Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads

1867 apokryptein 2025-02-02 17:07:31 UTC 598 timsh.org Llama Share

A user discovered that their iPhone app, Stack, was secretly collecting geolocation data without consent and sharing it with third-party companies like Unity Ads and Moloco. The user found that this data can be bought on data marketplaces like Datarade and used to track individuals, highlighting the risks of data trading and lack of user consent.

The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE

1602 medler 2025-02-02 19:12:13 UTC 2892 wired.com Llama Share

Elon Musk's team of young engineers, some barely out of college, are taking key roles in his Department of Government Efficiency project, despite little government experience. They have access to sensitive information and are raising concerns about regulatory capture and hostile takeover of government machinery.

CDC: Unpublished manuscripts mentioning certain topics must be pulled or revised

840 KittenInABox 2025-02-02 04:52:28 UTC 714 insidemedicine.substack.com Llama Share

The CDC has instructed its scientists to retract or pause research manuscripts containing "forbidden terms" such as gender and LGBT. This policy affects many studies, including those on Covid-19, cancer, and heart disease, and is causing fear and chaos among CDC experts.

Ask HN: What is interviewing like now with everyone using AI?

513 ramesh31 2025-02-02 15:19:32 UTC 697 news.ycombinator.com Llama Share

Interviews are becoming less effective due to AI use, but well-designed open-ended interviews can still detect cheating. Companies are shifting focus to assessing candidates' knowledge and problem-solving skills through in-depth discussions about personal and work projects.

Waydroid – Android in a Linux container

512 birdculture 2025-02-02 19:29:45 UTC 148 waydro.id Llama Share

We have created fully-integrated distros with Waydroid, including Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, and Debian 12, showcasing community contributions and added tools. Waydroid-Linux supports Intel and AMD GPUs with mesa integration, but recommends software-rendering for Nvidia GPUs and VMs.

Life is more than an engineering problem

387 biomene 2025-02-02 08:53:58 UTC 243 lareviewofbooks.org Prefix Share

This interview is part of The Rules We Live By, a series devoted to asking what it means to be a human living by an ever-evolving set of rules. The series is made up of conversations with those who dictate, think deeply about, and seek to bend or break the rules we live by. “ONCE IN A WHILE,” Ted Chiang tells me, “an idea keeps coming back over a period of months or even years. […] I start ...

Recent results show that LLMs struggle with compositional tasks

340 marban 2025-02-02 03:21:07 UTC 290 quantamagazine.org Llama Share

Researchers tested transformer-based language models on tasks like Einstein's riddle and found they struggle with compositional reasoning. The models' limitations are due to their inability to solve problems beyond their training data and are mathematically bounded.

GarminDB

325 haltcatchfire 2025-02-02 22:27:54 UTC 72 github.com/tcgoetz Llama Share

GarminDb is a Python script for parsing health data from Garmin Connect into a SQLite database. It automatically downloads and imports data, creates default views, and allows users to analyze data using Jupyter notebooks.

The legacy of lies in Alzheimer's science

302 apsec112 2025-02-02 19:00:10 UTC 204 nytimes.com Llama Share

Medical advances have reduced mortality rates for cancer and heart disease but Alzheimer's death rates have increased. Despite decades of research, no effective treatment for Alzheimer's has been found due to its complexity and research misconduct.

Show HN: Lume – OS lightweight CLI for MacOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon

302 sandropuppo 2025-02-02 11:46:22 UTC 74 github.com/trycua Llama Share

lume is a CLI tool for creating and managing macOS and Linux VMs on Apple Silicon with near-native performance. It offers various commands for creating, running, and managing VMs, as well as pulling and serving images.

Costa Rican supermarket wins trademark battle against Nintendo

300 type0 2025-02-02 21:07:48 UTC 110 ticotimes.net Llama Share

A small Costa Rican supermarket named "Super Mario" won a trademark dispute against Nintendo, claiming exclusive rights to the name for food supplies. The National Registry ruled in favor of the supermarket, stating Nintendo's existing registration doesn't cover food supplies.

Reverse-engineering and analysis of SanDisk High Endurance microSDXC card (2020)

271 userbinator 2025-02-02 10:32:40 UTC 131 ripitapart.com Llama Share

The user reverse-engineered a SanDisk High Endurance microSD card to determine its internal workings, finding it uses SanDisk/Toshiba 3D TLC Flash and BiCS3 3D TLC NAND Flash. The user was unable to determine the card's controller's SLC caching mechanisms and was met with a proprietary Parameter Page format from SanDisk.

Analyzing the codebase of Caffeine, a high performance caching library

264 synthc 2025-02-02 09:37:05 UTC 47 adriacabeza.github.io Llama Share

Caffeine is a high-performance caching library that uses a combination of algorithms, including Window TinyLFU and Segmented LRU, to optimize cache hit ratios. Its adaptive policy adjusts cache configuration based on workload characteristics, allowing it to fine-tune its behavior to specific application needs.

Sniffnet – monitor your Internet traffic

249 Brajeshwar 2025-02-02 16:14:49 UTC 93 github.com/gyulyvgc Llama Share

Sniffnet is free, open-source software for network analysis and inspection. It can be installed from GitHub releases or Nix package, with optional sponsorship for development.

Don't make fun of renowned author Dan Brown (2013)

246 fanf2 2025-02-02 21:42:02 UTC 224 onehundredpages.wordpress.com Llama Share

Dan Brown, a renowned author, woke up angry about critics who mocked his writing style. He spoke with his agent, who reassured him that critics' opinions don't matter, given his millions of fans worldwide.

Spaced repetition can allow for infinite recall (2022)

204 yamrzou 2025-02-02 11:42:06 UTC 199 efavdb.com Llama Share

Andrew's friend uses spaced repetition to memorize facts, reviewing them frequently to retain them. This method can potentially allow an infinitely-long-lived person to recall an infinite number of facts.

F-strings for C++26 proposal [pdf]

181 HeliumHydride 2025-02-02 22:19:10 UTC 210 open-std.org Prefix Share

This proposal adds string interpolation (so called f-literals) to the C++ language. Each f-literal is transformed by the preprocessor to a token sequence constituting a call to a make_formatted_string function which returns an instance of a new library type basic_formatted_string which has a conversion function to std::basic_string. The preprocessor extracts each ...

The Art of Dithering and Retro Shading for the Web (2024)

153 matthberg 2025-02-02 23:58:37 UTC 20 blog.maximeheckel.com Llama Share

The user built a custom post-processing effect for their personal website using React Three Fiber and shader techniques, incorporating dithering, color quantization, and pixelization to achieve a retro look. They shared their process and techniques, including ordered dithering, blue noise dithering, and CRT emulation, to create a realistic retro post-processing effect.

Compiling Java into native binaries with Graal and Mill

148 lihaoyi 2025-02-02 01:40:09 UTC 98 mill-build.org Llama Share

Graal native images provide faster startup times and lower memory footprints, but are slower to create and have limitations around reflection and dynamic classloading. They can be run without a JVM installed, but require separate binaries for each platform.

Emergence of a second law of thermodynamics in isolated quantum systems

132 westurner 2025-02-02 22:15:30 UTC 30 journals.aps.org Llama Share

Researchers derive a variant of the second law of thermodynamics for isolated quantum systems, showing entropy increase with respect to observables. This result supports recent findings questioning the necessity of nonintegrability for equilibration in quantum systems.

A loophole used by Shein/Temu to ship packages to US tax-free (2024)

129 donsupreme 2025-02-02 20:31:53 UTC 107 businessinsider.com Llama Share

Shein and Temu use a tax rule called de minimis to ship millions of packages to the US tax-free. Lawmakers are now scrutinizing this loophole, which opponents argue creates unfair competition and allows banned materials to be imported.

Tools for 2025

126 todsacerdoti 2025-02-02 02:12:13 UTC 21 yosemitesam.ch Llama Share

The author is excited about three new tools: Oils, a reimplementation of the Bash shell with an incremental upgrade path; Radicle, a decentralized git hosting/sharing solution; and Simplex Chat, a chat app with a unique approach to addresses.

Proposed bill to make it a crime to download DeepSeek in the US

115 _DeadFred_ 2025-02-02 01:54:13 UTC 81 congress.gov Full Share

www.congress.gov needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.

Fixing left and mutual recursions in grammars

110 brightprogramer 2025-02-02 08:31:12 UTC 29 brightprogrammer.in Llama Share

To fix the left recursion in the given grammar, we need to make it right recursive. This can be achieved by introducing new non-terminals and rewriting the rules accordingly. The goal is to avoid mutual left recursion and make the grammar right recursive.

'Obelisks', a new class of life living inside humans

108 Ziggy_Zaggy 2025-02-02 01:20:54 UTC 25 bgr.com Llama Share

Researchers discovered a new class of life called Obelisks within the human body, found in 10% of human microbiomes, with 30,000 identified types. Obelisks code for a new protein class called Oblins, but their origin and genetic makeup remain unclear.

Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act

104 mooreds 2025-02-02 00:55:03 UTC 24 en.wikipedia.org Llama Share

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 raised US tariffs on 20,000 imported goods, prompting retaliatory tariffs from other countries and contributing to a 67% decline in American exports and imports during the Great Depression. Economists agree that the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff worsened the effects of the Great Depression.

UK betting giant's unlawful marketing kept suicidal gambler hooked

92 Tarsul 2025-02-02 19:21:55 UTC 98 theguardian.com Llama Share

A man, identified as Sam, was targeted by Sky Betting & Gaming with personalized ads despite being at risk of harm due to his compulsive gambling. The high court ruled that the company's use of his data for marketing was unlawful, potentially having wide-ranging ramifications for the gambling industry.

ScatterBrain: Unmasking the shadow of PoisonPlug's obfuscator

87 tux3 2025-02-02 19:46:12 UTC 17 cloud.google.com Prefix Share

Since 2022, Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has been tracking multiple cyber espionage operations conducted by China-nexus actors utilizing POISONPLUG.SHADOW. These operations employ a custom obfuscating compiler that we refer to as "ScatterBrain," facilitating attacks against various entities across Europe and the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. ScatterBrain appears to be a ...

Reinforcement Learning: An Overview

82 t55 2025-02-02 17:20:21 UTC 12 arxiv.org Llama Share

The manuscript provides an overview of deep reinforcement learning and sequential decision making, covering various topics including value-based RL and policy-gradient methods. It discusses the field's current state and includes a brief discussion of RL+LLMs.

How to Run DeepSeek R1 Distilled Reasoning Models on RyzenAI and Radeon GPUs

81 waltercool 2025-02-02 00:27:05 UTC 22 guru3d.com Llama Share

DeepSeek R1 models use chain-of-thought reasoning to analyze complex prompts in detail, delivering more thorough results for tasks in scientific research and technical fields. AMD supports various sizes of these models across its processor and graphics card lineup, requiring specific drivers and memory configurations for optimal performance.

Show HN: Modest – musical harmony library for Lua

76 esbudylin 2025-02-02 10:32:30 UTC 7 github.com/esbudylin Llama Share

The Modest library supports chord and interval manipulation in Lua, providing flexible parsing and representation of musical notes and chords. It can be used with Lua 5.4 and LuaJIT, and supports various types of chords and intervals.

A Mount Lyell shrew has just been photographed alive

73 nithinj 2025-02-02 01:32:33 UTC 19 sfgate.com Llama Share

Three young researchers, Vishal Subramanyam, Prakrit Jain, and Harper Forbes, photographed the first-ever living Mount Lyell shrew in California. The shrew, previously unknown to be photographed, is a small, grayish-brown mammal that feeds on insects and has a pointy snout.

X sues Lego, Nestlé and more brands, accusing them of advertising boycott

68 unsnap_biceps 2025-02-02 03:04:57 UTC 45 npr.org Llama Share

Elon Musk's X expanded a lawsuit against several major brands including Lego, Nestle, and Shell, accusing them of boycotting the platform in 2022. The suit claims the boycott cost X billions of dollars in advertising revenue and violated competitive market principles.

DOGE Staff Had Questions About the 'Resign' Email. Their HR Chief Dodged Them

65 impish9208 2025-02-02 00:56:38 UTC 13 wired.com Llama Share

USDS employees met with new HR representative Stephanie Holmes about the "Fork in the Road" email offering deferred resignations, but she could not fully answer many questions. The meeting left employees confused about the offer's details, including the agreement process, ahead of the February 6 deadline.

Show HN: Groundhog AI Spring API

58 pcraig3 2025-02-02 17:29:24 UTC 19 groundhog-day.com Llama Share

The API provides North America's prognosticating animals and yearly weather predictions for business use. It offers OpenAPI schema and an 'add a groundhog' feature for updates and new additions.

USDA inspector general escorted out of her office after defying White House

58 nico 2025-02-02 02:20:45 UTC 28 reuters.com Full Share

Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker

Tiny vanes glued to planes promise big savings for US Air Force

51 dabinat 2025-02-02 23:13:13 UTC 39 newatlas.com Llama Share

A simple tweak to the C-17 Globemaster III involves attaching microvanes to its rear fuselage to reduce drag and save fuel. This modification is expected to save the US Air Force $14 million annually and pay for itself in seven months.

Mutool – all purpose tool for dealing with PDF files

43 rahimnathwani 2025-02-02 17:18:45 UTC 16 mankier.com Llama Share

mutool is a tool for dealing with document files, offering various subcommands for rendering, extracting, and manipulating PDFs. It supports output formats like PNG, SVG, and text, and allows for customization of rendering options.

AI realtime mock interview tool

42 OlehSavchuk 2025-02-02 00:23:15 UTC 27 prepin.ai Full Share

Master technical interviews with our AI-powered platform. Practice real-time coding challenges, receive instant feedback, track your progress, and access a vast question bank from top companies. Boost your interview success rate today.

Show HN: I built a full mulimodal LLM by merging multiple models into one

40 yoeven 2025-02-02 07:14:43 UTC 14 github.com/jigsawstack Llama Share

OmiAI is a TypeScript AI SDK that auto-picks the best model for prompts and includes built-in reasoning, tools, and multi-modal support. It requires API keys for LLM providers.

Why Is This CEO Bragging About Replacing Humans with A.I.?

37 baxtr 2025-02-02 19:31:06 UTC 33 nytimes.com Llama Share

Corporate executives like IBM's Arvind Krishna and Klarna's Sebastian Siemiatkowski see AI as freeing up employees for higher-value work. Klarna has reportedly saved $10 million annually using AI for marketing, contracts, and customer service.

Nevada Ivanpah Solar Plant Accidentally Incinerates Up to 6k Birds a Year (2016)

36 walterbell 2025-02-02 23:45:14 UTC 56 sciencealert.com Llama Share

The Ivanpah Solar Plant in California's Mojave Desert is killing up to 6,000 birds annually due to its concentrated sunlight beams. The plant's design and location along a migratory route make it difficult to find a solution to the problem.

Data-Oriented Exploits via Programming Language Synthesis [pdf]

36 matt_d 2025-02-02 08:13:49 UTC 1 ilyasergey.net Prefix Share

Data-oriented programming (DOP) is a methodology for em- bedding malicious programs into fixed executable vulnerable binaries. DOP is effective for implementing code reuse at- tacks that exploit memory corruptions without violating many defence techniques, such as non-execute, address space layer randomisation, control flow and code point integrity. Existing approaches for automated exploit ...

I'm Ready for You: On Balzac

36 lermontov 2025-02-02 04:09:45 UTC 5 lrb.co.uk Llama Share

Balzac's novel "The Lily in the Valley" is a romantic and lyrical work that explores themes of love, purity, and repression, set against the backdrop of the Bourbon Restoration in France. The novel is a semi-autobiographical account of Balzac's own experiences with love and loss, and features a complex and nuanced portrayal of the relationships between characters.

Show HN: Language Learning from YouTube content

35 ph4evers 2025-02-02 06:53:45 UTC 6 fluentsubs.com Llama Share

The service provides accurate video transcriptions and translations using AI models. It also offers vocabulary practice and support for users.

Ask HN: Do the tarrifs impact software/SaaS? If so, how?

34 xeckr 2025-02-02 05:06:01 UTC 45 news.ycombinator.com Llama Share

Selling software or SaaS across the border between Canada and the US may become more difficult due to tariffs and potential retaliatory measures, but the impact is uncertain and may be mitigated by the ability of digital businesses to operate remotely. The US tariffs on Canadian imports are a complex issue with various perspectives, including concerns about the legality of Trump's actions and ...

Wolves and America's urban-rural divide

30 kansaswriter 2025-02-02 15:05:08 UTC 64 thehustle.co Llama Share

Colorado reintroduced wolves to stimulate the environment, but they've disrupted a traditional industry and way of life. The reintroduction has created a challenging dynamic between Colorado's rural and urban economies, with benefits mostly going to urban residents and costs to rural residents.

Exploring Nine Simultaneous Transients on April 12th, 1950 (2021)

28 jandrewrogers 2025-02-02 16:25:38 UTC 3 nature.com Prefix Share

Nine point sources appeared within half an hour on a region within \(\sim \) 10 arcmin of a red-sensitive photographic plate taken in April 1950 as part of the historic Palomar Sky Survey. All nine sources are absent on both previous and later photographic images, and absent in modern surveys with CCD detectors which go several magnitudes deeper. We present deep CCD images with the 10.4-m ...

The Door Problem (2014)

28 bemmu 2025-02-02 14:36:18 UTC 5 lizengland.com Llama Share

A game designer's role is to solve everyday practical problems like "The Door Problem" which involves designing how doors open, close, and interact with players and other game elements. This involves collaboration with various teams including art, sound, programming, and writing to create a seamless gaming experience.

Minimum effective dose

27 surprisetalk 2025-02-02 04:43:00 UTC 9 winnielim.org Llama Share

The writer is recovering from a root canal and hesitant to exercise, but found that doing the minimum at the gym was enough to send a signal to their body. They believe in the concept of the minimum effective dose, which can be applied to many areas of life, including learning and personal growth.

Show HN: How good is your color vision? Find out in my new game

25 vidzert 2025-02-02 00:03:56 UTC 40 vidzert.com Full Share

Spot the square with a different color in this game to challenge your color perception.

You are asking the wrong question; 3D print business advice [video]

23 nejsjsjsbsb 2025-02-02 00:55:46 UTC 1 youtube.com Embed Share

Autothrottle: Resource Management for SLO-Targeted Microservices

22 mlerner 2025-02-02 23:17:38 UTC 1 usenix.org Llama Share

Autothrottle is a bi-level resource management framework for microservices that decouples application SLO feedback from service resource control. It achieves superior CPU savings, up to 26.21% over the best baseline and 93.84% over all baselines.

DeepSeek R1's recipe to replicate o1 and the future of reasoning LMs

22 Philpax 2025-02-02 03:13:30 UTC 0 interconnects.ai Llama Share

DeepSeek AI released R1, a reasoning language model trained via a 4-stage RL process, with a friendly MIT license. This marks a major transition in reasoning model research, with huge progress expected in 2025 and more open research.

What Is the Byzantine Generals Problem in Distributed Systems?

20 thunderbong 2025-02-02 14:01:02 UTC 3 newsletter.scalablethread.com Llama Share

The Byzantine Generals Problem is a thought experiment in distributed computing where some nodes may be untrustworthy or unreliable, making it difficult to reach a consensus. It requires at least 2f + 1 loyal nodes to ensure agreement, where f is the number of faulty nodes.

Splitting from Handmade Network

20 surprisetalk 2025-02-02 04:29:06 UTC 9 handmadecities.com Llama Share

Handmade Cities and Handmade Network leadership split amicably due to fundamental disagreements on brand direction. The Handmade movement now has three hubs with no collaborations between them.

Science is political and always has been (2024)

17 vmbrasseur 2025-02-02 19:50:26 UTC 8 jrhawley.ca Llama Share

Science is inherently political because it involves making decisions about funding, research questions, and whose opinions are valued, which are all influenced by societal values and power structures. Acknowledging the political nature of science does not undermine its pursuit of truth, but rather allows for a more nuanced understanding of how scientific knowledge is produced and used.

Calculate the number of language model tokens for a string

17 waldekm 2025-02-02 08:47:02 UTC 3 blog.mastykarz.nl Llama Share

To calculate language model tokens, divide string characters by 4 for a rough estimate, but use the actual model for accurate results. A Jupyter Notebook can calculate tokens for strings, files, or folders using Hugging Face or OpenAI models.

Solving key challenges in AI-assisted code reviews

16 benocodes 2025-02-02 07:14:53 UTC 1 qodo.ai Llama Share

Qodo Merge 1.0 is a robust code review agent with 14 workflows and features to streamline code reviews, including a focus on problems mode and dynamic learning. It optimizes feedback relevance, enhances adaptability to team-specific coding practices, and ensures a seamless developer experience.

Medical billing firm Medusind discloses breach affecting 360k people

16 guiambros 2025-02-02 00:42:27 UTC 2 bleepingcomputer.com Llama Share

Medusind, a healthcare billing provider, is notifying 360,934 individuals of a data breach that exposed their personal and health information in December 2023. The company is offering two years of free identity monitoring services and warning individuals to monitor their accounts for potential identity theft.

Analyst firm say DeepSeek has 50000 Nvidia GPUs and spent US $6B on buildouts

14 heresie-dabord 2025-02-02 22:26:24 UTC 3 tomshardware.com Llama Share

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, claims to have trained its model with low compute resources but SemiAnalysis reports $1.6 billion in hardware costs and 50,000 Nvidia GPUs. DeepSeek's success is built on strategic investments, technical breakthroughs, and a competitive workforce.