The Mono Project, a cross-platform application development platform, has been acquired by Microsoft and will be taken over by WineHQ. Microsoft recommends migrating to .NET, which includes work from the Mono fork, as the Mono Project's work is now complete.

Mark Zuckerberg regrets Meta's decision to censor content under Biden administration pressure, calling it "wrong" and vowing to push back if it happens again. He also expressed regret for downplaying a New York Post story about Hunter Biden and announced he won't make similar political contributions in the future.

The author created an all-monospace web page using Markdown and CSS, experimenting with a monospace grid to align text and draw diagrams, and invites others to use and improve the design. The page features responsive tables, grids, and diagrams, with a focus on aesthetics and technical challenge.

The user listed various APIs, including geolocation, Rick and Morty, Harry Potter, public holidays, anime images, weather, and League of Legends data APIs. These APIs provide information on locations, characters, episodes, postcodes, facts, and game data, with some offering free access and customization options.

Anthropic, an AI vendor, has published the system prompts for its latest models, Claude 3 Opus, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku, to increase transparency and ethics in AI development. The prompts outline what the models can and cannot do, including avoiding facial recognition and being polite but not apologetic.

The RISC-V backend has made significant progress, with the successful running of The Witcher 3 on an RISC-V PC, and the implementation of over 1,000 x86 instructions, including new AVX ones. However, the RISC-V backend still lags behind AArch64 and LoongArch64 in terms of expressiveness, lacking certain convenient instructions that make x86 emulation more efficient.

John Sainsbury, a donor to the National Gallery, buried a letter in a column in the Sainsbury Wing's foyer in 1990, criticizing the architects' design choice of two non-structural columns. The letter was recently discovered and the columns were demolished as part of a £85m project to upgrade the wing, with the Sainsbury family contributing £10m to the project.

Cookies are used to personalize content, analyze traffic, and display ads, and users can choose which types of cookies to accept. Certain cookies are essential for using the site, while others, like preference cookies, remember user settings and preferences.

The author discusses the challenges of implementing Collaborative Real-time Data Types (CRDTs) and Operational Transformation (OT) algorithms, highlighting the limitations of existing implementations and the need for a more efficient approach. The author presents their own implementation, Diamond, which uses a range tree and run-length encoded b-trees to achieve significantly faster ...

The immune system is complex and not always strengthened by infection, as some pathogens can cause permanent harm or chronic health conditions. The Hygiene Hypothesis suggests that exposure to certain beneficial microbes can help modulate the immune system, while crowd infections, which are more recent developments, can contribute to allergies and autoimmune diseases.

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ChartDB is a free and open-source database design editor that allows users to create diagrams with a few clicks and export SQL scripts. It supports popular DBMS and offers features like pre-designed examples, seamless editing, and visual previews to help users design and manage their databases efficiently.

US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen believes Canadians consume too much American news, which he finds "unhealthy" due to its polarizing and partisan nature, and suggests it's come at the expense of Canadians consuming news about their own country's politics.

2U acquired edX for $800 million in 2021, but the deal ultimately led to 2U's bankruptcy and edX's stagnation, with the non-profit organization Axim Collaborative retaining the cash and failing to deliver on its promises of innovation and equity advancement. The acquisition was marked by poor financial decisions, including significant debt and failed attempts to reduce student acquisition ...

Engineers respond well to professional, informational, and technical marketing materials that address their needs as knowledgeable professionals, rather than emotional appeals. They value clarity, features, and specifications, and are not turned off by jargon, but rather see it as a sign of expertise and understanding of their field.

Malicious hackers are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Versa Director software, linked to Chinese cyber espionage group Volt Typhoon, which targets critical US networks. The vulnerability allows attackers to upload files and has been exploited since June 2024, with Versa urging customers to deploy a patch and blaming customers for failing to implement system hardening and firewall guidelines.

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The Pidgin messaging app removed a malicious plugin called ScreenShareOTR that was used to install keyloggers and malware, allowing attackers to breach corporate networks. The plugin was available for both Windows and Linux versions of Pidgin and was only removed after a user reported it was a keylogger and screenshot capturing tool.

Taskwarrior is a free, open-source command-line TODO list manager that is flexible and unobtrusive. The latest release, 3.0.0, addresses minor issues and introduces new task-storage and sync support based on TaskChampion.

Cerebras Inference is the fastest AI inference solution, delivering 1,800 tokens per second for Llama3.1 8B and 450 tokens per second for Llama3.1 70B, 20x faster than NVIDIA GPU-based hyperscale clouds, with industry-best pricing and open API access.

The author discusses the significant changes happening in distributed systems, including the rise of object storage, new programming models, and the need for simplicity and consistency. They highlight the challenges of adopting new technologies, citing the importance of migration paths, backwards compatibility, and the need to transform one-way-door decisions into two-way-door decisions.

Andy, founder of Set Studio and Piccalilli, found that using paper and pencil for todo lists is more effective and simple than various digital tools. He recommends using paper for future organization during busy periods, as it provides flexibility and simplicity.

A new RAND Corporation report reveals that most AI projects fail due to misunderstandings, miscommunications, and unrealistic expectations, with 80% of AI projects failing, twice the rate of corporate IT projects. The report highlights the need for clear communication, domain expertise, and infrastructure investment to ensure successful AI implementation, and emphasizes the importance of ...

The Sovereign Tech Fund invested €686,400 in the FreeBSD project to improve infrastructure, security, regulatory compliance, and developer experience. The work will focus on five key projects, including security controls and developer experience, to enhance the open source operating system and preserve its digital sovereignty.

Deep Fission proposes a novel approach to nuclear power by building a small reactor that fits down a mile-deep drill shaft, eliminating the need for expensive civil engineering and containment systems. The reactor uses conventional pressurized water reactor technology, but with a simplified design and passive cooling and pressure systems, making it potentially safer and more cost-effective.

Eazel was an American software company that developed the Nautilus file manager for the GNOME desktop environment on Linux, which was adopted by the free software movement. The company failed to successfully monetize its flagship product and ceased operations in May 2001, but its technology was incorporated into GNOME and continues to be maintained by the free software movement.

A modified MASt3R architecture with a new Gaussian prediction head is used for novel view synthesis, predicting covariances, spherical harmonics, opacities, and mean offsets for each pixel. During training, the model is supervised using novel view renderings of the predicted scene, with rendering loss calculated only for pixels with direct correspondences to context images.

Japan's rice shortage and soaring prices are due to the country's acreage reduction policy, which has been in place for over 50 years, rather than a lean crop or increase in inbound tourism. The policy, which aims to raise market prices, has led to a reduction in rice production, making Japan one of the few countries that still maintains such a policy, despite its negative impact on consumers ...

Science News is a nonprofit organization founded in 1921 to provide accurate information on science, medicine, and technology. Its mission is to empower people to evaluate news and the world around them through public engagement in scientific research and education.

The US tipping system has been criticized for its historical roots in slavery and racial wage disparities, with 72% of adults saying it's expected in more places today than in 2019. The debate over eliminating taxes on tips has sparked controversy, with some arguing it's a way to institutionalize low wages and others advocating for a full minimum wage with tips on top.

The user spent $85,000 to migrate Buttondown from buttondown.email to buttondown.com, a process made more painful by the hybrid architecture. The migration was successful, with minimal production issues, and the user is happy with the outcome, considering it a sharp but fixed cost that was worth it.

The author created MiniJinja, a Jinja2-compatible template engine for Rust, to generate text and YAML formats, and to automate infrastructure tasks. The engine features a dynamic AST, a VM, and a macro system, and is designed to be lightweight and easy to use, with a focus on creative API design and type conversions.

Bucket Robotics transforms CAD models into custom defect detection models for manufacturing, aiming to automate defect detection in injection molding and casting. The company's solution uses CAD designs to generate detection models, allowing customers to have a defect detection model ready before their mold is finished, and runs on-device without requiring fancy hardware.

The FDA has warned about bacteria in tattoo inks causing inflammatory reactions, allergic responses, and infections, and a recent recall of three Sierra Stain inks found high levels of bacteria, including six species. The FDA recommends consumers be vigilant about tattoo supply quality and safety, and encourages artists to work in professional environments to reduce contamination risk.

Qualcomm's Oryon core features a substantial branch predictor with a 80 KB storage budget, an 8-wide decoder, and a distributed scheduling model. The core also has a large 12 MB L2 cache, unusually large TLBs, and aggressive prefetching capabilities, which enable it to achieve high performance and efficiency.

Researchers found over 40 STARTTLS-related security flaws in various software products, including vulnerabilities that allow command injection and credential stealing. They recommend using implicit TLS connections instead of STARTTLS and disabling plaintext and STARTTLS variants to improve email security.

Freebsd-rustdate is a Rust implementation of freebsd-update, aiming to improve performance and is currently in an experimental stage. It is not yet a production-ready tool and users are advised to use it with caution, as it has limited testing and use.

The Rust programming language is being used to port a Linux device driver from C, but the Rust version still allows for memory and thread safety vulnerabilities, including infoleaks and KASLR bypasses, due to the lack of automatic stack initialization and the ability to print raw pointer values. The Rust implementation also requires an unsafe block to write data to userspace, which can lead ...

Cerebras has set a new record for AI inference speed, serving Llama 3.1 8B at 1,850 output tokens/s and 70B at 446 output tokens/s using their custom wafer-scale AI accelerator chips. Their API inference offering is competitive in pricing and achieves faster speeds than OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic for their small models.

NASA has decided to send astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth on SpaceX's Crew Dragon in February, instead of Boeing's troubled Starliner. The decision is a significant blow to Boeing, which has faced years of delays, budget overruns, and technical issues with its Starliner program.

Google's new Pixel 9 series smartphones have AI features that stop working if the bootloader is unlocked, affecting apps like Pixel Screenshots, AI Weather Report, and Call Notes. Unlocking the bootloader gives users control over their device, but they may have to sacrifice access to certain features and apps.

KLEE is a symbolic virtual machine built on LLVM, executing LLVM bitcode modules with symbolic values. It has a POSIX/Linux emulation layer, replaying computed inputs on native code, and setting up environment variables and command line arguments.

This is the repository for DisTrO (Distributed Training Over-The-Internet), a family of low latency distributed optimizers that reduce inter-GPU communication requirements by three to four orders of magnitude. Join us on Discord if you're interested in helping research and build the future of distributed training.

Researchers at the University of Texas developed an AI that predicted 70% of earthquakes during a trial in China, indicating potential for future quake risk mitigation. The AI, trained on seismic data, ranked first in an international competition and could potentially be used to limit earthquakes' impact on lives and economies in regions like California and Texas.

Researchers at the University of Padova are developing low-cost alternatives for underwater communication modems and transducers to make the technology more accessible and affordable. Their modem, priced around $1,000, is software-defined and can be modified for specific applications, potentially expanding the use of underwater sensors for research and monitoring.

DeepComputing released the DC-ROMA RISC-V Pad II tablet, a mobile device powered by the SpacemiT Key Stone K1 SoC, running Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 and supporting touch inputs and external keyboard connectivity. The tablet is available for pre-order, with a starting price of $149, and is expected to support Android 15 on the 16GB RAM variant, promoting the development of RISC-V mobile apps.

Domesticated raccoons could surpass dogs in utility and companionship due to their unique combination of intelligence, dexterity, and manageable size. With genetic engineering and targeted modifications, raccoons could be domesticated more rapidly, potentially carving out a significant niche in the pet industry and offering benefits in military, search-and-rescue, and labor contexts.

Software designed to address legitimate business concerns about cyber security and compliance treats employees as threats, normalizing intrusive surveillance in the workplace, according to a report by Cracked Labs. The report highlights concerns about the potential misuse of employee surveillance technology, which can lead to false positives, inaccuracies, and violations of employees' privacy ...

Malicious hackers, likely working for the Chinese government, have been exploiting a high-severity zero-day vulnerability in the Versa Director virtualization platform to infect US-based ISPs with malware that steals customer credentials. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-39717, allows the attackers to install a custom web shell, VersaMem, which gives them remote administrative control ...

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UltimateAntiCheat is an open-source anti-cheat system that detects and prevents common game hacking attacks, including memory editing and code injection, with a client-server design and heartbeat mechanism. The project aims to be educational and not overly complex, with basic protections and optional networking support, and welcomes code suggestions and assistance with adding anti-cheat to games.

Google Fit APIs will no longer be available after June 30, 2025, and developers cannot sign up to use them as of May 1, 2024, but can migrate to Health Connect instead. The Google Fit APIs provide insights and features to help developers build health and wellness apps, including tracking progress, sensor data, and personalized coaching.

Vanilla Prime is a web development approach that focuses on web standards, patterns, and a Unix-style toolset, aiming to provide a deep understanding of the web platform and create performant, lightweight, and timeless websites. It requires intermediate knowledge of the web platform and a curious mind, and involves using tools like the terminal and shell scripting, with optional use of ...

The security guard industry has grown rapidly in recent years, with an estimated 131,760 guards in New York City alone, but the industry's lack of oversight and training has led to concerns about its effectiveness in preventing crime. Despite the industry's growth, guards are often underpaid and overworked, and the industry's consolidation into a few powerful firms has raised concerns about ...

The genetic prediction of IQ scores is much less accurate than that of height, with a prediction accuracy of 2-5% compared to 45% for height, due to the complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. The study of IQ and genetics has been plagued by confounding factors, including population stratification, assortative mating, and study participation bias, which have led to ...

The 2023 state of the climate report warns that the world is entering uncharted territory, with record-breaking heat waves, extreme weather events, and devastating climate-related disasters becoming the new norm. The report calls for immediate and drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transition away from fossil fuels, and adopt sustainable practices to mitigate the worst impacts ...

Swiss scientists have developed a new method to make chocolate using the entire cocoa fruit, including pulp, juice, and husk, without using sugar. This innovation aims to reduce waste, increase farmers' income, and promote sustainability in the chocolate industry, which has traditionally discarded the majority of the cocoa fruit.

Making yoghurt involves adding yoghurt to milk, while building a compiler like GCC requires a bootstrap process to create a self-compiling compiler. Bootstrappable implementations aim to minimize opaque binaries, ensuring user security and freedom by providing auditable source code, and collaboration is key to solving bootstrapping problems in existing compilers and build systems.

Chrome accessibility code involves building accessible applications using standard UI toolkits, which provide accessibility features for free, and requires extra work for custom controls and complex UI elements. The accessibility tree is built from the DOM tree, with objects wrapping DOM nodes, pseudoelements, and layout objects, and requires handling complexities such as CSS-generated ...

Caltech has achieved a milestone by having more than half of its incoming undergraduate class be women for the first time in its 133-year history, with a goal to showcase women in STEM fields and provide a representative environment for young women. The achievement is critical progress in reducing the substantial gap of women in science, technology, engineering, and math, and Caltech's ...

The distinction between "coders" and "programmers" in early computing is a myth, as the activities of coding and programming were often performed by the same person, and the separation of labor was not a common practice. The idea of a "coder" emerged in the 1950s with the introduction of automatic programming, which was promoted by influential figures like Grace Hopper to justify the ...

When feeling off, prioritize self-care, accept that some days won't be productive, and focus on small tasks to maintain a clean slate. Reflect on life, take breaks, and accept that pushing oneself can lead to worse performance, rather than forcing productivity.

The paper investigates the performance of Docker containers on different operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and Windows, and finds that the operating system has a significant impact on the performance of Docker containers. The results show that macOS is the most versatile host system for Docker containers, but Linux may be a better choice for certain applications that infrequently ...

Disclaimer: The bpftrace calls only run for 30 seconds on the demo server in order to handle all the traffic. If you want to run them for longer, please run bpfquery locally.

Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world

GeoWorks, a graphical operating system, was a popular alternative to Microsoft Windows in the early 1990s, offering a user-friendly interface and low system requirements, but ultimately failed due to lack of third-party apps and competition from Microsoft. Despite its failure, GeoWorks' technology has lived on in various forms, including its use in personal digital assistants, early ...

The wealth of the richest 1% globally surged by $42 trillion in the last decade, while the poorest half of the world's population accumulated a fraction of that amount. The G20 summit aims to address this growing disparity by imposing higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy, with Oxfam urging an annual net wealth tax of at least 8% on the super-rich.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims senior Biden officials pressured Facebook to censor COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, during the pandemic. Zuckerberg regrets not being more outspoken and vows to push back if faced with similar demands again, while the White House defends its efforts to protect public health and safety.

The user argues that for a communication product to be a Signal competitor, it must be open-source, end-to-end encrypted, and have no "transmit plaintext" option, and that Signal sets the bar for secure private messaging. The user also emphasizes the importance of cryptography auditing and key management, and warns against recommending non-competitor apps that do not meet these security standards.

The "merchants of complexity" create solutions that appear sophisticated to make people feel special, often at a premium price, while basic and straightforward options are seen as inferior. However, it's possible to break free from this cycle by recognizing the value of simplicity and taking control of one's own needs and problems.

Catcher Danny Jansen made history by playing for both the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox in the same MLB game. The game was suspended due to rain, and Jansen was traded to the Red Sox before it resumed, allowing him to play for both teams.

Scaleway has decided not to renew its membership in GAIA-X due to the association's polarization and lack of progress towards its original goals, and will instead focus on its multi-cloud product offering. Scaleway had initially supported GAIA-X's goals of guaranteeing data sovereignty, availability, interoperability, and portability, but became disillusioned with the association's slow ...

Nvidia employees work long hours, often until 2 a.m., due to the company's pressure cooker environment, but are motivated by generous pay packages and stock grants. The company's low worker attrition rate is attributed to its "golden handcuffs" policy, which has made many employees millionaires and incentivizes them to stay.

A great idea is just the starting point, and execution is equally crucial. To gain visibility and credibility, take ownership, develop critical thinking, and focus on high-impact projects while building influence and growing professionally.

The author, a long-time Mac user, shares their journey with Linux, starting with Ubuntu 9.04, and eventually returning to GNOME after 15 years, appreciating the consistent look and feel of Linux desktops, which has made them optimistic about giving desktop Linux another chance.

Twitch streamers are pushing back against restrictions imposed by the game's publisher, Hero Games, which asked them not to discuss certain topics, including politics, feminism, and Covid-19. The restrictions have backfired, with streamers thumbing their noses at the guidelines and discussing the topics they were asked to avoid, bringing attention to the game's developer, Game Science, and ...

Open Agent Studio is a no-code co-pilot builder that enables solutions impossible in other RPA tools. Subscribers get a free 4-week course to evaluate product ideas and launch a custom agent with an enterprise-grade white label.

Monzo's approach to centrally driven migrations allows for efficient and consistent changes across all services, minimizing coordination overhead and risk of inconsistency. The company uses a combination of automated testing, gradual roll-forward, and quick roll-back to ensure minimal downtime and maximum flexibility during large-scale migrations.

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PyRoboCOP is a lightweight Python package for control and optimization of robotic systems with nonlinear Differential Algebraic Equations and complementarity constraints. It provides automatic reformulation of complementarity constraints for effective optimization and is designed for ease of use with a guide and example problems.

Cox Media Group's "Active Listening" tool uses smart home devices to record conversations and collect data on consumers' online behavior, allowing advertisers to target them with personalized ads. The tool has raised legal concerns, as it may violate wiretapping laws, and major tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook have distanced themselves from the program.

Ruby provides several methods to execute system commands, including backticks, system, exec, IO.popen, Open3, spawn, %x, fork, and PTY.open. Open3.popen3 is recommended for production environments due to its ability to capture output, error messages, and exit statuses effectively.

David Hoeft, the chief investment officer of Dodge & Cox, made millions of dollars in personal trades in the same stocks his company was buying and selling, potentially violating the firm's ethics policy and the law. Despite his wealth and influence, Hoeft's trades were approved by the firm and he claims to have followed its code of ethics, but experts say his actions may have given him an ...

The author believes that large language models (LLMs) will not significantly improve in reasoning capabilities, but will become cheaper and faster, making them more useful for everyday tasks. The author's company, Fume, is building a codegen application that leverages LLMs to automate software development tasks, focusing on workflow optimization rather than relying on exponential improvements ...

We're on a quest to find the most beautiful word in the English language. We'll show you two words; choose the one you like the most. Leaderboard here. More on the project here

AI startups are dominating the latest cohort of Y Combinator, with 75% of startups working on AI-related products, including interior design, business interviews, and song creation. Meanwhile, ride-hailing companies like Uber are shifting their focus from developing autonomous vehicles to partnering with other companies, such as Waymo, to offer self-driving ride services.

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Tesla's Optimus robot was showcased at the World Robot Conference in Beijing, but it was motionless and trapped behind glass, unlike other robots that demonstrated various tasks. The company's decision not to do a demo may be due to trade show logistics or the robot's inability to compete with others, rather than a lack of PR department.

Carlsbad, California, is banning smoking indoors in apartments, condos, and shared buildings to improve public health, despite concerns over government overreach. The law, which takes effect in January, will not apply to single-family homes or hotels, and enforcement will be handled by landlords and tenants rather than police.

Grip-grab's gg may be marginally faster than rg due to its lightweight design. It's based on ripgrep crates and aims to provide a minimal version for search integration in other programs.

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Set up an alert to receive time-sensitive price drops for a full month on flights from specific airports to your destination. You'll receive detailed emails with new, lower fares and must book quickly, as deals can be unpredictable and may not last long.

iMessage's end-to-end encryption is not always enabled, as it depends on iCloud Backup settings, and even with Advanced Data Protection, messages can be accessed by Apple if iCloud Backup is enabled on other devices. To ensure true end-to-end encryption, users should enable Advanced Data Protection and disable iCloud Backup on all devices using iMessage.

The author argues that Facebook is a dangerous and manipulative platform that collects and uses personal data to influence users' behavior, and that it is essential to refuse to use Facebook to protect one's privacy and autonomy. The author provides numerous examples of Facebook's unethical practices, including its collection of personal data, manipulation of users' emotions, and promotion of ...