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TB Tilde: A Disruptive LLVM Alternative?

2025-01-24

Yasser's TB Tilde aims to replace LLVM, boasting superior compile speed and a smaller footprint. Early tests show its preprocessor is twice as fast as Clang's. TB Tilde uses a 'Sea of Nodes' IR, features a simple type system and thread-safe modules, supports JIT and AOT compilation, and even directly outputs linked executables. The project is actively under development, targeting March 2024 for Cuik compiler self-hosting on Windows, with optimizer improvements to follow.

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(yasserarg.com)
Development

China's 'Artificial Sun' Sets New Fusion Record: 1,006 Seconds of Plasma Confinement

2025-01-24
China's 'Artificial Sun' Sets New Fusion Record: 1,006 Seconds of Plasma Confinement

China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), nicknamed the 'artificial sun', has achieved a groundbreaking milestone in fusion energy research. It sustained high-confinement plasma operation for an unprecedented 1,066 seconds, surpassing the previous record of 403 seconds (also set by EAST). This significant achievement represents a crucial step towards harnessing fusion energy – a clean, virtually limitless power source. The success is attributed to advancements in heating system stability, control system accuracy, and diagnostic systems. This breakthrough not only showcases China's leadership in fusion research but also offers hope for a cleaner energy future.

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(charmingscience.com)
Tech Nuclear Fusion EAST Tokamak

Intel's Modular PC Design: A Sustainable Approach to Reduce E-waste

2025-01-24
Intel's Modular PC Design: A Sustainable Approach to Reduce E-waste

Addressing the growing e-waste problem, Intel introduces a modular PC design. This innovative approach allows for easy upgrades and repairs by modularizing key components, extending device lifespan and reducing electronic waste. Three levels of modularity—factory, field, and user—cater to different repair needs and skill levels. Intel aims to lower carbon footprint, support the right-to-repair, streamline manufacturing, and ultimately create a more sustainable PC lifecycle.

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(community.intel.com)
Hardware modular design

Substack Requires JavaScript

2025-01-24
Substack Requires JavaScript

The Substack website displays a message indicating that JavaScript must be enabled for the site to function correctly. This is a common website message reminding users to ensure their browser has JavaScript enabled; otherwise, the website will not load or function properly.

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(substack.com)
Misc Website Error

Amazon UK Halts Sales of Bloomsbury Books

2025-01-24
Amazon UK Halts Sales of Bloomsbury Books

Amazon UK has announced it will cease selling Bloomsbury's print and ebooks, citing a failure to agree on new contract terms. This move could severely impact Bloomsbury and reignites concerns about Amazon's trade terms with publishers. Amazon claims Bloomsbury refused good-faith negotiations, while its existing terms differed greatly from those of other publishers. While Amazon assures customers can still buy Bloomsbury books from third-party sellers, this is a high-risk strategy impacting sales of many bestselling authors published by Bloomsbury, including J.K. Rowling. The incident echoes a similar public battle between Amazon and Hachette over a decade ago.

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(www.thebookseller.com)
Tech Bloomsbury Publishing

Conquering Dumb LLM Search Judges with Classic ML

2025-01-24
Conquering Dumb LLM Search Judges with Classic ML

The author explores using a local LLM as a search relevance judge, a cost-effective alternative to OpenAI. Individual LLM judgments are unreliable, so the article proposes combining multiple LLMs' assessments of various product attributes (name, classification, description, etc.) using traditional machine learning (e.g., decision trees) to improve accuracy. Experiments show this approach can predict human preferences and reveal the logic behind human labels, aiding search engine optimization.

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(softwaredoug.com)
Development

Building Bolt: My Journey to a Production-Ready Compiler

2025-01-24
Building Bolt: My Journey to a Production-Ready Compiler

This post, the first in a series, details the author's experience building Bolt, a Java-style concurrent object-oriented programming language. It outlines the motivation behind creating a compiler, explaining the process using the analogy of a telegraph operator translating speech into Morse code. The author covers key compiler stages like lexing, parsing, type checking, and code generation, highlighting Bolt's advanced features such as objects, classes, inheritance, method overriding, concurrency, and generics. The article discusses static vs. dynamic typing and the role of LLVM, explaining how Bolt compiles to LLVM IR for optimization and machine code generation. Unique to Bolt is its double type-checking phase ensuring concurrent safety. The series promises a practical tutorial on building a compiler beyond toy languages.

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(mukulrathi.com)
Development

Full-Text Search Engine in 150 Lines of Python

2025-01-24

This article demonstrates building a functional full-text search engine using less than 150 lines of Python code. It starts by downloading English Wikipedia abstracts, then uses an inverted index and TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) for indexing and ranking. The process covers data preparation, tokenization, filtering, index construction, and search functionality, explaining each step's principles. The result is a surprisingly fast search engine capable of searching and ranking millions of documents, showcasing the core mechanics of full-text search in a concise manner.

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(bart.degoe.de)
Development

Vim's Rebirth After the Passing of its Founder

2025-01-24

The death of Bram Moolenaar, Vim's creator, shook the community. However, the project continues under the stewardship of Christian Brabandt. The team tackled website modernization, security updates, and new feature development, including XDG directory support and Wayland support. While controversies, such as Tree-sitter integration, exist, the Vim community remains active and dedicated to the project's future.

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(lwn.net)
Development

UI Hell: The Case of the Four-Function Calculator

2025-01-24
UI Hell: The Case of the Four-Function Calculator

This article delves into the surprisingly complex UI design of a seemingly simple four-function calculator. Starting with the basic components—ten digit keys, operators, and an equals sign—the author reveals hidden complexities. Issues like handling continuous operations, negative number input, implicit equals, and the legacy 'K-constant' feature are explored. These seemingly minor details lead to inconsistencies and user confusion, highlighting the challenges in designing even the simplest of devices. The author uses humor and diagrams to illustrate the intricate logic and historical evolution of calculator UI, prompting reflection on the design nuances often overlooked in everyday objects.

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(lcamtuf.substack.com)
Design Calculator

The Monstrous Function That Broke Calculus

2025-01-24
The Monstrous Function That Broke Calculus

In the 19th century, Karl Weierstrass unveiled a function that sent shockwaves through the mathematical community. This function, continuous everywhere but differentiable nowhere, resembled an infinitely jagged sawtooth, defying intuition and challenging the very foundations of calculus. Its seemingly paradoxical properties forced mathematicians to rigorously redefine continuity and differentiability, ultimately leading to the development of modern analysis. This 'mathematical monster' not only holds theoretical significance but also finds practical applications in fields like Brownian motion, showcasing the boundless possibilities within mathematics.

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(www.quantamagazine.org)
Math Weierstrass function mathematical analysis

Supercharging Vector Search with ColBERT Reranking in PostgreSQL

2025-01-24
Supercharging Vector Search with ColBERT Reranking in PostgreSQL

Traditional vector search relies on sentence embeddings, potentially losing fine-grained details. ColBERT overcomes this by representing text as token-level multi-vectors, retaining nuanced information and improving accuracy. However, token-level interaction is computationally expensive. This blog post demonstrates combining sentence-level vector search with ColBERT token-level reranking using the PostgreSQL extensions VectorChord and pgvector. This approach performs a fast initial search using sentence embeddings, followed by reranking with ColBERT for improved results. Significant improvements were observed on several BEIR datasets.

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(blog.vectorchord.ai)
Development vector search

Arch Linux Minimalist Setup: Get Up and Running Fast

2025-01-24

This guide provides a series of concise, actionable tutorials to help new Arch Linux users quickly set up a functional work environment. Instead of replicating the extensive ArchWiki, it focuses on a minimalistic i3 window manager setup, guiding users through essential tasks such as internet connectivity, display configuration, USB usage, and copy-pasting. It also covers multimedia controls, wallpaper settings, and other helpful tips, with feedback channels encouraging user participation in improvements.

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(ejmastnak.com)
Development Linux setup i3 window manager

Ignore the Hype: AI Won't Kill Software Development

2025-01-24
Ignore the Hype: AI Won't Kill Software Development

Many are claiming AI will replace software developers, but the author argues this is nonsense; the best days of software development are yet to come. AI tools boost developer productivity (Jevons Paradox), unlocking more projects, not fewer jobs. Even if AI handles some tasks, software development involves communication, design, and system architecture – all requiring human input. AI's computational cost and limitations also prevent complete human replacement. Ultimately, AI will accelerate technological progress, driving economic growth and creating more opportunities. Software developers should embrace AI, learn new tools and methods, and continuously upskill.

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(dustinewers.com)
Development

Zen 5's Op Cache Disabled: A Deep Dive into its Clustered Decoders

2025-01-24
Zen 5's Op Cache Disabled: A Deep Dive into its Clustered Decoders

This article delves into the instruction fetch and decode mechanism of AMD's Zen 5 processor. Zen 5 uses a unique dual-decoder cluster architecture, with each cluster serving one of the core's two SMT threads. Normally, Zen 5 relies on a 6KB op cache to deliver instructions, with the decoders only activating on cache misses. The author disables the op cache, forcing the decoders to handle all instructions, to evaluate their performance. Tests reveal significant performance drops in single-threaded mode with the op cache disabled; however, in multi-threaded mode, the dual-decoder clusters effectively compensate for the performance loss, even showing performance gains in some multi-threaded workloads. The author concludes that Zen 5's dual-decoder cluster design isn't the primary instruction source but acts as a secondary mechanism, boosting performance in high-IPC and multi-threaded scenarios, complementing the op cache for a balanced performance and power consumption.

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(chipsandcheese.com)
Hardware CPU Architecture

Epic Games Subsidizes Developers to Bypass Apple's App Store Fees

2025-01-24
Epic Games Subsidizes Developers to Bypass Apple's App Store Fees

Epic Games is expanding its mobile game store by subsidizing iOS developers' fees for using third-party marketplaces, directly challenging Apple's App Store dominance. This move aims to attract more games to its store and combat Apple's high fees. Epic will pay the Apple Core Technology Fee (CTF) for developers in its free games program, but this is not a long-term solution. Epic hopes the EU will enforce the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to break Apple's monopoly. This is the latest maneuver in Epic's long-running battle against Apple and Google, who Epic argues create unfair restrictions and fees for developers, stifling competition in the mobile gaming market. Despite a delayed launch due to technical issues, Epic is determined to push for greater competition in the mobile app store landscape.

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(www.theverge.com)
Game Apple App Store

Geometric Series Solution for Capacitor Charge Under Square Wave Excitation

2025-01-24

This article analyzes the charge and discharge process of a capacitor under the influence of a symmetric square wave voltage. By establishing recursive equations for charging and discharging, the geometric series solution for the process is obtained. Special cases are discussed where the time constant is much smaller or larger than the period of the square wave. For example, when the time constant is much smaller than the period, the capacitor fully charges and discharges; when the period is much smaller than the time constant, the circuit acts as a low-pass filter.

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(ivanbelenky.com)
Hardware capacitor square wave geometric series

Sei (YC) Hiring Full-Stack Engineer (TypeScript, React, Gen AI)

2025-01-24
Sei (YC) Hiring Full-Stack Engineer (TypeScript, React, Gen AI)

Sei, a Y Combinator-backed AI-powered regulatory compliance platform, is hiring a full-stack engineer. They use TypeScript, React, Next.js, and Python, building a scalable and secure platform. The ideal candidate is experienced, takes ownership, and aligns with Sei's human-centric, fast-execution culture. Competitive salary and equity are offered, but expect intense work.

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(www.ycombinator.com)
Startup

Linux 6.14 Adds Support for Microsoft Copilot Key

2025-01-24

The Linux 6.14 kernel introduces support for the Microsoft Copilot key found on new laptops pre-loaded with Windows. This key, used to launch Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant or similar chatbot software, was previously unmapped in Linux. The update modifies the atkbd keyboard driver, mapping the F23 key to the Copilot shortcut (Meta+Shift+F23). Additionally, Linux 6.14 boasts enhanced game controller support and other input subsystem improvements.

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(www.phoronix.com)
Development Hardware Support

DM50: A Cheap, Open-Source, High-Precision Calculator

2025-01-24
DM50: A Cheap, Open-Source, High-Precision Calculator

DM50 is a cheap, powerful, easy-to-build, open-source hardware calculator boasting high precision. The project is hosted on GitHub and offers downloads for PCBs, firmware, bezels, and a 3D-printed case. Recent updates include finalizing the casing design, battery life testing, key model selection, and processor advancements. DM50 aims to provide a user-friendly, high-performance calculator experience.

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(50calc.com)
Hardware

Saying Goodbye to bcachefs: One User's Reluctant Migration

2025-01-23

After a year of using bcachefs, Steinar Gunderson has migrated to XFS. His reason? A lack of confidence in bcachefs' future. While appreciating its compression and mixed SSD/HDD capabilities, he found the developer's uncompromising attitude, hostility towards distributions like Debian, and numerous unfixed bugs (including catastrophic data loss) unbearable. Reporting bugs proved a frustrating experience, with the developer prioritizing arguments with Debian over bug fixes. He ultimately chose the stability of XFS, sacrificing compression benefits, a trade-off he deems worthwhile.

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(blog.sesse.net)
Development

Open WebUI: Simplifying Access to Large Language Models

2025-01-23

Open WebUI is an open-source project that simplifies user interaction with Large Language Models (LLMs). It provides a user-friendly graphical interface, allowing even non-technical users to easily access and utilize the powerful capabilities of LLMs, such as text generation, language translation, and question answering. Without needing complex command-line operations or programming knowledge, Open WebUI lowers the barrier to entry for LLMs, opening up the world of AI to a wider audience.

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(polychat.co)
AI

Intel's Modular PC Design: A New Approach to E-Waste?

2025-01-23
Intel's Modular PC Design: A New Approach to E-Waste?

Intel has proposed a modular PC design aimed at reducing e-waste by simplifying repairs and upgrades. Current PC designs are typically monolithic, leading to disposal when a component fails or becomes obsolete. Intel's approach allows for easy component replacement, extending device lifespan. Three designs targeting different market segments are proposed: Premium Modular PC, Entry/Mainstream Modular PC, and Desktop Modular PC. While modular PCs aren't new, Intel's proposal directly addresses the growing e-waste problem and aligns with the right-to-repair movement. However, widespread adoption depends on cost-effectiveness and market acceptance.

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(www.theregister.com)
Hardware Modular PC E-waste Right to Repair

GitHub: Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering

2025-01-23
GitHub: Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering

Rune Skovbo Johansen invented a novel surface-stable fractal dithering technique. This allows dither patterns in 3D scenes to stick to surfaces while maintaining approximately constant dot size and spacing on screen, even as surfaces move. This GitHub repository provides a Unity example project, shader and texture source files, and details on dither properties and global options like radial compensation and quantized layers. The technique achieves this by dynamically adding or removing dots, and offers 3D textures of varying dot densities. Licensed under MPL-2.0, encouraging community contributions.

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(github.com)
Development 3D Graphics Dithering

macOS Kernel Vulnerability CVE-2024-54507: A Ghostly sysctl Overread

2025-01-23
macOS Kernel Vulnerability CVE-2024-54507: A Ghostly sysctl Overread

A security researcher uncovered a fascinating vulnerability (CVE-2024-54507) in the XNU kernel of macOS 15.0. The bug resides within the `sysctl_udp_log_port` function, where an integer type confusion leads to a 4-byte read instead of the expected 2-byte read of a `uint16_t` variable, resulting in a 2-byte out-of-bounds read. An attacker could exploit this to read parts of kernel memory; while the contents depend on linker behavior and system configuration, it could still leak sensitive data. Apple patched this vulnerability in macOS 15.2 and iOS 18.2.

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(jprx.io)
Tech kernel vulnerability

Trump Signs Crypto Executive Order, Charting a Path for US Digital Assets

2025-01-23
Trump Signs Crypto Executive Order, Charting a Path for US Digital Assets

President Trump signed a long-awaited executive order on cryptocurrencies, setting a federal agenda to bring US digital asset businesses under friendlier oversight. The order establishes a working group to review existing regulations and propose modifications or revocations within 180 days. It also bans the development of a US central bank digital currency (CBDC). The move is seen as positive for the crypto industry, causing a brief spike in Bitcoin's price before a retracement.

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(www.coindesk.com)
Tech Cryptocurrency

Polars vs Pandas: A Head-to-Head Comparison

2025-01-23
Polars vs Pandas: A Head-to-Head Comparison

This book provides a detailed comparison of the Polars and Pandas data manipulation libraries, arguing that Polars offers a more intuitive and efficient approach. Through numerous examples, it showcases Polars' advantages across indexing, method chaining, performance, data reshaping, time series, and scalability. Polars consistently outperforms Pandas in speed and readability. The book is aimed at readers with some experience in data manipulation, particularly those familiar with Pandas.

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(kevinheavey.github.io)
Development data manipulation

Say Goodbye to Hassle: Wake Up Your Devices with One Command – Introducing the 'wol' Tool

2025-01-23
Say Goodbye to Hassle: Wake Up Your Devices with One Command – Introducing the 'wol' Tool

'wol' is a powerful Wake-On-LAN (WOL) tool that lets you easily wake up your network devices via a command-line interface or web interface. It supports configuring multiple machines, providing a simple list view and one-click wake-up functionality. Whether you prefer CLI commands or a graphical interface, you can efficiently manage and wake up your computers or servers. Docker support is also included for easy deployment.

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(github.com)
Development

Anthropic's Claude API Now Features Citations for Verifiable Answers

2025-01-23
Anthropic's Claude API Now Features Citations for Verifiable Answers

Anthropic has launched Citations, a new API feature for Claude that allows it to cite specific sentences and passages from source documents within its responses. This significantly enhances the verifiability and trustworthiness of Claude's outputs. Applications range from document summarization and complex Q&A to customer support, offering improved accuracy and efficiency while minimizing the risk of AI hallucinations. Early adopters like Thomson Reuters and Endex have reported substantial improvements in accuracy and workflow.

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(www.anthropic.com)
AI Trustworthy AI
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