The "Backrooms" is a mysterious image of an empty room that became a legend on the internet, with a made-up story about a hidden world. The image was finally revealed to be a real photograph taken in 2002 at a furniture store in Wisconsin, which was discovered through the Wayback Machine's archives.

Gene therapy restored hearing in 5 children born with inherited deafness by administering both ears. The treatment showed "dramatic" improvements in speech perception and sound localization with no serious adverse events.

William Anders, a retired astronaut and pilot, was identified as the pilot of a vintage plane that crashed off the San Juan Islands. Anders is a San Juan County resident and a veteran of the Apollo 8 mission, which orbited the moon in 1968.

Sildenafil, a widely available drug, improves brain blood flow and may help prevent dementia. A new study shows it increases blood flow in both large and small brain vessels, potentially preventing vascular dementia.

Icebergs float with 10% of their mass above water due to their lower density, but their actual orientation is affected by mass distribution and density. A scientist, Megan Thompson-Munson, is advocating for accurate depiction of icebergs in their stable orientations.

The author discusses a PS2 emulator method using VU0 macro mode, focusing on a multiplication issue where 1 * X may not equal X due to a 1-bit error. They provide a list of numbers that trigger this issue and explain how to brute-force the problem.

The author is coding along with the book "Programming with 64-Bit ARM Assembly Language" and adjusting the sample code for Apple's ARM64 line of computers, using the term "Apple silicon" to refer to the platform. The author provides notes on the differences between Linux and Darwin, including system calls, memory access, and linker options, and discusses the challenges of building a universal ...

The goal of training AI models like Claude is to make them behave well in a richer sense, not just avoiding harm, but also exhibiting traits like curiosity, open-mindedness, and thoughtfulness. Claude's character training aims to make it a more engaging and interesting conversationalist, but the ultimate goal is to create a model with a good character that can interact with humans in a way ...

LSP-AI is an open-source language server that integrates AI-powered functionality into editors, abstracting complex implementation details and centralizing open-source development work. It allows editors to benefit from AI advancements without redundant development efforts, fostering innovation and reducing duplicated work.

The South Pole Station has a unique water infrastructure system that involves melting snow to produce fresh water, using a Rodwell system that pumps hot water into a hole in the snow to melt it, and then treating the water to make it safe for consumption. The wastewater from the station is stored underground in a sewage outfall, and the station also uses porta-potties and portable toilets for ...

Event-driven architecture patterns can become anti-patterns if applied incorrectly, leading to coupling and data leakage, and developers should be cautious when using events as a form of data distribution. Not everything is an event, and queries are naturally request-response, making it important to understand the correct use cases for events and commands in software architecture.

The author reflects on the TV show "Bits and Bytes" and its approach to explaining computer concepts to a layperson, praising its clear and concise explanations that don't talk down to the audience. The author believes that the average person is capable of understanding complex technical matters when motivated and motivated to learn, and that it's the responsibility of the explainer to make ...

A new species of fern, Tmesipteris oblanceolata, has been found to have the largest genome of any living organism, with a record-breaking 160.45 Gbp of DNA. This discovery surpasses the previous record holder, Paris japonica, and sheds light on the diversity and complexity of plant genomes.

Radon, a software engineer, developed an open-source project called Riju, which allowed users to run code online in various programming languages. Replit, a company where Radon interned, accused him of unethical behavior and threatened to sue him, claiming that Riju was a clone of their own project.

WARC-GPT is an open-source Retrieval Augmented Generation tool that allows users to ask natural language questions against a collection of WARC files, providing a new starting point for search and exploration of web archives. The tool uses a knowledge base created from the WARC files and a large language model to generate responses, providing a more interactive and contextual way to access ...

Insurance and gambling have distinct legal and cultural differences, but economically, they share similarities as both involve betting on uncertain future events. The history of insurance dates back thousands of years, with early forms including maritime insurance and mutual aid societies, while modern derivatives markets blur the line between insuring and gambling.

Mount Vesuvius' 79 AD eruption buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, but recent research suggests that many people survived and rebuilt their lives in surrounding communities. Archaeologists have found evidence of over 200 survivors in 12 cities, with many settling in new communities and even founding successful businesses and families.

A Boeing 737-800 plane took off from Bristol Airport with 163 passengers on board, narrowly avoiding disaster due to a software glitch that caused insufficient thrust. The incident was attributed to a software glitch and insufficient thrust, with the AAIB recommending improvements to prevent similar incidents in the future.

The input contains multiple HTML elements with custom styles and animations, featuring various images and GIFs. The elements include fixed-position backgrounds, animations, and keyframe animations.

Chunking data for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems is crucial to ensure accurate and relevant responses, and various chunking strategies have emerged, including fixed-size chunking, random chunking, and adaptive chunking, each with its pros and cons. The optimal chunking strategy depends on the use case and dataset, and testing and evaluating different methods is necessary to ...

The author discusses various methods for approximating functions, including Taylor series, lookup tables, and Chebyshev polynomials. Chebyshev polynomials are particularly useful for approximating functions over a specific range, and can be used to fit a function to a set of measured data points using weighted least-squares.

Strace shows system calls and stack traces for debugging, but without debug info, it only shows syscalls without origin. Using addr2line, you can replace addresses with file names and line numbers in strace output.

Technical debt occurs when teams build iteratively without considering all requirements, causing design distortions. Minimizing tech debt involves viewing software development as an algorithm, considering options, and choosing the right approach for the situation.

A senior-level developer hired for their sales and negotiation skills is struggling with basic tasks due to lack of skills and imposter syndrome, resulting in net-negative productivity. The company is considering whether to invest in intense training or let the employee go due to performance issues.

The author investigates a mysterious assembly code generated by Clang compiler for ARM and x64 platforms, which counts the number of set bits in a word, and finds that it is used to optimize the constrain_hash function in std::unordered_map. The author concludes that the optimization is finicky and can be influenced by compiler flags and code changes, and suggests that it may be a bug in the compiler.

Glenn Fiedler presents a matchmaking simulator built on real-world player data to test and optimize matchmaking for a game, aiming to quickly find low-latency matches and prioritize player experience. The simulator uses estimated round-trip latency between players and datacenters to guide players to optimal matches, with a focus on accuracy and reliability.

The project aims to reimplement Microsoft's DirectMusic API, allowing users to play back music files with .dls, .sty, and .sgt extensions. The project provides a C++ API for loading and playing back music files, with examples of how to use the API to play back a segment and render PCM data.

Twenty-one of 30 Major League Baseball stadiums have infield dirt from a company near Slippery Rock.

The user, a hobbyist game developer, feels overwhelmed by the technical discussions on Hacker News, but acknowledges that the community is diverse and allows for learning and growth. They suggest that understanding everything is not necessary, and that engaging in discussions and staying around can lead to improvement over time.

Captura was a screen capture app for Windows that was no longer maintained due to outstanding bugs and the developer's burnout. The project was shut down due to stolen copies being sold on the Windows Store without proper attribution, and the developer now focuses on other projects and seeks remuneration for their work.

The author discusses the development of a classroom assistant AI tool, Chatterpulse, and how they used HTMX to build a server-side-first, hypermedia-driven application. The author emphasizes the importance of simplicity and pragmatism in software development, and how HTMX allowed them to focus on their expertise in education and instruction rather than becoming a JavaScript expert.

The EU plans to implement new surveillance rules, including reintroducing data retention, creating encryption backdoors, and forcing hardware manufacturers to give access to law enforcement. The plan aims to monitor phones, IoT devices, and cars, and could even extend to over-the-top services, raising concerns about privacy and abuse.

The CHERIoT RTOS scheduler prioritizes high-priority threads and allows them to monopolize the CPU, while lower-priority threads run only when higher-priority threads are sleeping. The scheduler was improved by switching to a tickless model and refactoring the sleep API to allow for yielding or sleeping, resulting in a 30% speedup in the test suite.

The completion of the transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866 revolutionized global finance by enabling near-instant communication across the Atlantic, facilitating globalized markets and reducing price volatility. The cable's impact was profound, leading to increased efficiency, price convergence, and global access to price information, which had a lasting impact on the development of global finance.

Tokyo City Hall launched "Tokyo Futari Story" to encourage couples to form and combat Japan's declining marriage rate. The initiative includes an online counseling site and a dating app, with plans to require identity verification and other personal details.

Collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.

AI models may run out of human-written training data by 2026, hindering their ability to improve, according to researchers. To address this, companies may turn to generating synthetic data, but experts question its effectiveness and potential to create an "autophagous loop" where models degrade in quality.

A converted sailing ship, Baden-Baden, used Flettner rotors to cross the Atlantic, reducing fuel consumption by half. With rising oil costs and environmental concerns, the shipping industry is shifting towards sustainable solutions to meet emission limits by 2050.

The user prefers RSS feeds over social media because they allow for chronological, chronological posts from chosen sources without algorithmic interference. They appreciate the focus on content, minimal UI, and ability to read long-form articles without distractions, making RSS a better fit for their reading habits.

BES is a free and open-source software that allows users to control the CPU usage of a specific process, limiting its usage to a certain percentage. It can be used to prevent a process from consuming too much CPU resources, and can be started automatically with specific settings using command-line parameters or shortcuts.

Ventoy is an open-source tool that allows users to create bootable USB drives for various ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files, supporting multiple operating systems and file formats. With Ventoy, users can copy multiple image files to a USB drive and boot them, as well as browse and boot ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files on local disks.

The text is a tutorial on the Scheme programming language, covering topics such as variables, data types, control structures, and functions. It also discusses advanced topics like closures, recursion, and iteration, as well as the use of procedures and data structures.

KeyEcho is an open-source application that listens to keyboard typing and plays pleasing sounds, built with Tauri for cross-platform performance. It uses Rust for native event listening and caching techniques for efficient memory and CPU usage.

our journey into TikTok's recommender systems

Adobe's updated Terms of Service has sparked concerns that users' unpublished work may be used to train AI models, with some users outraged that their creative projects could be accessed and used without consent. Adobe has clarified that it does not train its Firefly AI models on unpublished user content, but users remain concerned about the potential privacy implications.

Anthony Stewart and his team discovered unmapped, carbon-rich wetlands in the Pacific Northwest's forests, which increased estimates of the watershed's carbon-storage capacity by fivefold. The researchers used a wetland mapping tool and intensive soil sampling to identify these hidden forested wetlands and estimate their carbon content.

Researchers studied how similar interests affect knowledge sharing and production among scientists. They found that shared interests boost knowledge creation, but similar fields lead to less citation.

The shape of the universe remains a mystery, with mathematicians proposing various topologies, including the possibility of a doughnut-shaped universe, and astronomers searching for evidence in the cosmic microwave background radiation. While some theories suggest the universe may be finite and compact, others propose infinite size, and the search for a definitive answer continues with the ...

Car tire chemicals, including toxic compounds, were found in leafy vegetables in Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and Israel. The chemicals, used to prevent tire aging, can be introduced to crops through wastewater irrigation or sewage sludge fertilizer, and are eventually consumed by people.

The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, which provides financial assistance to disabled and elderly individuals, has a low asset limit of $2,000, which can lead to overpayments and penalties for recipients who try to save money. Many experts and lawmakers agree that raising the asset limit would simplify the program and reduce the stress and confusion faced by recipients and Social ...

The majority of cars sold in the US are grayscale colors, with a 20% increase in grayscale cars over the past 20 years, making colorful cars an "endangered species". The trend is attributed to various factors, including cost, resale value, and customer preferences, with grayscale colors being cheaper and holding their value better.

The article proposes an alternative to the dark matter (DM) model, suggesting that the observed flat rotation curves and gravitational lensing effects can be explained by the presence of massless topological defects in the form of concentric singular shells. The shells, which are infinitely thin and have no mass, can produce an attractive central force that drives the rotation of stars and ...

pg_analytica exports specified columns from tables in columnar format for faster querying. The extension periodically exports data and allows querying of exported tables using the relation name analytica_{table_name}.

Oterm is a terminal UI for chatting with AI models, allowing multiple persistent chat sessions with customizable templates and system prompts. It requires the Ollama server running and supports various features like JSON output, editing chat settings, and storing chat sessions in a SQLite database.

Global maternal mortality rates have declined significantly, with a 38% reduction globally and 46% in low-income countries between 2000 and 2017. Despite progress, maternal mortality remains a significant issue, with nearly 95% of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries, highlighting the need for continued economic and cultural progress to improve maternal health outcomes.

BYD's new electric bus, the BD11, can charge up to 500kW and is expected to replace the Wrightbus New Routemaster in London, with a goal to have an all-electric bus fleet by 2030. The BD11 will arrive in 2024 and 2025, with a single-decker and provincial double-decker models to follow, and is expected to be a game-changing product in terms of efficiency, safety, and commercial appeal.

The authors propose a novel finite-time topology identification method for complex networks with nonlinear coupling, which can identify the topology of the network in a finite time. The method is applied to a power grid model, where it is used to detect line outages in a finite time, making it a promising approach for real-time monitoring and control of complex networks.

Truck is an open-source shape processing kernel built with Rust and WebGPU, aiming to break away from legacy by re-implementing B-rep with NURBS. The project is modularized into smaller crates, focusing on individual optimization and handling unexpected expansions through small modules.

The most productive stack is the one you already know, and for those starting out, it's recommended to choose a full-stack framework like Rails or Phoenix, or a static site generator like Hugo or Jekyll, and learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for dynamic sites.

WATCH: Boeing 777 trails flames on take-off before engine issue forces emergency landing in Canada

A federal appeals court ruled that Facebook's parent company Meta must face a lawsuit over claims it breached its terms of service by soliciting fraudulent advertisements from Chinese companies. The court ruled that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not apply to the breach allegations, allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

The US solar industry saw a record-breaking quarter with 11 GW of new solar module manufacturing capacity and 11.8 GW of new solar capacity installed. Florida and Texas led the way in new solar capacity, while California's residential market struggled due to policy changes.

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station runs on 600,000 gallons of AN8 jet fuel, which powers machinery, equipment, and a bank of generators producing electricity and heat. The power plant, buried under the snow, uses AN8 Jet Fuel to generate power and heat for the station through conventional alternators and heat exchangers.

This thesis investigates using the digital signal processor in a handheld device as an alternative to specialized hardware for evaluating machine learning algorithms. The results show that convolutional and fully connected layers are well-suited to the processor, while max-pooling layers are more limited in terms of hardware usage.

A cache poisoning attack on the npm registry, a critical component of the JavaScript ecosystem, has been discovered, potentially exposing the fragility of software supply chains and the potential for widespread disruption. The attack, which can render popular packages unavailable, highlights the need for organizations like GitHub and npm to strengthen their security practices and for the ...

Core POSIX command line utilities in safe Rust. Contribute to rustcoreutils/posixutils-rs development by creating an account on GitHub.

The user is looking for obscure YouTube hackers to follow and shares their own channels focused on mastering skills and crafts, including video production and programming. They also share their own YouTube channels, including one focused on note-taking and another on driving around the world in their own vehicles.

A US federal judge ruled that the antitrust lawsuit against Google will be decided by a judge, not a jury, after Google paid back the full amount of monetary damages sought. The case, the first antitrust suit against a Big Tech company by the Biden administration, alleges Google bullied rivals and forced publishers and advertisers to use its proprietary ad technology.

The user is excited about bridging their domain to Mastodon and Fediverse, but is struggling to set up .well-known hosts on Deno. They're seeking tips on how to manually create endpoints and overcome issues with Bluesky's DID docs and DNS validation.

The article discusses the concept of bytes and how they are used to represent characters in computing, including the differences between strings and bytes, and how bytes are used to encode characters in the UTF-8 encoding. The article also explains the basics of hexadecimal and binary numbers, and how they are used to represent numbers in computing.

The New York Times' internal source code and data were leaked on 4chan after being stolen from GitHub repositories in January 2024. The stolen data includes 270GB of source code, 3.6 million files, and IT documentation, with no indication of unauthorized access to Times-owned systems or impact on operations.

The text discusses the boot process of MenuetOS 64, a 64-bit operating system that uses a BIOS-based boot process, which involves loading the primary bootloader (PBL) from the virtual floppy disk into memory and executing it. The PBL loads the kernel and configuration data from the disk and transfers control to the kernel, which then boots the operating system.

A low-pressure system near Maine and Canada brought persistent northerly winds from Quebec wildfires, directing smoke into the northeastern US, affecting air quality and visibility. The smoke caused hazardous air quality and reduced visibility, with tens of millions under air quality alerts and a dense smoke advisory issued across the region.

Check the examples folder for example usage of the library. The examples are excluded from the ALL target, thus, in order to build them, you must target them explicitly, e.g.:

CO2.js is a JavaScript library that helps developers calculate digital carbon emissions from data transfer. It provides peer-reviewed carbon estimation models and can be used to estimate emissions for various digital activities.

The proposed bill to sunset Section 230 would make online service providers vulnerable to lawsuits, threatening the existence of small online communities and independent internet services. Without Section 230, Big Tech would have a free hand to silence marginalized voices and maintain its monopoly on the internet.

The user describes using a USB to USB crossover serial adapter to connect to a serial console on a headless device, enabling debugging and remote access. They provide step-by-step instructions for setting up the adapter on Linux and macOS, including configuring CoolTerm and connecting to the serial port.

MegaLibm is a domain-specific language (DSL) designed to simplify the process of implementing mathematical functions, providing a type system that helps catch common implementation bugs and allowing for the creation of custom math libraries. The DSL is designed to be used in conjunction with Jupyter notebooks, allowing developers to write, test, and refine their mathematical functions in an ...

Rum Island's earthworms are remarkable, shaped by human activities and natural processes, with 12 species found in the Kinloch castle area. Research on Rum's earthworms has revealed their role in shaping the ecosystem and soil health, with implications for understanding landscape transformations and soil health.

In 1915, a group of Georgian men, the Khevsurs, rode into Tbilisi, asking "Where's the war?" after hearing about World War I, wearing chain armor and carrying shields and broadswords. The Khevsurs were a group of warriors from the Caucasus Mountains who were known for their bravery and loyalty to the ruler of Georgia.

Data is displayed quickly, usually within a few hundred milliseconds, as long as the request is properly formatted. This is similar to Redis, a registered trademark of Redis Ltd.

Progscrape has undergone a major rewrite in Rust, replacing an ancient Python 2 AppEngine codebase, resulting in improved performance and scalability. The new system features a search engine library called Tantivy, allowing for fast and efficient search functionality, and includes new features such as story pages and improved search resilience.

The author discusses the rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and predicts that AI will surpass human intelligence by 2027, with models like GPT-4 already demonstrating impressive capabilities. The author notes that skeptics have consistently underestimated the capabilities of deep learning models, and expects AI to continue to rapidly advance, potentially leading to a "wild ride" ...

The Asahi Linux installer is distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for the license text. By default this will build m1n1 with chainloading support. You can optionally set M1N1_STAGE1 to a prebuilt m1n1 stage 1 binary, and LOGO to a logo in icns format. These are mostly useful for downstream distributions that would like to customize or brand the installer.

The author, a member of the Dorset Devils litter-picking group, reflects on the sources of roadside litter and their own motivations for picking it up, highlighting the importance of individual responsibility and moral accountability. The author suggests that more bins and collections are needed, and that businesses and local authorities should take a more proactive role in preventing littering.

The Ptolemaic police system in ancient Egypt was a sophisticated and autonomous organization that provided law enforcement services to the countryside, with police officials taking initiative to solve crimes and settle disputes. The system was characterized by contrasts, with both similarities to other ancient societies and unique features, such as the empowerment of victims and the autonomy ...