsa, specifically Alexander the Great's section. Alexander holds a contest of wisdom among philosophers. Aristotle initially dominates, but Plato's unique instrument, capable of mimicking the sounds of all creatures, lulls animals to sleep and then awakens them, demonstrating a deeper wisdom. The story reflects medieval Islamic perspectives on Plato and Aristotle, showcasing Plato as a mystic.

(www.willbuckingham.com)

Misc Nizami Plato Aristotle

arXiv's 20-Year Odyssey: One Programmer's Reluctant Reign

2025-03-27

arXiv's 20-Year Odyssey: One Programmer's Reluctant Reign

Paul Ginsparg's arXiv preprint server, a cornerstone of scientific communication, has undergone a dramatic transformation over two decades. Initially a solo project, its growth led to management challenges, code maintenance nightmares, and friction with library staff. Despite attempts to relinquish control, Ginsparg remained deeply involved until the Simons Foundation's funding enabled a much-needed restructuring and modernization. This article details the story of a brilliant programmer's tenacious yet bittersweet journey, and the arduous evolution of an open-source platform.

(www.wired.com)

Development

It's Time to Abandon Chat Interfaces for Human-AI Interaction

2025-03-27

This article critiques the anti-pattern design of chat interfaces in human-AI interaction. The author uses their experience building a chat-based calendar agent as an example, highlighting its inefficiency compared to traditional graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The author argues that for most transactional tasks, the information abstraction layer of a GUI is far more effective, saving time and effort. Chat interfaces are better suited for social interaction, not tasks requiring precise instructions. The future of human-AI interaction should move towards hybrid interfaces, integrating the intelligence of LLMs into GUIs to avoid cumbersome prompt engineering and enhance user experience.

(hello-jp.net)

AI human-AI interaction AI anti-patterns hybrid interfaces

The Rise of Tabletop RPGs: How Dungeons & Dragons Is Combating Loneliness

2025-03-27

The Rise of Tabletop RPGs: How Dungeons & Dragons Is Combating Loneliness

Starting from a board game café in New York City, a group of twenty-somethings transformed their Dungeons & Dragons hobby into a thriving Twitch channel, "The Bards of New York," boasting thousands of followers. Their success mirrors the exploding popularity of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), especially Dungeons & Dragons. Once a niche hobby, D&D now boasts tens of millions of players, spawning movies, TV shows, and lucrative streaming careers. The article highlights how TTRPGs not only provide entertainment but also foster strong communities, combating loneliness and enhancing creativity and problem-solving skills—a particularly valuable aspect in a post-pandemic world.

(www.businessinsider.com)

Game Tabletop RPGs

The UK's National AI Institute: A Case Study in University-Led Failure

2025-03-27

The UK's National AI Institute: A Case Study in University-Led Failure

The Alan Turing Institute (ATI), intended to be the UK's leading AI institution, is in crisis due to mismanagement, strategic blunders, and conflicts of interest among its university partners. The article details the ATI's origins and how it became a university-dominated, profit-driven consultancy rather than a true innovation hub. The ATI neglected cutting-edge research like deep learning, focusing excessively on ethics and responsibility, ultimately missing the generative AI boom. This reflects common issues in UK tech policy: unclear goals, over-reliance on universities, and a reluctance to abandon failing projects. The defense and security arm, however, stands as a successful exception due to its industry and intelligence agency ties.

(www.chalmermagne.com)

AI AI Institute UK Tech Policy University Domination

Next.js's Openness Challenges and Netlify's Response

2025-03-27

Next.js's Openness Challenges and Netlify's Response

Netlify delves into the challenges posed by Next.js, including the lack of adapter support hindering other platforms from providing the same experience as Vercel, insufficient documentation for serverless deployments, and numerous undocumented behaviors. These issues force platforms like Netlify to invest heavily in reverse engineering and testing to offer complete functionality. The article advocates for increased openness in Next.js and details Netlify's strategies, such as proactive automated testing and participation in initiatives like OpenNext, to address these challenges.

(www.netlify.com)

Development Openness

Glider Returns: A Classic Apple II Game Reimagined

2025-03-27

Glider Returns: A Classic Apple II Game Reimagined

The classic Apple II game, Glider, has been resurrected by a developer who painstakingly recreated it using 6502 assembly. Requiring an Apple ][+ or later model (mouse required on the ][+), this reimplementation offers both mouse and keyboard control and is best enjoyed on a monochrome display (by design). The developer has also shared a detailed development log detailing the journey of learning 6502 assembly and bringing the project to life. This free, playable version is a treat for retro gaming enthusiasts.

(www.colino.net)

Game

The Synchrony Budget: Minimizing Synchronous Calls in Distributed Systems

2025-03-27

This article explores the importance of managing synchronous calls when building distributed service systems. The author introduces the concept of a "synchrony budget," advocating for minimizing synchronous requests between services to improve performance and availability. Synchronous calls are costly, impacting response times and system stability. Using an e-commerce order processing example, the article demonstrates how to handle interactions with inventory and shipping services asynchronously (e.g., using Kafka), reserving synchronous calls for situations where they're essential (like payment services). The author also covers the Outbox pattern and CDC technology for handling message buffering and data synchronization in asynchronous communication, ultimately achieving a high-performance and highly available distributed system.

(www.morling.dev)

Development Asynchronous Communication Synchrony Budget

Search Engine Crawler Optimization: The Long Tail of 0.1%

2025-03-27

A search engine's crawler consistently struggled to finish its task, spending days on the final domains. Recent migration to slop crawl data reduced memory usage by 80%, increasing crawling tasks. This resulted in 99.9% completion in 4 days, but the remaining 0.1% took a week. The issue stems from website size following a Pareto distribution, with large websites (especially academic ones with numerous subdomains and documents) and crawler limits on concurrent tasks per domain. Initial random ordering caused large sites to start late. Sorting by subdomain count led to a surge of requests to blog hosts. Adding request delay jitter and adjusting the sort order to prioritize sites with more than 8 subdomains partially solved the problem. However, inherent limitations of the batch crawling model require further optimization.

(www.marginalia.nu)

Development crawler optimization

Qualcomm Accuses Arm of Anti-Competitive Practices

2025-03-27

Qualcomm Accuses Arm of Anti-Competitive Practices

Qualcomm has filed antitrust complaints against Arm with regulators in the US, Europe, and South Korea, alleging that Arm is limiting access to its technologies and changing licensing models to harm competition. Arm denies the accusations, framing Qualcomm's actions as a diversion from their ongoing commercial dispute. This follows a recent Delaware court case where Qualcomm won, but Arm is seeking a retrial. The complaints highlight a significant rift between the two tech giants, with Qualcomm seeking to secure access to Arm's crucial technologies.

(www.tomshardware.com)

Tech

Dissecting NSO's BLASTPASS: A Zero-Click iOS Exploit

2025-03-27

Dissecting NSO's BLASTPASS: A Zero-Click iOS Exploit

Ian Beer of Google Project Zero details the analysis of NSO Group's BLASTPASS iMessage exploit. This zero-click attack chain leveraged a maliciously crafted WebP image disguised as a PassKit attachment to bypass the iMessage sandbox. Exploiting a Huffman coding vulnerability in the lossless WebP format, the attackers triggered memory corruption. A sophisticated 5.5MB bplist heap groom within a MakerNote EXIF tag facilitated memory overwriting during TIFF image rendering. This triggered a forged CFReadStream's destructor, executing malicious code. The attack cleverly exploited vulnerabilities in ImageIO and Wallet, bypassing BlastDoor sandbox and Pointer Authentication Codes (PAC). HomeKit traffic may have been used for ASLR disclosure. The analysis reveals the complex techniques used, highlighting the need for robust sandbox mechanisms and a reduced remote attack surface.

(googleprojectzero.blogspot.com)

Tech iOS vulnerability zero-click exploit NSO Group

Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet: AI Planning Skills on Display in Pokémon

2025-03-27

Anthropic's Claude 3.7 Sonnet: AI Planning Skills on Display in Pokémon

Anthropic's latest language model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, demonstrates impressive planning capabilities while playing Pokémon. Unlike previous AI models that wandered aimlessly or got stuck in loops, Sonnet plans ahead, remembers its objectives, and adapts when initial strategies fail. While Sonnet still struggles in complex scenarios (like getting stuck on Mt. Moon), requiring improvements in understanding game screenshots and expanding the context window, this marks significant progress in AI's strategic planning and long-term reasoning abilities. Researchers believe Sonnet's occasional displays of self-awareness and strategy adaptation suggest enormous potential for solving real-world problems.

(arstechnica.com)

AI strategic planning

Rediscovering Piranesi's Perspective Trick: A Forgotten Artistic Technique

2025-03-27

Rediscovering Piranesi's Perspective Trick: A Forgotten Artistic Technique

This article delves into the unique perspective technique employed by 18th-century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Unlike traditional perspective, Piranesi's trick uses a near-large, far-small ratio when depicting a series of similar objects, rather than true perspective convergence. This technique, while violating perspective rules, enhances image readability and comprehension. The article analyzes the mathematical principles of this technique and, through comparison with traditional perspective, demonstrates its potential applications in image processing and mapmaking. The author even developed an algorithm to apply this technique to image editing software, offering a fresh perspective on image manipulation.

(medium.com)

Design

Rivulet: A Flowing Strand Programming Language

2025-03-27

Rivulet: A Flowing Strand Programming Language

Rivulet is a novel programming language that uses semigraphic characters representing 'strands' to write code. Programs consist of tightly packed code blocks called glyphs, each containing several types of strands that execute together. Rivulet avoids traditional control flow mechanisms, instead using a rollback mechanism to implement conditional branching and loops. Data is organized as lists, and commands operate on single cells or entire lists. While its syntax may seem complex at first glance, it's actually quite easy to learn.

(github.com)

Development graphical programming novel programming paradigm

Craniometrix: $7M+ in Revenue and Hiring a Chief of Staff to Scale

2025-03-27

Craniometrix: $7M+ in Revenue and Hiring a Chief of Staff to Scale

Craniometrix, a healthcare startup, has secured over $7 million in revenue and is seeking a Chief of Staff to help scale its operations. Leveraging Medicare's new GUIDE program, they provide innovative care for dementia patients while generating additional income for physicians. The company uses a software and services model, with payments starting July 1st, and has already signed a significant number of doctors. The ideal candidate will be highly detail-oriented, work across all aspects of the business, and manage multiple projects simultaneously. Responsibilities include onboarding customers, building processes (AI-powered outbound calling, etc.), translating operations into product requirements, assisting with investor decks, responding to sales inquiries, and identifying expansion opportunities. The position requires 3+ years of healthcare experience, strong operations management skills, and a commitment to working 60+ hours per week. Craniometrix is building the world's first one-stop-shop care platform for Alzheimer's disease, focusing on optimizing care monitoring, management, and intervention.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Startup Healthcare Tech Healthcare Startup

Boycott AI: Don't Let Big Tech Fool You Again

2025-03-27

Boycott AI: Don't Let Big Tech Fool You Again

The author recounts their experience of succumbing to the allure of Apple products, only to find themselves trapped in a cycle of technological control. They argue that AI, like the tech advancements of the past two decades, fosters addiction, diminishes creativity and autonomy, and ultimately leaves users at the mercy of Big Tech. The author urges a boycott of AI products, advocating for independent living and avoiding past mistakes.

(unherd.com)

Tech digital dependence

Modern C Updated: Free Edition Now Available with Full C23 Support

2025-03-27

The free version of the updated Modern C is now available! This release focuses on complete support for the new C23 standard. Key improvements include enhancements to integer types (new _BitInt(N) type, `` and `` headers, 128-bit type support), a nullptr constant, attribute annotations, enhanced type-generic programming (auto and typeof type inference), default initialization, and constexpr. New chapters cover compound literals, lambdas, internationalization, and robust error handling. An appendix and a temporary include header are also included to ease the transition to C23.

(gustedt.gitlabpages.inria.fr)

Development C23 standard

Postel's Law: The Open Source Evolutionary Dead End

2025-03-27

Postel's Law, advocating "be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept," has ironically led to an evolutionary dead end for open-source software. Because closed-source producers often violate specifications, open-source consumers are forced to constantly compromise, leading to specifications becoming meaningless, hindering new projects, and reducing competitiveness. The author urges open-source maintainers to strictly adhere to specifications, reject unreasonable user requests, and direct issues to the offending closed-source vendors, avoiding the "three-ring circus" and maintaining specification integrity.

(alexgaynor.net)

Development Postel's Law Software Specifications

US Space Force Certifies Vulcan Centaur Rocket for National Security Missions

2025-03-27

US Space Force Certifies Vulcan Centaur Rocket for National Security Missions

The US Space Force has certified United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket for national security missions, following a rigorous certification process involving two test launches in 2024. Despite a nozzle malfunction during the second test, the rocket successfully completed its mission, and corrective actions have been implemented. ULA plans to launch a dozen rockets this year, aiming for a launch cadence of two per month by year's end. This certification adds to the nation's space launch capabilities.

(spacenews.com)

Tech

Hanif Kureishi's Heartbreaking Account of Paralysis: Shattered

2025-03-27

Hanif Kureishi's Heartbreaking Account of Paralysis: Shattered

Following a fall in Rome, English playwright, screenwriter, and novelist Hanif Kureishi became a quadriplegic. His new book, *Shattered*, chronicles his year in hospitals, a series of dispatches detailing the physical pain, emotional turmoil, and reflections on life. Kureishi, with his signature wit and sharp prose, portrays the absurdity and warmth of hospital life, revealing the resilience and vulnerability of a human spirit facing adversity. More than just a moving account of illness, *Shattered* is a profound meditation on creativity, humanity, and life itself.

(www.nybooks.com)

Misc illness life

Andalusian Interest Groups' Digital Communication Strategies: A Silent Lobby?

2025-03-27

This paper investigates the digital communication strategies of Andalusian interest groups on social media. The study finds that these groups, primarily composed of companies and business associations, exhibit extremely low interactivity, rarely engaging in dialogue with the public. While employing some political communication and propaganda techniques, their communication activities lack clear political objectives, focusing instead on maintaining a positive self-image rather than active lobbying. The results suggest that the digital communication strategies of Andalusian interest groups may not primarily serve lobbying purposes but rather a more passive approach.

(www.frontiersin.org)

Misc interest groups lobbying

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