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Pagecord: Effortlessly Publish Writing from Your Inbox

2025-01-12

Pagecord: Effortlessly Publish Writing from Your Inbox

Pagecord is a Ruby on Rails application that lets you effortlessly publish your writing to your website by simply sending an email. It streamlines the writing and publishing process, automating the steps typically involved in editing and uploading content. The open-source project, hosted on GitHub, provides comprehensive documentation and testing instructions.

(github.com)

Development writing tool

Microsoft Releases Phi-4: A 14B Parameter Open-Source Language Model

2025-01-12

Microsoft Releases Phi-4: A 14B Parameter Open-Source Language Model

Microsoft has unveiled Phi-4, a new 14-billion parameter open-source language model. Built using a blend of synthetic data, filtered public domain websites, and academic books and Q&A datasets, Phi-4 boasts a rigorous enhancement and alignment process, ensuring accurate instruction following and robust safety. With a context length of 16k tokens, it's designed for general-purpose AI systems and applications (primarily English) needing memory/compute constrained environments, low latency, and strong reasoning and logic capabilities. Microsoft emphasizes that developers should consider the limitations of language models and mitigate for accuracy, safety, and fairness, especially in high-risk scenarios.

(ollama.com)

AI

IPv4 Exhaustion and the Slow Rollout of IPv6: A 2024 Retrospective

2025-01-12

In 2024, the internet's IPv4 address pool continued to shrink, while IPv6 adoption remained sluggish. This article analyzes IPv4 address allocation data, revealing that the address trading market hasn't effectively recycled unused addresses, leading to volatile pricing. Meanwhile, IPv6 deployment, while growing, falls short of expectations and shows regional disparities. The author predicts a future of highly fragmented internet, with IPv6 adoption being a key factor. The piece delves into technical, economic, and policy aspects impacting internet development and offers insightful future projections.

(www.potaroo.net)

Tech Internet Addressing

AI in the 80s: A Simple Animal Guessing Game That Pioneered Machine Learning

2025-01-12

AI in the 80s: A Simple Animal Guessing Game That Pioneered Machine Learning

This article recounts a simple game, "Guess the Animal," written in BASIC in the 1980s. Using a decision tree, the game asks yes/no questions to guess the animal. Crucially, it learns from mistakes, adding new questions and answers to its knowledge base and saving/loading progress. This showcases early explorations of trainable algorithms, predating modern AI hype. The author recreated the algorithm in C++, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of both implementations. The article highlights how even simple ideas, like decision trees and self-learning, anticipated modern AI.

(medium.com)

AI decision tree

Aussie Engineer's Take on Working for US Tech Firms: Time Zones, Culture, and Stability

2025-01-12

An Australian engineer shares his decade-long experience working for American tech companies. He details the challenges of cross-timezone collaboration: mornings are spent catching up on overnight work, but afternoons offer invaluable focused time. While loneliness can be an issue, strong teamwork and documentation culture mitigate this. He also notes the inherent instability of working for a US company from abroad, but highlights the larger scale, better compensation, and higher brand recognition as key motivators. Finally, he discusses cultural differences between Australia and the US, where Americans are more enthusiastic and Australians more understated, requiring adaptation to the American work culture.

(www.seangoedecke.com)

Development cross-cultural work

World's Darkest Skies Threatened by Chilean Megaproject

2025-01-12

World's Darkest Skies Threatened by Chilean Megaproject

The Paranal Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert, boasting the world's darkest and clearest skies, faces a critical threat. A massive industrial complex planned by AES Andes, encompassing a port, ammonia and hydrogen production plants, and thousands of power generation units, will be located just 5-11 kilometers away. This proximity will cause irreparable damage to astronomical observations due to light pollution and atmospheric turbulence. The project jeopardizes not only the existing Paranal Observatory, responsible for groundbreaking discoveries, but also the upcoming Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the world's largest. ESO urges relocation to protect this irreplaceable dark sky, a heritage for all of humanity.

(www.eso.org)

Tech light pollution astronomical observation Paranal Observatory

Adobe Lightroom's AI Adds Bitcoin to Photo

2025-01-12

Adobe Lightroom's AI Adds Bitcoin to Photo

A photographer using Adobe Lightroom's AI highlight removal tool discovered a bizarre error: a bitcoin appeared in their photo of a seagull where none existed before. The unexpected addition of a cryptocurrency logo to the image sparked outrage and debate among photographers, raising concerns about the reliability of AI image processing technology.

(bsky.app)

Tech

Stop Trying to Schedule Calls With Me!

2025-01-12

Stop Trying to Schedule Calls With Me!

The author vents frustration with the SaaS sales process: from initial trial emails to endless demo calls and contract negotiations, it's a time-wasting, inefficient ordeal. Sales reps focus solely on closing deals, engineers are overworked, and the user experience suffers. The author calls for SaaS companies to improve their sales tactics, minimize unnecessary communication, and enhance user experience.

(matduggan.com)

Development Sales

ChatGPT's 'Prefrontal Cortex Problems': A Curious Experiment in AI Cognitive Testing

2025-01-12

ChatGPT's 'Prefrontal Cortex Problems': A Curious Experiment in AI Cognitive Testing

The author administered a series of cognitive tests, including the clock drawing test, to ChatGPT, revealing symptoms akin to those exhibited by humans with prefrontal cortex damage, such as poor spatial organization and planning deficits. While ChatGPT can programmatically generate correct clock images, it consistently fails when directly drawing or describing them textually. This leads the author to ponder AI cognitive abilities, supervisory mechanisms, and the ethical risks of endowing AI with higher cognitive functions. The conclusion is that current AI models struggle with human tasks, prompting suggestions for AI governance and legislation.

(solresol.substack.com)

AI AI cognitive testing prefrontal cortex

JPMorgan's Return-to-Office Mandate: 300,000+ Employees Called Back

2025-01-12

JPMorgan's Return-to-Office Mandate: 300,000+ Employees Called Back

JPMorgan Chase, America's largest bank, is reportedly ending remote work for over 300,000 employees, mandating a five-day-a-week return to the office. CEO Jamie Dimon's strong advocacy for in-person collaboration is driving this decision, prioritizing innovation and teamwork. This move reflects a broader trend among large corporations shifting away from remote work, sparking debate about workplace flexibility and impacting numerous employees.

(www.forbes.com)

Tech return to office JPMorgan

RSDS: A Decentralized Syndication Protocol to Fix the Internet's Missing Piece?

2025-01-11

RSDS: A Decentralized Syndication Protocol to Fix the Internet's Missing Piece?

Author Tautvilas Mečinskas proposes a new protocol called RSDS (Really Simple Decentralized Syndication) to address the challenges of content discovery and aggregation on the internet. The article reviews the rise and fall of RSS and the shortcomings of attempts like Bluesky, highlighting how RSDS uses lightweight data structures, decentralized domain name IDs, and Bitcoin blockchain-based timestamps to significantly reduce costs and complexity. It also features spam prevention, support for content licensing, and enables the creation of truly decentralized social networks. The core of RSDS lies in its low barrier to entry—everyone can host content—while also allowing for the development of commercial applications.

(tautvilas.medium.com)

Tech social network

FSF: Guardians of Software Freedom

2025-01-11

Since its founding in 1985, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been a steadfast advocate for software freedom, resisting the encroachment of commercial interests. Its unique non-member governance structure ensures its mission remains uncompromised, weathering challenges from the 'open source' movement and corporate influence to uphold software freedom as a fundamental human right.

(www.fsf.org)

Development software freedom Free Software Foundation

Internet Archive's Ceramic Archivists: Where Clay Meets the Digital Age

2025-01-11

Internet Archive's Ceramic Archivists: Where Clay Meets the Digital Age

The Internet Archive commissioned artist Nuala Creed to create a series of ceramic sculptures honoring staff members who have dedicated at least three years to the organization. These lifelike sculptures not only depict the Internet Archive's staff but also symbolize the human touch behind the digital age. From internet pioneers to everyday employees, each sculpture is unique, conveying the importance of knowledge preservation and digital legacy. The project is more than an art exhibition; it's a tribute to the unsung heroes of the internet's development.

(www.nualacreed.com)

Misc art installation

FCC Proposes US Cyber Trust Mark for Smart Devices

2025-01-11

FCC Proposes US Cyber Trust Mark for Smart Devices

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is seeking registration for its proposed "US Cyber Trust Mark" logo, part of a cybersecurity labeling program for smart devices. This program aims to help consumers identify smart devices meeting higher security standards. The FCC has released the logo design and is seeking public comment. Use of the logo requires explicit written consent from the FCC.

(www.fcc.gov)

Tech Smart Devices

WordPress Founder Deactivates Accounts of Contributors Planning a Fork

2025-01-11

WordPress Founder Deactivates Accounts of Contributors Planning a Fork

WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members involved in efforts to create a fork of the open-source project. The conflict stemmed from a dispute with WP Engine, a commercial hosting company criticized for insufficient community contribution. Following this, key community figures like Joost de Valk (Yoast) and Karim Marucchi (Crowd Favorite) expressed concerns about WordPress governance, hinting at a potential fork. Mullenweg, ostensibly to support their independent efforts, deactivated their accounts and others, sparking controversy.

(techcrunch.com)

Development Community Governance

Chatham House Rule: The Bay Area's Embrace of Silence

2025-01-11

Chatham House Rule: The Bay Area's Embrace of Silence

From healthcare conferences to AI salons and even dinner parties, the archaic Chatham House Rule—prohibiting attribution of information to speakers or disclosure of attendees' identities—is surging in popularity across the San Francisco Bay Area. Fueled by the tech industry's obsession with secrecy, its widespread use is sparking debate. Proponents argue it fosters candid discussion, particularly on sensitive topics. Critics, however, contend it obscures accountability and weakens the impact and authenticity of speech. The article explores the phenomenon of the Chatham House Rule's prevalence in the Bay Area and its complex implications.

(sfstandard.com)

Tech Chatham House Rule Tech Secrecy Bay Area Culture

The Future of Wi-Fi: Faster, Secure, Smarter Networks

2025-01-11

The Future of Wi-Fi: Faster, Secure, Smarter Networks

The future of Wi-Fi is an exciting landscape shaped by the rise of IoT, the adoption of Wi-Fi 6E/7 and WPA3, and the ever-increasing number of devices connecting to wireless networks. This article explores the evolution of Wi-Fi technology, highlighting how Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 deliver faster speeds, improved reliability, and enhanced security, while WPA3 strengthens security measures. A key focus is Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE), providing secure encrypted connections for guest networks without passwords. With growing connectivity demands and the prevalence of BYOD devices, businesses need to adopt more secure and manageable Wi-Fi architectures to meet future challenges.

(www.cloudi-fi.com)

Tech

US Regulator Moves to Protect In-Game Currencies

2025-01-11

US Regulator Moves to Protect In-Game Currencies

The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) proposed a rule to extend protections similar to those for real-world bank accounts to virtual in-game currencies. This move addresses the rise of in-game currency transactions and fraud. The proposal aims to safeguard players from unauthorized transactions, scams, and account theft, holding game companies accountable for financial issues reported by customers. Platforms like Roblox, with its Robux currency, are highlighted due to past complaints. The rule interpretation expands the Electronic Fund Transfer Act's coverage, providing greater legal recourse for gamers.

(www.yahoo.com)

Game virtual currency game regulation

Ford Mach-E Outsells Gas-Powered Mustang for the First Time

2025-01-11

Ford Mach-E Outsells Gas-Powered Mustang for the First Time

In 2024, Ford's electric Mustang Mach-E outsold its gas-powered counterpart for the first time, solidifying its position as a top-selling EV in the US. All of Ford's EV models achieved record sales in 2024, showing double-digit growth. The Mach-E's strong performance, with 16,119 units sold in Q4 and 51,745 for the full year, places it as the second best-selling electric SUV in the US, only behind the Tesla Model Y. Meanwhile, sales of the gas-powered Mustang declined by 9.5% to just over 48,600 units. This significant milestone highlights the increasing consumer preference for electric vehicles and the rapid growth of the EV market.

(electrek.co)

Tech Ford

1895 California Cycling Road Map Unearthed

2025-01-11

1895 California Cycling Road Map Unearthed

The Library of Congress holds a fascinating 1895 map of California roads for cyclists, created by George W. Blum and the California Photo-Engraving Co. This historical artifact offers a unique glimpse into California's road network and cycling culture at the turn of the 20th century, providing valuable data for researchers studying transportation and history.

(www.loc.gov)

Misc historical map cycling

The Grimm Brothers: More Than Just Fairy Tales

2025-01-11

This review discusses Ann Schmiesing's biography, *The Brothers Grimm*. The book portrays the tumultuous lives of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, highlighting their contributions not only to children's literature with their famous fairy tales, but also to linguistics and folklore. Facing a volatile era and personal hardships, their perseverance and dedication to scholarship made them cornerstones of German national identity. The biography reveals both their academic triumphs and the complexities of their characters, including biases present in their work. However, their passion for freedom and scholarship shines through, making their story a legend of struggle, persistence, and national identity, transcending the fairy tales themselves.

(hudsonreview.com)

Misc Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales

Spinning Globe on a Commodore PET: A Retro 8-bit Dev Story

2025-01-11

Spinning Globe on a Commodore PET: A Retro 8-bit Dev Story

This post details the creation of a spinning globe animation demo on a Commodore PET, written in 6502 assembly. The author cleverly uses PETSCII characters and bit vector techniques to cram a 32x32 pixel world map into 4.8KB of memory, achieving surprisingly smooth animation. The article dives into the data structure design, projection algorithm, and optimization strategies, showcasing impressive programming skills and a passion for retro game development.

(www.masswerk.at)

Game 6502 assembly

CES 2025: The Worst Tech of the Year

2025-01-11

CES 2025: The Worst Tech of the Year

At CES 2025, the "Worst in Show" awards highlighted the most troubling trends in tech, focusing on privacy violations, security flaws, poor repairability, and unsustainable practices. Judges evaluated products based on severity of issues, innovative badness, global impact, comparison to previous iterations, and the balance between positives and negatives. The awards served as a wake-up call, showcasing the concerning direction of certain technological advancements.

(www.worstinshowces.com)

Tech

Florida's Civilian Police Oversight Crumbles Under New Law

2025-01-11

Florida's Civilian Police Oversight Crumbles Under New Law

A new Florida law has led to the dissolution or suspension of at least 15 civilian review boards tasked with overseeing police misconduct investigations. The law mandates that only law enforcement agencies can investigate such misconduct, effectively stripping civilian boards of their oversight power. Supporters claim this ensures consistency in investigations, while critics fear it will damage community-police relations and erode public trust. This move, seen as the latest in a series of pro-law enforcement actions by Florida's GOP-led legislature, has sparked significant controversy.

(www.tampabay.com)

Tech police oversight Florida law enforcement

Cursor's Clever Algorithm: Character Prefix Conditioning for Accurate Code Completion

2025-01-11

Cursor's Clever Algorithm: Character Prefix Conditioning for Accurate Code Completion

Cursor's blog post dives into a crucial problem in AI code completion: handling character prefixes effectively. Traditional token-based sampling fails when the cursor isn't on a token boundary. The post introduces character prefix conditioning, an algorithm that samples based on character prefixes, ensuring completions start with user input. The post concludes with a challenge: devise an efficient algorithm to sample from this distribution while minimizing calls to the underlying language model.

(www.cursor.com)

Development Code Completion

Cannonball: A Revamped OutRun Engine

2025-01-11

Cannonball: A Revamped OutRun Engine

Cannonball is an enhanced OutRun arcade game engine rewritten in C++. It retains core elements from the original 68000 and Z80 assembler code, but improves upon it for modern platforms with higher frame rates and widescreen support. The project requires the original ROMs, as these contain graphics and audio data. Cannonball supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and more, using SDL2 for rendering with OpenGL or OpenGLES options.

(github.com)

Game

CubeTrek: 3D Visualization for Your GPS Tracks

2025-01-11

CubeTrek: 3D Visualization for Your GPS Tracks

CubeTrek is a web-based platform for visualizing, sharing, and managing your GPS tracks. Breaking free from the limitations of 2D maps, it utilizes Babylon.js to create an interactive 3D terrain view, offering a more intuitive way to experience the thrill of outdoor activities. Supporting data import from Garmin, Polar, and Coros watches, CubeTrek combines NASA SRTM data and OpenStreetMap data to provide rich statistics and activity analysis, even automatically identifying the peaks you've climbed. The backend is built with Java and Spring Boot, while the frontend leverages technologies like Bootstrap, D3.js, and MapLibre GL JS.

(github.com)

Development GPS tracks 3D visualization outdoor activities

Lovable's 19-Hour Outage: A GitHub App Debacle

2025-01-11

Lovable's 19-Hour Outage: A GitHub App Debacle

Lovable experienced a nearly 19-hour outage due to GitHub disabling its app for violating terms of service related to rapid repository creation. The app was crucial for cloning and pushing user repositories. Lovable swiftly responded by implementing a more scalable file storage solution using AWS S3 for new projects, and eventually restored service after GitHub reinstated the app. The incident highlighted Lovable's need for improved dependency management, faster response times to outages, and stronger vendor communication. Improvements include implementing a paging system for critical alerts and migrating to a more robust analytics database.

(lovable.dev)

Development GitHub outage service availability cloud storage

Microsoft Sues Service for Generating Illicit Content with its AI Platform

2025-01-11

Microsoft Sues Service for Generating Illicit Content with its AI Platform

Microsoft is suing three individuals and seven customers for running a service that generated harmful and illicit content using Microsoft's AI platform. The defendants developed tools to bypass Microsoft's safety measures, using compromised legitimate user accounts to create a fee-based platform. Operating from July to September 2024, the service used undocumented APIs and stolen API keys to generate illegal content, including pornography and violent materials. Microsoft's lawsuit cites multiple legal violations and seeks an injunction and damages.

(arstechnica.com)

Tech

The Secret Engineering of San Antonio's River Walk

2025-01-11

The Secret Engineering of San Antonio's River Walk

San Antonio's River Walk, a beloved tourist attraction, maintains its constant water level through ingenious engineering. This article details the replacement of critical floodgates in the system. The project involved overcoming significant challenges to replace aging gates without draining the river. Crews also upgraded a pump room, improving flood control and water quality. The story showcases the intricate engineering and commitment to preserving this urban jewel, highlighting the meticulous process of removing and installing massive components in a bustling downtown area.

(practical.engineering)

Tech river management flood control

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