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Post-Disaster Aid: Best Practices for Donations and Volunteering

2025-01-16

Post-Disaster Aid: Best Practices for Donations and Volunteering

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emphasizes that the most effective way to provide post-disaster aid is through cash donations to recognized disaster relief organizations. These organizations can procure necessary supplies based on actual needs, prioritizing local businesses in affected areas to support economic recovery. In-kind donations should be coordinated beforehand to avoid unnecessary burdens. Volunteers should also work through reputable organizations and avoid self-deploying to disaster zones. Post-disaster recovery is a long-term process; volunteer needs persist for months, even years, after the immediate emergency.

(www.fema.gov)

Misc Disaster Relief Volunteering Donations

The Extraordinary Life of Potoooooooo: A Racing Legend

2025-01-16

The Extraordinary Life of Potoooooooo: A Racing Legend

Potoooooooo, a chestnut thoroughbred with a legendary status, is renowned for his unusual name and spectacular racing career. He won over 25 races, his name, a humorous misspelling of "Potatoes," adding to his colorful story. After retirement, Potoooooooo became a significant sire, his offspring including multiple Epsom Derby winners. His genetic legacy continues to shape thoroughbred racing to this day.

(en.wikipedia.org)

Misc horse racing thoroughbred pedigree

David Lynch, Visionary Director of 'Twin Peaks' and 'Blue Velvet,' Dies at 78

2025-01-16

David Lynch, Visionary Director of 'Twin Peaks' and 'Blue Velvet,' Dies at 78

Acclaimed director David Lynch, known for his dark, surrealist style in films like 'Blue Velvet' and 'Mulholland Drive,' and the television series 'Twin Peaks,' has passed away at age 78. Lynch's films blended horror, film noir, mystery, and European surrealism, creating a unique narrative style. A recipient of an honorary Oscar, his work profoundly impacted cinema and television.

(variety.com)

Film Twin Peaks Blue Velvet

Google Cuts Code Migration Time in Half with AI

2025-01-16

Google Cuts Code Migration Time in Half with AI

Google reports using its AI tools to halve the time required for code migrations. This involved projects like migrating 32-bit IDs to 64-bit IDs in the Google Ads codebase, upgrading JUnit testing libraries, and replacing the Joda time library. While human review is still necessary, the AI significantly sped up the process, reducing what would have taken hundreds of engineering years to just months. Google emphasizes the AI should be used in conjunction with traditional methods for optimal efficiency and cost management.

(www.theregister.com)

Development Code Migration

Penn Station Expansion Unnecessary: NYC Ready for Through-Running

2025-01-16

Penn Station Expansion Unnecessary: NYC Ready for Through-Running

A new report by the Effective Transit Alliance New York (ETA) refutes Amtrak's claim that a $16.7 billion Penn Station expansion is needed to handle increased ridership from the Gateway Program. ETA argues that the existing Penn Station can accommodate increased ridership through operational changes, eliminating the need for massive expansion. The report analyzes international examples and uses modeling to demonstrate that through-running allows Penn Station to handle 48 trans-Hudson trains per hour, doubling its current peak capacity. ETA urges Amtrak, the MTA, and NJ Transit to abandon the costly expansion plan and instead adopt a more cost-effective operational model.

(www.etany.org)

Tech transit

Training Large Diffusion Models on a Shoestring Budget: $1890

2025-01-16

Training Large Diffusion Models on a Shoestring Budget: $1890

Sony Research has open-sourced micro_diffusion, demonstrating how to train large-scale diffusion models on an extremely low budget ($1890). Using 37 million publicly available real and synthetic images, they trained a 1.16 billion parameter sparse transformer model, achieving an FID score of 12.7 on zero-shot generation on the COCO dataset. The project provides training code, dataset code, pre-trained model weights, and details a staged training process, including progressive training from low to high resolution and the use of patch masking to reduce training costs and improve efficiency.

(github.com)

AI diffusion model low-budget training

Let's Encrypt to Offer 6-Day Certificates and IP Address Support in 2025

2025-01-16

Let's Encrypt to Offer 6-Day Certificates and IP Address Support in 2025

Let's Encrypt announced plans to introduce two new certificate options in 2025: short-lived certificates with a six-day lifetime and support for IP addresses. Six-day certificates significantly enhance security by minimizing the window of vulnerability. IP address support enables secure TLS connections for IP-accessible services using publicly trusted certificates, eliminating the need for domain names. The rollout will be phased, with general availability expected by the end of 2025. Users will need an ACME client supporting certificate profiles to obtain the short-lived certificates.

(letsencrypt.org)

Tech SSL Certificates

Microsoft Patches Critical Windows Secure Boot Vulnerability

2025-01-16

Microsoft Patches Critical Windows Secure Boot Vulnerability

Microsoft has patched a critical vulnerability that allowed attackers to bypass Windows Secure Boot. The vulnerability, present in system recovery software from multiple vendors, involved a mis-signed UEFI application that allowed malicious firmware to be installed before the OS even loads. The patch revokes the problematic signature. The status of Linux systems remains unclear.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

Oh Shit, Git!?! A Survival Guide

2025-01-16

This blog post humorously recounts the author's struggles with Git and offers practical solutions to common problems. It covers scenarios like undoing commits, amending commit messages, accidentally committing to the wrong branch, and recovering files, providing clear commands and steps. The author invites readers to share their own Git horror stories for collective learning.

(ohshitgit.com)

Development Code Management

Legendary Director David Lynch Passes Away

2025-01-16

Legendary Director David Lynch Passes Away

Renowned film director David Lynch has passed away at the age of 77. His family released a statement expressing their deep sorrow and thanking fans for their years of support. Lynch was known for his unique surrealist style and profound exploration of the human condition. His films, including Mulholland Drive, The Elephant Man, and Blue Velvet, have profoundly impacted cinematic history. His passing is a significant loss to the world of cinema.

(www.facebook.com)

Misc David Lynch Film Director Death

Nvidia's Secret Weapon: The DLSS Supercomputer

2025-01-16

Nvidia's Secret Weapon: The DLSS Supercomputer

Nvidia has been secretly running a supercomputer with thousands of its latest GPUs for six years, continuously training and optimizing its DLSS upscaling technology. This machine analyzes DLSS model failures – like ghosting, flickering, and blurriness – constantly improving the training dataset and leading to significant quality improvements. This relentless effort, combined with the new transformer model in DLSS 4, has yielded remarkable results.

(www.pcgamer.com)

Tech

GitHub Now Offers Free arm64 Hosted Runners!

2025-01-16

GitHub Now Offers Free arm64 Hosted Runners!

GitHub has announced the free availability of Linux arm64 hosted runners in public repositories (currently in public preview). These runners, powered by Cobalt 100 processors, offer 4 vCPUs and up to a 40% performance boost compared to the previous generation of Arm-based VMs. Arm-native developers can now build, test, and deploy entirely within the arm64 architecture without virtualization. Simply add the `ubuntu-24.04-arm` or `ubuntu-22.04-arm` labels to your public repository workflow to get started.

(github.blog)

Development hosted runners

Shopify's 5-Year React Native Journey: Successes, Lessons, and the Future

2025-01-16

Shopify's 5-Year React Native Journey: Successes, Lessons, and the Future

Shopify shares its five-year experience with React Native. Initially driven by efficiency, talent portability, and faster value delivery, Shopify migrated all its mobile apps to React Native. The transition was successful, resulting in high-performing apps (<500ms screen loads, >99.9% crash-free sessions). They learned about React Native's speed, hot reloading, and how TypeScript improves talent portability. Challenges included debugging complexities, updates requiring effort, and reliance on third-party libraries. Shopify stresses the importance of native development and improved team skills via shared infrastructure and training. They will continue collaborating with Meta to improve React Native.

(shopify.engineering)

Development Mobile Development

Blogger Offers Free Mentoring in AI and Tech

2025-01-16

Blogger Offers Free Mentoring in AI and Tech

A blogger is conducting an experimental project offering free 30-minute mentoring sessions (three sessions total) to three volunteers. Topics range from statistics and science to AI, self-improvement, and more. Applicants should describe their goals and how they hope the mentor can help. The blogger will prioritize applicants where they believe they can provide the most assistance and contribute to the greater good. This experiment aims to explore the value of mentoring and may result in a follow-up sharing experiences and results.

(dynomight.substack.com)

Tech mentoring experiment

California's Housing Crisis After the Fires: Rebuild or Collapse?

2025-01-16

California's Housing Crisis After the Fires: Rebuild or Collapse?

Recent wildfires in California have destroyed thousands of homes, exacerbating an already dire housing crisis. Los Angeles and other areas have extremely low vacancy rates, making finding rental properties difficult even at high prices. The fires have also caused insurance premiums to skyrocket, leaving many homeowners facing exorbitant costs or losing coverage altogether. This could lead to widespread foreclosures and homelessness. While the government has taken some steps to speed up rebuilding, experts argue these measures are insufficient. The real solution lies in transforming urban planning, increasing high-density, fire-resistant housing, requiring significant policy changes.

(www.vox.com)

Tech Housing Crisis Insurance Crisis

DBOS Transact: Ultra-Lightweight Durable Execution in TypeScript

2025-01-16

DBOS Transact: Ultra-Lightweight Durable Execution in TypeScript

DBOS Transact is a lightweight TypeScript library for durable execution, leveraging Postgres for persistence. This means your program can automatically resume from where it left off, even if interrupted or crashed. It solves common problems like orchestrating long-running workflows, running reliable background jobs, processing events exactly once, and building fault-tolerant distributed task queues. DBOS Transact is easy to use: install it and annotate your program with decorators. It requires no other dependencies and integrates seamlessly into any TypeScript application, like Next.js, without external dependencies beyond Postgres.

(github.com)

Development durable execution

PubPeer Review: TRF2-S Protein Regulates Axonal mRNA Transport

2025-01-16

A PubPeer post discusses a research article on TRF2-S, a novel RNA- and FMRP-binding protein crucial for regulating axonal mRNA transport and presynaptic plasticity. Published in Nature Communications, the study reveals how TRF2-S influences neuronal growth and function by impacting mRNA trafficking and local translation. This research sheds light on neural mechanisms and potentially offers new avenues for neurological disease treatment.

(pubpeer.com)

Tech Neuroscience RNA-binding protein Axonal transport

Biden's Last-Minute Cybersecurity EO: AI, Microsoft, and More

2025-01-16

Biden's Last-Minute Cybersecurity EO: AI, Microsoft, and More

In a parting shot, President Biden issued a sweeping cybersecurity executive order aimed at bolstering federal cybersecurity, regulating government AI use, and subtly targeting Microsoft's dominance. The 40-page order mandates improvements in government network monitoring, software procurement, AI implementation, and the punishment of foreign hackers. It seeks to leverage AI's benefits, introduce digital identities for US citizens, and close vulnerabilities exploited by adversaries like China and Russia. Key provisions include requiring software vendors to prove secure development practices, enhancing cloud authentication key protection (in response to incidents like the Microsoft server breach), and boosting CISA's network monitoring capabilities. The order also promotes AI research for cybersecurity and aims to streamline citizen services through digital identity documents.

(www.wired.com)

Tech executive order

Physically Based Rendering: A Milestone in Ray Tracing

2025-01-16

Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation is a seminal work in computer graphics, meticulously detailing the construction of modern photorealistic rendering systems through rigorous mathematical theory and executable code. Its impact extends beyond film and game production, influencing product design and architecture. The authors were even awarded an Academy Award for its contribution to filmmaking. The third and fourth editions are now freely available online, offering invaluable learning resources for developers.

(pbr-book.org)

Development ray tracing rendering

Artie (YC) is Hiring a Founding Engineer for Distributed Systems

2025-01-16

Artie (YC) is Hiring a Founding Engineer for Distributed Systems

Artie, a Y Combinator-backed startup, is seeking a Founding Engineer focused on distributed systems. Artie offers a real-time database replication solution leveraging Kafka and CDC, processing over 10 billion rows monthly. The ideal candidate possesses strong computer science fundamentals, thrives in a multi-faceted role, and has experience with asynchronous systems and technologies like gRPC, Kafka, and Kubernetes (though not strictly required). Go proficiency is preferred but not mandatory. This challenging role offers the opportunity to shape the next generation data platform, aiming for zero data latency while maintaining ease of use and scalability.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development data engineering

Test-Driven Development with LLMs: Fun and Profit

2025-01-16

This blog post explores a novel approach to Test-Driven Development (TDD) leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs). The author demonstrates how LLMs significantly enhance TDD efficiency by generating unit tests and code implementations based on specifications, iteratively refining the code and reducing debugging overhead. An automated workflow integrating IDE, terminal, and chat interface is also presented to further boost productivity. While acknowledging the inherent unreliability of LLMs, the author emphasizes the importance of human review and supplementary test cases to mitigate risks. The approach is best suited for well-structured projects, prioritizing low cognitive load to promote maintainable code.

(blog.yfzhou.fyi)

Development Test-Driven Development

Nintendo Admits Emulators Are Technically Legal, But Developers Still Tread Carefully

2025-01-16

A top Nintendo executive admitted that emulators are technically legal. However, emulators that circumvent a console's technical protection measures, reproduce copyrighted programs, or direct users to pirated content are illegal. Nintendo's previous aggressive actions against several emulator projects may now be explained by this statement, highlighting their focus on protecting developers and copyrights.

(www.androidauthority.com)

Game Emulators

Rule-Breaking Neutron Star Spins Once Every Six Hours

2025-01-16

Rule-Breaking Neutron Star Spins Once Every Six Hours

Australian scientists have discovered a neutron star, ASKAP J1839-075, with an incredibly slow rotation period of 6.5 hours – thousands of times slower than expected. This challenges our understanding of neutron star evolution, as it's believed pulsars stop emitting radio waves as they slow down. This one, however, continues to emit. The discovery, made using the ASKAP radio telescope, was a lucky find, and future telescopes like SKA-Low are expected to reveal more about these extreme objects.

(www.abc.net.au)

Tech Neutron Star Pulsar Radio Telescope

2000-Year-Old Wine: A Taste of the Past

2025-01-16

2000-Year-Old Wine: A Taste of the Past

A Roman tomb unearthed in Carmona, Spain, yielded a remarkable find: a 2,000-year-old glass urn containing five liters of remarkably preserved white wine, predating the previous record holder by three centuries. This discovery, along with other well-preserved artifacts like amber, textiles, and perfume, offers a visceral connection to the past, challenging the typical perception of history as solely comprised of grand events and famous figures. The author argues that such artifacts provide a glimpse into the everyday lives of ordinary people, making the past feel immediate and tangible.

(resobscura.substack.com)

Misc ancient Rome historical artifacts

The RNA World: Solving Life's Chicken-or-Egg Problem

2025-01-16

The RNA World: Solving Life's Chicken-or-Egg Problem

The 'chicken or the egg' dilemma of life's origin—the interdependence of DNA and proteins—has long puzzled scientists. New research suggests RNA may have played both roles. Early life may have consisted solely of RNA, capable of both storing genetic information and catalyzing chemical reactions, enabling self-replication. This 'RNA world' hypothesis resolves the paradox, offering insights into how life emerged from simple chemistry. Further research focuses on early Earth environments—soda lakes or impact crater lakes—that could have fostered RNA and other building blocks, providing more clues to unlock the mystery of life's origin.

(nautil.us)

Tech RNA world biochemistry

Red Hat Undercuts VMware With OpenShift Virtualization Engine

2025-01-16

Following Broadcom's acquisition of VMware and subsequent pricing changes, many enterprise users are seeking alternatives. Red Hat is capitalizing on this with the launch of OpenShift Virtualization Engine (OVE), a virtualization-focused platform designed to attract VMware customers. OVE leverages the OpenShift platform, removing container capabilities to provide a pure virtualization solution. Integrated with Advanced Cluster Management (ACM) and Ansible automation, OVE simplifies VM migration and management. Red Hat also offers migration tools and professional services to ease the transition, particularly for large enterprises with substantial VM deployments.

(www.nextplatform.com)

Tech

Stanford's Off-Grid Ammonia Generator: Powering the Future with Thin Air

2025-01-16

Stanford's Off-Grid Ammonia Generator: Powering the Future with Thin Air

Researchers from Stanford University and King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals have developed a groundbreaking device that generates ammonia from ambient air and water vapor without any external power source. Utilizing a catalyst-coated mesh, the system combines atmospheric nitrogen and water vapor to produce ammonia at room temperature and pressure. This ammonia can be used directly as fertilizer or processed into a sustainable green fuel, offering a revolutionary approach to fertilizer production and energy generation. The technology promises to significantly impact both developing nations and industrial applications.

(spectrum.ieee.org)

Tech green energy ammonia

Replit CEO: We Don't Need Pro Coders Anymore, Thanks to AI

2025-01-16

Replit CEO: We Don't Need Pro Coders Anymore, Thanks to AI

Replit CEO Amjad Masad revealed that their new AI-powered tool, 'Agent,' built using Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, generates functional software applications from simple natural language prompts. This has led to a fivefold revenue increase in the last six months. Masad claims this advancement makes professional coders obsolete, empowering non-coders to build software with AI. He even coined 'Amjad's Law,' stating the return on learning basic coding doubles every six months. While this lowers the barrier to software development, it also raises questions about the long-term competitive advantage of AI models.

(www.semafor.com)

Development

Ditch the Algorithm, Embrace RSS: Reclaim Your Information Feed

2025-01-16

Tired of social media algorithms dictating your content? This article details how to use RSS to curate a high-quality information stream, bypassing the noise. The author explains how to subscribe to platforms like YouTube, IGN, Hacker News, and Reddit using RSS, and employs advanced filtering techniques to remove low-quality content. For example, they show how to filter Reddit posts to get only high-upvote, text-based content. The core benefit of RSS is user control, allowing efficient reading without the inefficiencies of algorithm-driven feeds.

(joeyehand.com)

Tech content filtering efficient reading

Why Some UK Gov Services Are Offline at Night: A Legacy Tech Nightmare

2025-01-16

Why Some UK Gov Services Are Offline at Night: A Legacy Tech Nightmare

This post explores why some DVLA (UK Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency) digital services are offline overnight. The root cause lies in a complex legacy system, including a 1980s IBM mainframe and a partially completed modernization effort. Facing a choice between years of rebuilding infrastructure or launching a service with nighttime limitations, DVLA chose the latter to deliver value quickly. The article highlights the challenges of digital transformation in large organizations grappling with legacy technology and the difficult decisions involved in balancing speed and long-term stability. The situation underscores how tricky government digitalization can be, even a decade after initial modernization efforts.

(dafyddvaughan.uk)

Tech legacy systems government services

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