Muse Spark Open is a multimodal model available today, offering agentic capabilities on Apple M5 Ultra Mac Studios. It's the first open-weight model to run on desktops with two M5 Ultra Mac Studios and various inference engines.
The author self-hosts various services, including Jellyfin for media management, Frigate for IP cameras, and Home Assistant for automation. They prefer native deployments over containerized ones to maintain simplicity and efficiency.
Researchers have found that neural networks can be understood directly by studying their mechanisms and data flow, rather than first trying to untangle them. This approach has led to a new understanding of how neurons generalize and group related concepts together, challenging the idea of polysemanticity or superposition as the primary explanation for complex network behavior.
RPKI adoption has significantly increased, with 70.3% of routed prefixes now valid. Invalid routes are rare and mostly isolated, showing RPKI's effectiveness in securing routing.
Apple's A20 Pro processor powers the iPhone 18 Pro and Duo, delivering laptop-class performance with a new wafer-level multichip module design. The chip enables on-device AI calculations and improved graphics performance, but required significant thermal management advancements to keep it cool.
A user's NAS was infected with a ChaCha20-based malware, which contained various sensitive data including passwords and crypto wallet keys. The malware was likely designed to be easily downloaded and executed by users, but the user managed to extract the key and decrypt it using IDA and Python.
DEsk is a beta Linux desktop environment with realistic skeuomorphism, featuring a desk as the main workspace. It can be installed on various distributions and has features like ray-traced graphics, customizable settings, and integration with existing programs.
Researchers tested Jev, a decision model, on the Trolley Problem and found it made choices that diverged from human preferences. The model prioritized saving its own server over people in some scenarios.
Al Jazeera was targeted in a series of zero-click attacks using mercenary spyware delivered via Discover-Tech's ads, with at least 45 devices infected. The company's platform, Controlium, allows customers to target specific users with "controlled ads" that deliver malware. Discover-Tech has been linked to multiple mercenary spyware companies and ADINT firms, including Candiru and Intelos.
BeBox is a Haiku application that emulates Be Inc.'s BeBox computer, running various versions of BeOS and Hobbit prototypes. It allows users to run the original system with customizable settings and profiles.
Withings is forcing new users to pay $99.99/year for a subscription to sync their data with Apple Health, despite it being a standard feature that doesn't require a subscription. This change ruins the hardware experience and destroys trust in the brand, prompting an urgent call to backtrack on this decision.
A security bug was found in ICQ, allowing anyone to log in without a password. The bug can be exploited by downloading an ICQ clone and sending a long password to overflow the buffer.
Krea 3 is an image editing model for production, offering precise changes and costs per image. It compares to other models like Nano Banana Pro and GPT Image 2.5 in terms of quality, speed, and cost on a single workload.
Fortran, a well-established programming language for scientific computing, will be celebrated with an event on December 1st, 2026. The 'Celebrating 70 years of Fortran' event at the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester will feature a workshop and evening reception.
E Ink announces E Ink Kaleido 4, a new ePaper platform with improved color performance and brightness. The M10C II smart notebook from Hanvon Technology is the world's first product to feature E Ink Kaleido 4.
The author emphasizes the importance of personal privacy in the digital age, citing government surveillance measures and technological advancements that threaten individual freedom. They advocate for strong cryptography to protect against such threats.
The UK has issued economic sanctions against Cryptomus, a cryptocurrency platform linked to Russia's wartime economy and illicit activities. The sanctions freeze Cryptomus assets in UK banks and bar British companies from offering it business.
Biscoff cookies, a Belgian speculoos variant, became a global phenomenon after Delta Air Lines started serving them in 1986 as a peanut replacement. Today, Biscoff is the world's fifth-bestselling cookie and has expanded beyond airline snacks to become a popular ingredient in various food products.
Meta's new commercial terms allow the company to use web scrapers to collect content from websites associated with business accounts, potentially training AI products. Publishers may have limited options as they can't opt out of these new terms ahead of October 30.
Libreboot has released version 26.10, a major update with several design changes and improvements, including the addition of EDK2 as the default UEFI payload for all supported hardware. The new release offers greater security and customization compared to proprietary firmware, with features such as anti-AI policies and improved support for modern graphics cards.
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If you travel in the same circles I do, you probably know that my friend and colleague Mark Witton is working on a speculative biology book, Dinosaurs Evolved, that takes a fresh look at what life on Earth might be like now had the asteroid missed and the K-Pg extinction never happened. As a lifelong spec-bio fan, I’m stoked for that project. Speculative sauropods have given me a lot to think ...
Articulated buses are built in two sections with a pivot point near the middle, increasing passenger capacity without adding height. These buses have various designs, including rear-engine and puller configurations, which provide different benefits and drawbacks.
The website lists 13,626 properties near public forest, game lands, and wilderness areas. It provides interactive maps for zooming and navigation to view the properties.
The author successfully used the Claude AI tool to create a working SANE driver for their Plustek OpticFilm 8200i scanner and an improved MIPI camera driver for their laptop, leveraging Windows virtual machines and USB capture tools. The project demonstrates how AI can aid in tedious hardware development tasks, making it more efficient and effective.
The author's TP-Link EAP770 v1 access point had a Wi-Fi 7 bug causing corrupted downloads over Wi-Fi, which was fixed by exploiting a kernel vulnerability. The issue was related to Qualcomm's SFE/PPE offload feature, which recalculated checksums on corrupted packets.
We launched an AirTag silencing tool for bike owners, but it also enabled tracking without notifications. We've removed the product and will use our patent to prevent similar devices from being made in the future.
Epic Games launched a new, faster launcher in response to Steam's slow loading speed, but Valve countered with an update that made its client faster than Epic's. The new features and performance of Epic's client are overshadowed by existing bugs and missing basic features.
Establish a trusted tunnel between devices to share files securely. Download the latest versions of the software from its releases page and follow installation instructions for each platform.
The Simons Foundation and partners commit $15 million to support mathematics researchers navigating AI's impact. The program aims to foster collective standards and community-driven discussions on AI use in mathematics.