Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Open Source Powering a Revolutionary Water Simulation Tool: epanet-js

2025-07-08

epanet-js is a web application combining modern web maps with the EPANET hydraulic simulation algorithm. Built by Iterating using code from the open-source Placemark project, it offers a browser-based alternative to expensive, proprietary software. This innovative tool challenges the status quo, providing a powerful and accessible solution for water utility system planning and updates. The core library is open-sourced, showcasing the power of community contribution and open-source principles.

Chatbots as Internet Gatekeepers: A Recipe for Disaster

2025-05-29

Putting an untrusted AI chatbot between you and the internet is a disaster waiting to happen. The author uses the Browser Company's Dia browser as an example, highlighting the risks: AI could recommend affiliated products, paid promotions, or even be manipulated with customized content. This mirrors how companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft prioritize their own products, behavior that, while not illegal, creates information bias and manipulation. Even more concerning is the potential for ideological manipulation, which AI will make more efficient and harder to detect. Relying on a chatbot is like relying on a butler for all your news and communication; convenient initially, but ultimately leading to manipulation or worse.

Google Zanzibar: A Scalable Global Authorization System

2025-05-04

Google's 2019 Zanzibar paper details a flexible and scalable global authorization system designed to handle Google's massive scale. It's inspired numerous similar products. Zanzibar's core lies in its flexible access control model and strong distributed consistency guarantees. Leveraging Google Spanner and TrueTime for consistency, and clever architectural designs (like zookies and the Leopard indexing system) for scalability, it tackles complex challenges. While its distributed nature and high consistency requirements might be overkill for most applications, its API design is influential, with many companies striving to create simpler, more accessible alternatives.