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The Unexpected Legacy of Parking Reform Pioneer Donald Shoup

2025-02-12

The Unexpected Legacy of Parking Reform Pioneer Donald Shoup

Professor Donald Shoup, a pioneer in parking reform, passed away on February 6th. This article details how his work fundamentally reshaped the political economy of parking and cities themselves. His seminal work, *The High Cost of Free Parking*, argued that underpriced parking leads to wasted resources and urban congestion. Shoup advocated for demand-based parking pricing and the abolition of minimum parking requirements, using parking revenue to improve local infrastructure to gain public support. His ideas have been implemented in thousands of cities worldwide, leaving a lasting impact on urban planning.

(www.worksinprogress.news)

Misc parking reform

Syd: A Robust Rust-Based Linux Sandbox Kernel

2025-02-12

Syd is a GPL-3 licensed, rock-solid application kernel written in Rust for sandboxing applications on Linux systems (5.19 and above). Evolving from a tool for detecting package build errors in Exherbo Linux, Syd now provides a robust security boundary. Leveraging modern Linux APIs, it eliminates TOCTTOU vulnerabilities. Unlike other sandboxing tools, Syd operates without extra privileges, offering a simple interface to complex sandboxing mechanisms. Features include path sandboxing, execution control, network sandboxing, and advanced features like lock and proxy sandboxing. It's designed for strong application isolation and security.

(fosdem.org)

Development Linux sandbox

PgAssistant: Your PostgreSQL Performance Assistant

2025-02-12

PgAssistant: Your PostgreSQL Performance Assistant

PgAssistant is an open-source tool designed to help developers understand and optimize their PostgreSQL database performance. It offers database behavior analysis, schema optimization, and SQL query library management. Integration with OpenAI or local LLMs assists in SQL query optimization. A user-friendly interface simplifies operation, and a JSON file manages the SQL query library. It also integrates PGTune for database parameter tuning and Docker Compose file generation.

(github.com)

Development

Disney's 'Go Away Green': Camouflaging Infrastructure

2025-02-12

Disney's 'Go Away Green': Camouflaging Infrastructure

Disney Parks utilize a range of muted colors, including various shades of green, gray, brown, and blue, dubbed "Go Away Green," to seamlessly blend infrastructure like speakers, fences, and trash cans into the environment. This clever camouflage technique, inspired by military colors, minimizes distractions and enhances the immersive experience, focusing visitor attention on the attractions rather than the park's functional elements. The strategy is applied to large buildings and smaller infrastructure alike.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Design Theme Park Design Color Theory

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-02-12

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

LSD Dose-Response Study: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Trial

2025-02-12

LSD Dose-Response Study: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Trial

This study employed a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design with six experimental sessions to investigate the effects of varying doses of LSD (25µg, 50µg, 100µg, 200µg, and 200µg 1 hour post-ketanserin administration) on healthy participants. Sixteen subjects underwent assessments of subjective effects, physiological responses, plasma BDNF levels, and LSD plasma concentrations. The findings provide insights into LSD's mechanism of action. This research falls under the Tech category.

(www.nature.com)

Tech dose-response double-blind study

DeaDBeeF: A Highly Customizable Cross-Platform Audio Player

2025-02-12

DeaDBeeF (0xDEADBEEF) is a modular, cross-platform audio player compatible with GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows, BSD, OpenSolaris, and other Unix-like systems. It plays numerous audio formats, handles format conversion, boasts a highly customizable UI, and supports numerous plugins for extended functionality. The screenshot showcases a heavily customized DeaDBeeF instance running on Linux with several plugins.

(deadbeef.sourceforge.io)

Hardware audio player customizable

The Information Deluge: Coping with the News Overload

2025-02-12

The Information Deluge: Coping with the News Overload

Reflecting on a 45-year career in tech, the author laments the shift from singular news sources to highly personalized strategies in the age of information overload. From the initial era of TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines, to the explosion of USENET and the web, news sources have multiplied exponentially, exceeding human information processing capacity. Faced with a deluge of information that's often untrustworthy or irrelevant, people have developed coping mechanisms, including complete disconnection and digital sabbaths. The author argues we need a fundamental rethink of our relationship with information, cultivating better discernment skills and building psychological and cultural defenses to navigate the chaos. This isn't a problem solvable by technology or law; it requires individual effort to improve our capacity to manage information overload.

(www.theregister.com)

Misc information filtering

To Compile or Not to Compile Database Queries: A Deep Dive

2025-02-12

This article explores the trade-offs of compiling database queries. Traditional query interpreters struggle with the speed of modern NVMe SSDs, leading to significant performance bottlenecks. Compiling queries offers substantial speed improvements, especially for OLAP workloads. However, compilation time and optimization challenges create unpredictable performance cliffs. Vectorized interpreters, conversely, are easier to build, debug, and offer more consistent performance. The article contrasts this with browser JavaScript/Wasm engines, which use a tiered compilation approach (interpreter, baseline compiler, optimizing compiler) to achieve a smooth performance trade-off. The author proposes a similar approach for databases, suggesting a baseline compiler as a key component. Several implementation strategies, including 'copy-and-patch' and Wasm compilation, are explored. Ultimately, the article argues that building a baseline compiler isn't prohibitively difficult and offers perspectives on future directions.

(www.scattered-thoughts.net)

Development query optimization

Hiding Secrets in Emojis: Exploiting Unicode Variation Selectors

2025-02-12

Hiding Secrets in Emojis: Exploiting Unicode Variation Selectors

A Hacker News comment sparked a discussion about hiding information using Unicode variation selectors. This article demonstrates that arbitrary data can be encoded into a single emoji by converting data into a sequence of Unicode variation selectors, remaining invisible after rendering. This method can bypass human content filters or be used for text watermarking, enabling covert information transmission and tracking. While this technique has potential for abuse, it also highlights the complexity and potential security challenges of Unicode.

(paulbutler.org)

Tech Data Hiding Information Security

The Unix Trinity: dmr, kt, and bwk

2025-02-12

In Unix history, the initials dmr, kt, and bwk represent legendary figures: Dennis M. Ritchie (dmr), co-creator of Unix and the C programming language; Ken Thompson (kt), co-creator of Unix alongside Ritchie; and Brian W. Kernighan (bwk), co-author of influential Unix programs and books like "The C Programming Language" and "The UNIX Programming Environment". These three giants shaped the foundations of Unix and profoundly impacted modern computer science.

(drio.github.io)

Development C Programming Language

Cheap Smartwatch Security Flaw Exposes Sensitive Health Data

2025-02-12

Cheap Smartwatch Security Flaw Exposes Sensitive Health Data

A security researcher reverse-engineered a low-cost smartwatch, revealing a critical vulnerability. The watch, using the VeryFit app, lacks authentication, allowing anyone to connect and access sensitive health data—activity, sleep, heart rate, even menstrual cycles—without any security measures. The researcher created a website to extract and convert this data to TCX format. This highlights the security risks of budget smartwatches and underscores the need for user caution.

(sprocketfox.io)

Tech smartwatch security

Intensional Programming in Joy: Introspection with a Single Operator

2025-02-12

This article explores intensional programming in Joy, a stack-based functional programming language. Joy itself is extensional, lacking the ability to 'dissect' code blocks. The author proposes two intensional operators: 'map' and 'quota', proving their mutual expressibility. While behaviorally equivalent, intensional programs can distinguish a single operator from a subprogram with multiple commands. This opens avenues for exploring weaker notions of equivalence in intensional languages and demonstrates a robust approach to introducing intensionality in minimalist languages like Joy.

(pithlessly.github.io)

Development Joy language intensional programming

Massive Supply Chain Attack: Malware Delivered via Abandoned Amazon S3 Buckets

2025-02-12

Researchers registered roughly 150 abandoned Amazon S3 buckets for around $400, finding they contained software libraries still in use. These buckets received eight million requests in two months, highlighting a massive vulnerability. An attacker could easily inject malware into these libraries, spreading it widely through software updates – a SolarWinds-style attack on a much larger scale. The abandonment of these buckets leaves developers unable to automatically patch vulnerabilities, giving attackers control over updates and hindering vendor identification of affected software. This underscores the critical flaws in software supply chain security; fixing it will be both difficult and expensive.

(www.schneier.com)

Tech software supply chain S3 security

Reverse Engineering the League of Legends Game Engine for High-Fidelity Datasets

2025-02-12

This article details the creation of a high-fidelity League of Legends dataset by reverse engineering the game engine and replay file format. Existing datasets and analytics tools suffer from low granularity, imprecision, and incompleteness. The author's tool captures precise player positions, ability usage timings, and damage calculations at millisecond intervals. The article describes the technical challenges, including decrypting internal replay files, emulating the game engine, and processing encrypted packets. This work has significant implications for reinforcement learning and offers valuable insights into data extraction for similar games.

(maknee.github.io)

Game

NASCAR's Next Gen: How 3D Printing is Revolutionizing Race Car Design

2025-02-12

NASCAR's Next Gen: How 3D Printing is Revolutionizing Race Car Design

NASCAR's Next Gen platform utilizes 3D printing, specifically additive manufacturing by Stratasys, to create custom race car parts. This allows for greater design freedom and faster iteration compared to traditional subtractive methods like CNC machining. Stratasys provides parts like ducts, covers, and brackets, significantly reducing costs and lead times. The partnership with Joe Gibbs Racing highlights the advantages of 3D printing for rapid prototyping and problem-solving, exemplified by the quick creation of a custom fixture for a problematic tube. The faster, cheaper, and less skill-intensive nature of 3D printing gives NASCAR teams a significant competitive edge.

(www.popsci.com)

Tech Additive Manufacturing

Mikey: Audio Recorder, Transcriber, and Meeting Note Generator

2025-02-12

Mikey: Audio Recorder, Transcriber, and Meeting Note Generator

Mikey is an application for recording audio, transcribing it using the Groq API, and automatically generating meeting notes. Its user-friendly PyQt GUI provides a seamless experience for managing recordings, viewing transcriptions, and browsing saved sessions. It uses pyaudiowpatch for audio recording, the Groq API for transcription, and a conversational model for generating concise meeting notes. A standalone executable can be built for easy distribution.

(github.com)

Development audio recording transcription meeting notes

Skies-ADSB v2.0: Real-time 3D Air Traffic in Your Browser

2025-02-12

Skies-ADSB v2.0: Real-time 3D Air Traffic in Your Browser

Skies-ADSB transforms your browser into a real-time 3D air traffic display. Leveraging ADS-B data from an RTL-SDR receiver, it allows exploration of local air traffic, surrounding airspace, and geography with customizable 3D maps. Built with JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, Python 3, and WebGL (Three.js), it runs on major modern browsers. Version 2.0 includes breaking changes from 1.x, requiring a fresh install. Users can report bugs, request features, and suggest improvements via the issue tracker. The project thanks Andre Thais CFI and Frank E. Hernandez for their contributions and utilizes public domain map data from Natural Earth and OpenStreetMap.

(github.com)

Development Air Traffic 3D Visualization Real-time Data

EU Launches €200 Billion AI Investment Plan to Rival US

2025-02-12

EU Launches €200 Billion AI Investment Plan to Rival US

The European Commission announced a €200 billion investment in AI, with €20 billion allocated to AI gigafactories for collaborative development of complex AI models. This ambitious plan aims to compete with massive US investments like OpenAI's $500 billion initiative. The gigafactories, boasting 100,000 next-generation AI chips each, will provide crucial computing power for companies of all sizes, fostering the growth of trustworthy AI. Funding will leverage existing EU programs and encourage member state contributions, creating the world's largest public-private partnership for AI development.

(www.euronews.com)

Tech gigafactories

The Gordian Knot of Online Schema Changes and Foreign Keys in MySQL

2025-02-12

The Gordian Knot of Online Schema Changes and Foreign Keys in MySQL

This post dissects the inherent challenges of performing online schema changes in MySQL, particularly when dealing with tables linked by foreign key relationships. The author analyzes the limitations of existing tools like pt-online-schema-change and gh-ost, highlighting the complexities and risks involved in altering parent tables. Altering a parent table necessitates concurrent alterations of all child tables, creating a fragile process with minimal tolerance for errors. A single failure can lead to data inconsistencies or outages. The author concludes that online schema changes involving foreign key constraints on large tables are practically infeasible.

(code.openark.org)

Development Online Schema Change

Punch Cards: A Surprisingly Relevant Piece of Digital Humanities History

2025-02-12

This article explores the digitization and reuse of punch cards for knitting machines. Punch cards, a fascinating binary data storage format, are still used today. The article details methods for converting punch card images into data using computer vision and recreating punch cards using CNC machines. The author stresses the importance of high-quality scans and the need for standardized metadata to better preserve and utilize this valuable historical material and foster the transmission and development of knitting technology. The article also highlights the role of community-supported archives in preserving this legacy.

(blog.archive.org)

Misc Punch Cards Knitting Machines

Critical YouTube Flaw Leaks User Emails via Pixel Recorder

2025-02-12

Critical YouTube Flaw Leaks User Emails via Pixel Recorder

A critical vulnerability in YouTube allows attackers to leak the email address of any YouTube user by exploiting the Google Pixel Recorder service. The attack chain involves first obtaining the user's obfuscated Gaia ID through YouTube's /get_item_context_menu endpoint. Then, by leveraging Pixel Recorder's sharing functionality and bypassing notification mechanisms, the attacker converts the Gaia ID into the email address. While the exploit requires a complex chain of steps, its impact is significant, resulting in a $10,500 bounty from Google.

(brutecat.com)

Tech YouTube vulnerability privacy leak

SEC's X Account Hijacked in Bitcoin Pump-and-Dump Scheme

2025-02-12

SEC's X Account Hijacked in Bitcoin Pump-and-Dump Scheme

An Alabama man pleaded guilty to identity theft and access device fraud for hijacking the US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) X account to artificially inflate Bitcoin's price. He and his co-conspirators falsely claimed the SEC approved Bitcoin ETFs. Bitcoin's price surged before plummeting after the SEC's chairman debunked the claim. The hack exploited SIM swapping, a social engineering technique to gain control of accounts. This case highlights the vulnerability of cryptocurrency markets and the dangers of SIM swapping.

(gizmodo.com)

Tech SIM Swapping

A Retro Computing Odyssey: The Mystery of the Yellow Commodore Disks

2025-02-12

This article recounts the author's discovery of a set of unusual Commodore 64/128 disks, 'Penny Farthing,' created by the late Commodore enthusiast David Mohr (Lord Ronin). These bright yellow disks contained chapters of Mohr's science fiction story and games by the late interactive fiction author Paul Panks. Accessing the disks required specialized Commodore hardware and software (like Wheels GEOS), highlighting the allure of retro computing and its niche community. The story pays tribute to Mohr and Panks, and their contributions to the Commodore scene.

(www.amigalove.com)

Tech

US Warns Against AI Deals with Authoritarian Regimes, Exacerbating Tensions with Allies

2025-02-12

US Warns Against AI Deals with Authoritarian Regimes, Exacerbating Tensions with Allies

US Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves delivered a strong message at an AI summit, cautioning countries against AI deals with "authoritarian regimes" and asserting the US's unwavering leadership in AI. This contrasted sharply with a jointly signed declaration advocating international cooperation, prompting concerns from participating nations about US unilateralism. These nations expressed disagreement with US terminology regarding multilateralism and international collaboration, and voiced suspicion over a French-initiated AI fund. This move is interpreted as a US response to European and other nations' attempts to challenge its dominance in AI, sparking debate over the future of global AI governance.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

The Ultimate Guide to File Watchers: A Comprehensive Overview

2025-02-12

This article provides a comprehensive list of file watching tools, covering various programming languages, licenses, and functionalities. From older inotify wrappers to modern tools written in Rust and Python like watchexec, the article meticulously compares each tool's pros and cons, dependencies, and Debian package support. The author also shares personal experiences and challenges encountered, such as using systemd .path units and the limitations of watchman. Developers and system administrators alike will find this resource invaluable in selecting the right file watching tool for their needs.

(anarc.at)

Development file watching

Git Shallow Clones: Performance Pitfalls and the Depth 2 Optimization

2025-02-12

Git shallow clones (`--depth 1`) can significantly impact performance on the first push. This is because shallow clones artificially mark some commits as root commits, preventing the server from using optimizations and requiring the transmission of the entire commit snapshot. Using `--depth 2` deep clones, however, preserves a complete commit history, allowing the server to utilize optimizations even on the first push, reducing data transfer and significantly improving push speed. Subsequent pushes are unaffected.

(stackoverflow.com)

Development shallow clone

Webb-site.com to Shut Down: A Founder's Farewell Amidst a Cancer Battle

2025-02-12

David Webb, founder of Webb-site.com, announces the site's closure on March 31, 2025, due to his battle with metastatic prostate cancer. The article reflects on the site's contributions to public data transparency in Hong Kong since its 1998 launch, including uncovering government spending, tracking vaccination rates, and immigration data. An attempt to transfer the database to the University of Hong Kong failed due to the post-National Security Law environment. Webb will cease manual data collection, making existing data publicly available for download. The piece is a poignant reflection on the site's legacy, observations on Hong Kong's socio-political climate, and a peaceful farewell from a determined individual.

(webb-site.com)

Misc Hong Kong Data Transparency Public Interest

Tesla's European Sales Crash: Model Y Transition and the Musk Effect

2025-02-12

Tesla's European Sales Crash: Model Y Transition and the Musk Effect

Tesla's January sales in Germany plummeted nearly 60% year-over-year, mirroring a broader European slump. The downturn is attributed to the Model Y transition and negative sentiment surrounding Elon Musk's political actions. While the overall German auto market declined only 2.8%, the electric vehicle market grew by 53.5%, highlighting Tesla's unique challenges. While Tesla will likely cite the Model Y transition, the 'Musk effect' is undeniable, potentially impacting the entire EV industry.

(electrek.co)

Tech

Fixing Concurrency Bugs in AWS SSM Plugin Enables VS Code Remote SSH

2025-02-12

Fixing Concurrency Bugs in AWS SSM Plugin Enables VS Code Remote SSH

A recent Stanford graduate at Formal, while troubleshooting a customer issue with Visual Studio Code's Remote SSH connection to AWS EC2 instances for machine learning, unexpectedly uncovered and fixed several concurrency bugs in AWS's SSM reference library. The problem stemmed from insufficient TCP/IP port forwarding support in the Formal Connector, preventing VS Code from properly initializing the remote development environment. The fix involved deep dives into SSH and SSM protocols, ultimately resolving data races and sequence number issues by modifying the AWS Session Manager plugin. This now allows secure VS Code Remote SSH connections through the Formal Connector.

(www.joinformal.com)

Development VS Code Remote SSH Concurrency Bugs

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