Mitochondria Are Alive

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Lynn Margulis proposed that mitochondria originated from engulfed bacteria, and her theory was initially rejected but later accepted due to evidence of mitochondrial functions. Mitochondria are now considered to be their own life forms, not just organelles, with their own genomes and ability to process information and evolve.

Delta: A syntax-highlighting pager for Git, diff, grep, and blame output

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Install the delta package and add settings to your ~/.gitconfig to enable features like syntax highlighting and navigation in git diffs. Delta improves git blame and diff views with customizable styling and hyperlinks to hosting providers.

Multiple new macOS sandbox escape vulnerabilities

https://jhftss.github.io/res/2024-11-7-A-New-Era-of-macOS-Sandbox-Escapes/image-20241019161759137.png
The author discovered multiple sandbox escape vulnerabilities in macOS, including CVE-2023-27944, CVE-2023-32414, and others, by exploiting weaknesses in the App Sandbox restrictions and XPC services. Apple addressed many of these vulnerabilities, but the author found new ways to bypass the checks, including using dynamic library injection and path traversal issues, and reported them to Apple ...

Stabilizing the Obra Dinn 1-bit dithering process (2017)

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The user tried various methods to stabilize the swimming dither effect in their game Obra Dinn, including mapping the dither pattern to the scene geometry in different spaces and using motion warping. They eventually settled on a sphere-mapped dither with supersampling, which preserved the game's style and eliminated the discomfort from the swimming dither effect.

I quit Google to work for myself (2018)

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The user worked as a software developer at Google for four years, but quit after realizing the company's promotion system was flawed and didn't reward his valuable work. He left Google to pursue his own projects as an Indie Hacker, seeking control and autonomy over his career and business.

Show HN: Asterogue, my sci-fi roguelike, is now playable on the web

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A lightswords-person seeks peace after The Great War, hearing a mythical tale of ancient aliens and a Cursed Orb that can bring peace. The person crash lands on an asteroid, possibly the one on the map, and chooses to descend into its unknown heart.

After decades, FDA moves to pull ineffective decongestant off shelves

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The FDA has proposed removing oral phenylephrine from over-the-counter products due to its ineffectiveness in relieving stuffy noses. The agency will open a public comment period before making the order final, giving drugmakers time to reformulate their products.

FDA proposes ending use of oral phenylephrine as OTC nasal decongestant

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Rust for tokenising and parsing

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The user is developing a SQL analysis tool called sqleibniz for the SQLite dialect, which includes static analysis, syntax checks, and error messages with context. They are using Rust to implement the tool, leveraging features like macros, pattern matching, and error handling to create a robust and user-friendly experience.
Police in the US are allowed to lie to adults during interrogations, but some states ban this practice for juveniles. A bill in Washington state aims to make incriminating statements obtained through deception inadmissible in court for both adults and children.

Λ-2D: An Exploration of Drawing as Programming Language

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The user designed a new programming language called λ-2D, which is drawn on a grid and uses lambda calculus as its basis. The language aims to be visually appealing and easy to use, with features like frames and sliders for parametric control.

Claude AI to process secret government data through new Palantir deal

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Anthropic partnered with Palantir and AWS to bring its Claude AI models to US intelligence and defense agencies, sparking criticism over its "AI safety" aims. The partnership will allow Claude to process and analyze sensitive data, raising concerns over its potential flaws and military applications.

LoRA vs. Full Fine-Tuning: An Illusion of Equivalence

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Researchers compared fine-tuning methods, finding that LoRA models have different weight structures and generalization behaviors than fully fine-tuned models. LoRA models with new singular vectors, called intruder dimensions, perform similarly but adapt less robustly to new tasks.

Principles for product velocity

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The company aims to achieve product velocity by eliminating unnecessary requirements and focusing on a limited scope to build high-quality products quickly. They prioritize simplicity, avoid overthinking, and make strategic decisions to cut corners where possible, such as using vendors and ignoring non-essential features.

Perceptually lossless (talking head) video compression at 22kbit/s

https://mlumiste.com/assets/images/compression/facevid2vid.png
The LivePortrait model generates deepfakes and can compress video by transmitting only facial keypoints. It achieves a bitrate of 36kbit/s at 30FPS, potentially lower with entropy coding.

Notes on Guyana

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Guyana's history involves two death cults, diverse leadership, a semi-race war, CIA-backed regime change, and the largest per capita oil discovery in history. The country's complex ethnic dynamics, including Afro-Guyanese, Indo-Guyanese, and Native populations, have shaped its tumultuous and conflict-fraught independence.

Making Electronic Calipers

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The user created a 500 Hz, millimeter-precise linear position sensing system using a microcontroller, capacitive coupling, and digital signal processing. They implemented the system using an STM32F103 microcontroller, Rust programming, and a custom PCB, achieving a position error of about 0.6 mm.

My Notes on Apple Math Notes

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The user praises Apple's Math Notes for its innovative handwriting recognition and inline expression evaluation, but criticizes its lack of feedback and trust issues with recognizing handwritten symbols. The user suggests improvements, such as adding interactive mode and user-definable notation, to make Math Notes a more useful tool for problem-solving and math education.

Ham Radio 101: What is WSPR?

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WSPR is a protocol for weak-signal radio communication between hams, sending low-power transmissions for testing propagation paths. It uses coded, beacon-like transmissions with strong error correction and narrow-band frequency-shift-keying.

Elwood Edwards, voice of AOL's 'you've got mail' alert, has died

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What Is a Staff Engineer?

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A Staff+ Engineer is a technical expert who operates above the Senior level, staying within the technical track of an organization's career ladder, and is characterized by four key skills: deep technical knowledge, technical vision, project management, and leadership. Their role involves autonomously combining these skills to fill various roles, doing "glue" work, and leveling up the team to ...

How to self-host all of Bluesky except the AppView (for now)

https://alice.bsky.sh/post/3laega7icmi2q/opengraph-image?aaa5f236ae7077a1
The article discusses setting up a personal Bluesky instance with a PDS, data ownership, and a Relay firehose. It provides instructions for cloning a GitHub repository, setting up a mirror of plc.directory, and running a fully-functional copy of the Bluesky App.

Desktop icons are surprisingly hard

Refactoring legacy code for Plasma desktop icons took three weeks, fixing issues like race conditions, mixed frontend and backend code, and incorrect icon positioning when screens were turned off or disconnected. Changes included separating user and computer actions, saving icon positions per resolution, and loading icon positions last to prevent shuffling.

Guild Builds

https://nytimesguild.org/tech/guild-builds/thumbs/frogger.jpg
Games are built by union members and supporters and are not affiliated with the New York Times company. Please pardon any bugs. We are working hard to win a contract! There are a lot of chants on the lines, so we built a way to keep track of them. Strike Chants

Pirating "The Pirate Bay" TV Series Is Ironically Difficult

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The Pirate Bay series premiered on SVT, a Swedish national broadcaster, and has sparked a digital revolution, much like its real-life counterparts. The show's creators mixed facts and fiction to tell the story of the founders, Fredrik, Gottfrid, and Peter, who were sentenced to prison for their actions.

Genetic repair via CRISPR can inadvertently introduce other defects

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Scientists used CRISPR to correct genetic defects in chronic granulomatous disease but found new defects in some repaired cells. Further technological advances are needed to make CRISPR safer and more effective for gene-editing therapies.

The case of a program that crashed on its first instruction

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The customer's program crashed on its first instruction due to an access violation. The debugger couldn't identify the issue, but further analysis revealed a suspicious thread with a read-write memory block.

Apple Macintosh before System 7

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The Macintosh System Software version history is based on primary sources, including original Apple disks and documentation, and corrects major errors in Apple's Knowledge Base article TA31885. The article provides detailed information on Macintosh System Software releases, including System 1.1, System 3.0, System 4.0, and System 6.0, as well as Macintosh hardware models, such as the ...

The Weeds Are Winning

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Weeds have developed resistance to herbicides, threatening crop yields and farmer livelihoods, with some species resistant to multiple classes of chemicals. Scientists recommend a diverse approach to weed control, including non-chemical methods and crop rotation, to prevent further resistance.

Why 4D geometry makes me sad [video]

How is the SSD installed – M4 Mac Mini (2024)

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A user asked how to replace an SSD in a device and if it's a DIY process, and another user corrected the assumption that the SSD is soldered down.

Fedora KDE Desktop Spin Promoted to Same Tier as Gnome-Based Fedora Workstation

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Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop Edition will be promoted to Edition status alongside GNOME Workstation. This change will improve KDE Plasma's visibility and marketing support starting with Fedora 42.

Colors of the Court – NBA Uniforms

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The NBA has undergone significant changes in on-court fashion since Nike took over as the league's outfitter in 2017, eliminating the traditional white-at-home standard and introducing the "City Edition" concept. Today, teams wear a variety of colors and jerseys, with some teams wearing white on the road more often than at home, and fans are treated to a mix of traditional and unique designs.

Judge's Investigation into Patent Troll Results in Criminal Referrals

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A Delaware federal judge investigated patent trolls Mellaconic IP, Backertop Licensing, and Nimitz Technologies, finding that attorneys associated with these shell companies had violated legal ethics rules. The judge's investigation led to the referral of involved attorneys to disciplinary counsel and highlighted the need for transparency in patent lawsuits, particularly when foreign ...

Ease of maintenance is a feature

Tech emphasis on scalability and speed often neglects ease of maintenance, leading to complex systems that hinder quick changes. High maintenance can cause friction, especially in downsized teams with limited codebase experience.

Algol-68 seemed like a good idea

The development of Algol-68 was a complex and ambitious project that aimed to create a universal programming language but ultimately failed to gain widespread adoption due to its complexity and impracticality. Despite efforts to refine the language, it remained unpopular in the industry and was eventually surpassed by simpler languages like Pascal and C.

Intentrace: Strace for Everyone

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intentrace is a tool that intercepts and records system calls, providing syscall deductions for debugging. It currently supports 166 syscalls and is planned to cover all Linux syscalls.

TSMC will stop making 7 nm chips for Chinese customers

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TSMC will suspend production of advanced AI chips for Chinese companies due to US export controls. The move may reset ambitions of Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Baidu that rely on TSMC for manufacturing.

The 'Invisibility Cloak' – Slash-Proc Magic

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A bind mount operation can hide a process from the process list by overlaying a /proc/ directory. This technique leaves behind forensic artifacts like anomalous filesystem mounts and empty process directories.

iPhones Mysteriously Rebooting Themselves, Locking Cops Out

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Law enforcement believe the activity, which makes it harder to then unlock the phones, may be due to a potential update in iOS 18 which tells nearby iPhones to reboot if they have not been in contact with a cellular network for some time, according to a document obtained by 404 Media.

Judge: Zuckerberg not liable for social media harm to children

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A US judge ruled Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not personally liable in 25 lawsuits accusing his company of addicting children to social media. The judge found a lack of specifics about Zuckerberg's wrongdoing, allowing related claims against Meta to proceed.

Man sick of crashes sues Intel for allegedly hiding CPU defects

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A New York man is suing Intel for allegedly deceptively marketing faulty 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs as reliable and fast. He claims Intel misled customers to protect its brand and seek unjust enrichment, causing hundreds of thousands or millions of people to pay a premium price for defective products.

Thunderbird Turns 20 Years Old

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Thunderbird is a free email application that’s easy to set up and customize - and it’s loaded with great features!

Toy Models of Superposition (2022)

Researchers investigate the phenomenon of superposition in artificial neural networks, where features are represented as directions in activation space, and demonstrate that it can occur in simple ReLU networks trained on synthetic data with sparse input features. The superposition hypothesis suggests that neural networks can represent more features than they have dimensions by tolerating ...

Functional Programming in Go

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Functional programming is a style of programming that uses functions as the main control structure, allowing for more concise and elegant code. It involves three main operations: map (apply a function to each element), filter (keep or discard elements based on a function), and reduce (combine elements into a single value).

The Cybergypsies (Indra Sinha, 1999)

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The author recommends Indra Sinha's The Cybergypsies as a historical computer book, alongside Kidder and Stoll's works. It's a memoir about the early days of online communities, BBSs, and MUDs, written with empathy and vivid descriptions.

It feels like 2004 again

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The tech industry is experiencing a cyclical repeat of the 2004 disruption, where big players are struggling and smaller innovators are thriving. This malaise may yield a new wave of open web culture and independent creativity, similar to the 2000s.

Gravity's Eastern Voyage

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Dr Zhaoyuan Wan's study, "Gravity's Eastern Voyage," examines the introduction and adaptation of Newtonian mechanics in imperial China from 1727 to 1912. His research highlights the agency of Chinese scholars in adopting and reinterpreting Newtonian concepts, challenging Eurocentric narratives and contributing to a more inclusive history of Newtonian science.

There's Almost No Gitlab

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Mergify does not currently support GitLab due to GitHub being the primary platform for innovation and open-source projects. The company prioritizes GitHub support over GitLab due to its larger market share and revenue.

I wonder how much Cook dithered over that cheerful-looking exclamation mark

Users expressed congratulations to President Trump on his victory, looking forward to working with his administration. However, others pointed out that Joe Biden remains the current president and questioned the legitimacy of the congratulatory messages.

A brief history of the word "fuck"

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The word "fuck" has a rich history and diverse uses across many parts of speech, with its origins dating back to the 14th century. It has been used in various contexts, including sex, violence, and humor, and has been considered taboo in different eras.

How to find exploits in video games

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The user created a tool to find exploits in the game Sword of Convallaria by extracting game data, decrypting Lua bytecode, and analyzing network traffic. The tool allows for security testing and can be used to identify vulnerabilities in the game.

Are Devs Becoming Lazy? The Rise of AI and the Decline of Care

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Software development is entering a new era with AI-powered tools like GitHub Copilot, which can generate code but also introduce security risks and lazy habits. To avoid this, developers should review AI-suggested code, stay sharp on core skills, and invest in security training.

First image of our Milky Way's black hole may be inaccurate, scientists say

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Scientists have reanalyzed the Event Horizon Telescope's 2022 image of Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, suggesting its doughnut-like appearance may be an artifact. The new analysis indicates the accretion disk surrounding the black hole may be elongated and rotating at 60% of the speed of light.

D-Wave achieves calibration of Advantage2 processor

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D-Wave Quantum Inc announced a 4,400+ qubit Advantage2 processor with doubled coherence and 40% energy scale increase for advanced problem solving. The processor delivers 25,000 times faster results and five times better solutions on complex problems.

M4 and M4 Pro Mac minis are probably Apple's best Mac minis

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The new M4 Mac mini is Apple's most appealing entry-level Mac, offering impressive performance and capabilities at a $599 price point. It's a capable mainstream PC with few notable compromises, making it a great choice for those who want a desktop Mac without breaking the bank.

How to Fix the Electoral College

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The US Electoral College system creates "first-class" citizens in swing states and "second-class" citizens in non-competitive states. An alternative proportional system, such as D'Hondt's method, could assign electors more accurately, but may lead to multiple parties and potential runoffs.

Why langurs drink salt water

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Researchers at the German Primate Center and Leipzig Zoo studied the Cat Ba langur, a critically endangered species, and found it has adapted to its isolated environment by drinking salt water and retaining key genetic traits. The study highlights the need to protect the species and its habitat due to its unique adaptability and ongoing threats to its survival.

Neural Optical Flow for PIV in Fluids

https://synthical.com/preview/article/56a49fbb-6842-45bb-aac1-97cd23711f72
Neural optical flow offers improved accuracy and robustness for particle image velocimetry through a continuous neural-implicit representation. It enables efficient data assimilation, consistent regularization, and direct pressure inference from PIV images.

I Wonder

Users expressed congratulations to President Trump on his victory, looking forward to working with his administration. However, others pointed out that Joe Biden remains the current president and questioned the legitimacy of the congratulatory messages.

Converting ASCII strings to lower case at crazy speeds with AVX-512

AVX-512 instructions allow for fast string conversion to lowercase using SIMD operations. A C++ function using AVX-512 can be 20 times faster than a conventional approach on small strings.

Corinthian Bronze

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Corinthian bronze was a valuable metal alloy in ancient times, possibly made from copper, gold, and silver. It was prized for its resistance to tarnishing and was used to create priceless objects, including statues and vessels.