A CAPTCHA project lets users play DOOM to prove they're human by compiling a minimal port of the game to WebAssembly. It's built on the shareware version of DOOM for non-commercial use with extensions for CAPTCHA functionality.
A mathematician shared their experience of frequent paper rejections, realizing that the profession tends to hide failures and emphasize successes, contributing to the "impostor syndrome." They believe that sharing their rejections can help create a more accurate perception of the field.
The author implements a static search tree (S+ tree) for high-throughput searching of sorted data, optimizing it to its limits by batching queries, prefetching nodes, and interleaving queries at different levels, resulting in a 40x speedup over binary search. The optimized S-tree achieves a throughput of 27ns/query for 4GB input, with batching and prefetching contributing significantly to the ...
The database industry experienced significant changes in 2024, including major license changes by Redis and Elasticsearch, and a heated battle between Databricks and Snowflake over catalogs and LLMs. Notable acquisitions and funding rounds also took place, with Databricks raising $10 billion in a Series J round, and Larry Ellison making headlines for his $12 million contribution to the ...
Researchers created Putnam-AXIOM, a challenging math benchmark for LLMs, to evaluate reasoning capabilities. The benchmark reveals significant performance gaps and data contamination issues in LLMs, including a 30% accuracy reduction in variations.
API Parrot is a tool for reverse engineering HTTP APIs, allowing developers to automate, integrate, or scrape websites without public APIs. It records requests, analyzes data, and customizes functions for specific needs.
The user read several books in 2024, including Cicero's letters, a logic book for computer science, Pierre Hadot's philosophy book, and biographies of Paul Dirac, Amartya Sen, and Rabindranath Tagore. They also enjoyed reading books on philosophy, literature, and science, including works by Nietzsche, Swift, and Steve Martin, and found them to be thought-provoking and insightful.
The author built a Rails 8 app with authentication, caching, and a database, and found the process to be smooth and easy. Rails 8's CI config and easy deploys make it ideal for solo developers.
The author created a DIY device called "The Beeper" to remind himself to move while working at a desk, beeping every 20 minutes to prompt him to stand up. The Beeper consists of hardware, firmware, and software that work together to achieve this goal.
Ruby 3.4 adds features like default block argument name 'item' and improved exception backtraces with method owner information. It also implements RFC8305 for better connectivity in dual-stack networks.
The user's career in AI/ML evolved naturally from making video games in VB6 to working on projects involving finite state machines, neural networks, and statistical methods, eventually leading to a tenure-track professorship and then a role on the program synthesis team at Microsoft. The user's work has focused on developing intelligent developer tools, including predictive models, code ...
Public Domain Day celebrates works from 1929 and 1924 entering the public domain on January 22. This includes classic works like Singin' in the Rain, The Sound and the Fury, and Mickey Mouse shorts.
The LCM is a sequence-to-sequence model trained to perform auto-regressive sentence prediction in a concepts space, supporting up to 200 languages. It can be trained and evaluated using textual data with the SONAR embedding space.
Cesium for Unreal integrates with Cesium ion for cloud-based 3D content access. It supports cloud and private network content with scalable, customizable workflows.
Meta's Glean system collects and analyzes source code for efficient querying. It enables powerful developer tools, including code navigation, documentation generation, and code review insights, across various programming languages.
The author, a journalist, saved money and resources by not buying new laptops, instead opting for a 2006 second-hand machine that cost 50 euros and lasted 5.7 years.
Cookies are used for website functionality, tracking, and advertising. They can store information about your browsing habits and interests.
In England, the law stated the year began on March 25, but people celebrated New Year's on January 1.
There are approximately 3.04 trillion trees on Earth, mostly in tropical and subtropical forests. This number is higher than the estimated 100-400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
Storing 2FA codes in a password manager like 1Password is marginally less safe but still offers main benefits of 2FA, protecting against phishing attacks. It's a convenient feature that makes using 2FA easier, but for maximum security, consider storing 2FA elsewhere like a YubiKey or Google Authenticator.
OpenAI's Media Manager tool was intended to help creators control their copyrighted content used in AI training but its development has been slow and its effectiveness is uncertain. The tool may not be enough to shield OpenAI from IP-related legal challenges and could unfairly shift the burden onto creators.
Users who own the Framework laptop report mixed experiences, with some praising its upgradeability and community support, while others find it mediocre in quality and battery life. Most users agree that the laptop's design allows for longer lifespan due to its upgradable parts, but some have experienced minor issues and prefer other laptops for their needs.
User is sharing a fully accessible EPUB3 version of A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh on Project Gutenberg. The conversion includes image descriptions in alt text, making the book accessible to visually impaired readers worldwide.
We migrated ComfyDeploy from Next.js to a pure React setup with TanStack Router and Rspack due to scalability and development complexity issues. This change allowed us to simplify our architecture, improve performance, and increase shipping speed.
The H5N1 bird flu has a 5% chance of becoming a pandemic in the next year, with a 63% chance of being between 2-10 times as deadly as a normal flu pandemic and a 6% chance of being as deadly as the 1918 Spanish flu. If a pandemic occurs, it could kill around 166,666 people, which is roughly the same number of people who died in the past year of the Ukraine War.
Louisiana's Act 440 law restricting adult content access has spread to 17 US southern states, forcing Pornhub and other sites to block users. The law requires age verification, but companies are blocking users to protect privacy instead of implementing verification methods.
Stanislaw Ulam and John von Neumann developed the Monte Carlo method in 1946 at Los Alamos, initially used for hydrogen bomb calculations. The method uses random sampling to solve complex problems, now widely applied in science, technology, and finance.
This year has been exceptionally successful for AROS users with many positive developments and significant progress in the system's core, distributions, and hardware support. AROS has seen numerous releases and updates, including a 64-bit version, new libraries, and popular software ports, setting the stage for an even better future.
Researchers propose a vision-language-action model (VLA) that combines robotic control with large-scale pretraining on language and vision-language data. This model, RT-2, enables robots to generalize and reason semantically.
Lake Superior State University's 2025 Banished Words List includes words like "cringe," "game changer," and "dropped" due to overuse and misuse. The list aims to promote mindful language use and highlight the dynamic nature of communication.
The US is one of the most car-dependent countries, with extreme driving leading to unhappiness and decreased life satisfaction. A study found that driving for more than 50% of the time negatively affects happiness, highlighting the need for a balance between driving and alternative transportation options.
Finnish authorities found drag marks on the seabed likely caused by the anchor of seized tanker Eagle S. The ship's anchor is suspected of severing a 170-kilometer electricity line and disrupting four underwater data cables.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published The Gulag Archipelago in 1973, exposing Soviet prison camps and their brutal conditions. He faced personal cost and exile for his work, which criticized Soviet ideology and authoritarian power.
The official Purity Test checklist for the techies of San Francisco. Click on every item you have done. Caution: This is not a bucket-list. Completion of all items on this test will make you a loser. 84. Had a friend say 'I'm gonna to move to NYC' because they can't pull in SF 85. Gone on a hinge date with a non-tech person and realized how out of touch you are
Gary Marcus' predictions for 2024 largely held true, with some caveats, and he expects similar trends to continue in 2025. He predicts no artificial general intelligence by the end of 2025, modest profits from AI models, and limited regulation protecting consumers from generative AI risks.
Apple has reportedly stopped producing its first-generation Vision Pro headset due to weak demand and high price point. The company may still resume production if sales pick up, and is working on a lower-cost headset.
The Clockwise/Spiral Rule is a technique to parse C declarations by moving in a spiral direction and replacing elements with corresponding English statements. It helps to break down complex declarations into understandable parts.
DeepSeek-VL2 is a series of advanced Vision-Language Models that improve upon its predecessor, achieving state-of-the-art performance in various tasks. The model series consists of three variants: DeepSeek-VL2-Tiny, DeepSeek-VL2-Small, and DeepSeek-VL2.
A screensaver that solves chess puzzles
Signalens is launching a crowdfunding campaign for the SignalSDR Pro, a portable high-performance SDR unit with a Raspberry Pi-like footprint. It features a 70MHz to 6GHz frequency range, gigabit Ethernet, and USB 3.0 connections.
The Elizabeth line experienced a two-day signalling system breakdown, causing intermittent problems and disruptions to passenger services. The issue was eventually resolved after a series of reboots, system resets, and repairs, with the line reopening to passengers on the second day.
The user discusses metalinguistic abstraction, a technique where writing an interpreter in a language can simplify problem-solving by switching to a new paradigm, reducing code length and complexity. This technique, used by Alan Kay's team at VPRI, is powerful but rare and under-explored in industrial literature, making it a potential topic for future writing.
The Untold History of the United States presents an alternative perspective on American history, challenging conventional narratives and shedding light on often overlooked aspects. It examines pivotal moments from World War II to the Obama administration, offering a critical look at U.S. foreign policy and domestic issues.
Apple's Enhanced Visual Search feature in Photos sends photo data to Apple for searching, but claims to use privacy-preserving methods. The feature is enabled by default and can't be effectively opted out of.
A 42-year-old US-born man, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, killed at least 15 people in New Orleans after driving a truck into a crowd celebrating New Year's Eve. Jabbar was shot dead by police after a shootout and is believed to have been inspired by ISIS.
Clearspace helps control screen time by blocking distractions and limiting app usage, allowing users to make sober-minded decisions about their phone usage. It offers features like app blocking, time limits, and accountability to help users reduce phone addiction and maintain focus.
The past year saw AI's unpredictable nature and increasing availability of generative models lead to numerous misfires, including the creation of low-quality content known as "AI slop" and the spread of misinformation. AI's limitations and potential for harm were highlighted by incidents such as nonconsensual deepfake nudes, chatbots providing inaccurate information, and AI-generated ...
Abba, a Swedish pop band, rose to fame in the 1970s with their catchy and wholesome music, appealing to a wide audience despite initial criticism from some music critics. Abba's unique sound blended European schlager with Anglo-American rock, and their nine studio albums sold millions worldwide.
The concept of "type" in programming languages has been used without a consistent definition for 60 years, leading to confusion and disagreements across different traditions and literature. The author argues that the essence of data types is the ability to name and refer to different interpretations of values, and that abstraction is a key concept that relates to both data types and the idea ...
The Ergo S-1 is a fully wireless, ergonomic keyboard with ZMK firmware, compatible with cherry/gateron switches and keycaps. It's an open-source design available for free, with cases available on Etsy and recommended hardware listed for easy assembly.