tech
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Delhi man gets AliExpress order after four years
indianexpress.com ‘Never lose hope’: Delhi man gets AliExpress order after four yearsOnline retail service AliExpress was banned in India in June 2020 along with 58 other Chinese apps.
https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-in-india/delhi-man-gets-aliexpress-order-after-four-years-8684225/
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When Silence is Power (2013)
thefrailestthing.com When Silence is PowerIn The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt wrote, “What first undermines and then kills political communities is loss of power and final impotence.” She went on to add, “Power is actua…
https://thefrailestthing.com/2013/12/21/silence-is-power/
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Oscilloscope/AWG/Logic Analyzer: Analog Discovery 3
digilent.com What’s Different with the Analog Discovery 3?As many of you have heard (otherwise I presume you wouldn't be reading this post) the Analog Discovery 3 has been released by Digilent. One of the biggest questions that I had as one of the team members responsible for creating the documentation on the Analog... #ad3 #analog #AnalogDiscovery
https://digilent.com/blog/whats-different-with-the-analog-discovery-3/
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Btreefs generates executable code at runtime to unpack btree nodes
https://evilpiepirate.org/git/bcachefs.git/tree/fs/bcachefs/bkey.c#n727
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Playing sounds of healthy coral on reefs makes fish return (2019)
www.abc.net.au Scientists lure fish to dead reefs using speakers playing healthy coral soundsUnderwater speakers playing healthy coral reefs noises double the amount of fish on damaged reefs, giving scientists hope that sound could be used to help restore them.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-12-03/great-barrier-reef-coral-fish-acoustics/11760016
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How platform engineering works
chadxz.dev How Platform Engineering Works ~ chadxz.devLessons learned in my first year as a platform engineer.
https://chadxz.dev/platform/
- www.independent.co.uk Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
Students enrolled in the university’s flagship CS50 course will be presented with the AI teacher in September
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/harvard-chatbot-teacher-computer-science-b2363114.html
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Has Xbox lost the console wars?
www.theverge.com Has Xbox really lost the console wars?Microsoft’s Xbox chief discussed the state of the Xbox business
https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/24/23772314/ftc-microsoft-day-two-hearing-summary-xbox-console-wars-sony-playstation-call-of-duty
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Tilia – regulation-compliant (but US-only) money transmitter for gaming
www.tilia.io About Us | TiliaA Pioneer in Virtual Worlds and Metaverse Economies. Learn more about the history and team at Tilia.
https://www.tilia.io/about
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How to Be an Engineer That PMs Don't Hate
staysaasy.com How To Be An Engineer That PMs Don’t HateWe’ve talked about How To Be A PM That Engineers Don’t Hate, now let’s talk about it in the other direction.
https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2023/06/18/how-to-be-an-engineer-pms-down-hate.html
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On the paper “Exploring the MIT Mathematics and EECS Curriculum Using LLMs”
https://people.csail.mit.edu/asolar/CoursesPaperStatement.pdf
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Time is not a synchronization primitive
https://xeiaso.net/blog/nosleep
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Intercal: Practically Impossible
https://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/intercal/pgpi.html
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BrowserBox Pro goes open-source
github.com GitHub - dosyago/BrowserBoxPro: 📷 BrowserBoxPro - The internet. But unrestricted. And secure. Remote browser isolation product, available open-source here and for purchase on our website.📷 BrowserBoxPro - The internet. But unrestricted. And secure. Remote browser isolation product, available open-source here and for purchase on our website. - GitHub - dosyago/BrowserBoxPro: 📷 Brow...
https://github.com/dosyago/BrowserBoxPro
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Try: run a command and inspect its effects before changing your live system
github.com GitHub - binpash/try: "Do, or do not. There is no try." We're setting out to change that."Do, or do not. There is no try." We're setting out to change that. - GitHub - binpash/try: "Do, or do not. There is no try." We're setting out to change that.
https://github.com/binpash/try
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Pink Floyd, 'The Wizard of Oz,' and Me
www.nytimes.com Pink Floyd, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and MeThe inside story of a Times reporter’s strange role in a foundational moment in early internet culture: “The Dark Side of the Rainbow.”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/21/magazine/dark-side-of-the-rainbow-pink-floyd-wizard-of-oz.html
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AMD's 128-core Epycs could spell trouble for Ampere Computing
www.theregister.com AMD's 128-core Epycs take the fight to Ampere ComputingWe still have more cores, exec sniffs
https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/21/amd_ampere_cloud_core_competition/
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Office real estate crash will be so sharp, values unlikely to recover by 2040
fortune.com The office real estate crash will be so sharp and deep that Capital Economics thinks office values are unlikely to recover by 2040The research firm’s top property economist likens the decline in office demand to what malls have experienced over the last six years—and sees a similar outcome.
https://fortune.com/2023/06/23/commercial-real-estate-crash-office-values-unlikely-to-recover-by-2040-says-capital-economics/
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https://izzys.casa/2023/06/everything-you-never-wanted-to-know-about-cmake-redux/
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LastPass users locked out (again) with infinite 2FA loop
www.bleepingcomputer.com LastPass users furious after being locked out due to MFA resetsLastPass password manager users have been experiencing significant login issues starting early May after being prompted to reset their authenticator apps.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/lastpass-users-furious-after-being-locked-out-due-to-mfa-resets/
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Air Quality Reporting on iOS
https://intergalactic.systems/posts/post-1965946732.html
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Zotero Better Notes – Knowledge management inside Zotero
github.com GitHub - windingwind/zotero-better-notes: Everything about note management. All in Zotero.Everything about note management. All in Zotero. Contribute to windingwind/zotero-better-notes development by creating an account on GitHub.
https://github.com/windingwind/zotero-better-notes
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Upload a Godot HTML5 Game to Itch.io with GitHub Actions
simondalvai.com Upload a Godot HTML5 game to itch.io with Github Actions - Simon DalvaiAutomatically upload your Android Godot game to itch.io with Github Actions godot-html-export and itchio-butler-upload
https://simondalvai.com/blog/godot-itchio-upload/
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Everything that uses configuration files should report where they're located
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/ReportConfigFileLocations
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PCMag: European Parliament approves new rules for rechargeable batteries, including that consumers must be able to "easily remove and replace" batteries in portable devices such as phones and tablets.
www.pcmag.com EU: Smartphones Must Have User-Replaceable Batteries by 2027The European Parliament just caused a major headache for smartphone and tablet manufacturers.
>EU: Smartphones Must Have User-Replaceable Batteries by 2027
>The European Parliament just caused a major headache for smartphone and tablet manufacturers.
>The European Union (EU) is set to usher in a new era of smartphones with batteries that consumers can easily replace themselves.
>Earlier this week, the European Parliament approved new rules(Opens in a new window) covering the design, production, and recycling of all rechargeable batteries sold within the EU.
>The new rules stipulate that all electric vehicle, light means of transport (e.g. electric scooters), and rechargeable industrial batteries (above 2kWh) will need to have a compulsory carbon footprint declaration, label, and digital passport.
>For "portable batteries" used in devices such as smartphones, tablets, and cameras, consumers must be able to "easily remove and replace them." This will require a drastic design rethink by manufacturers, as most phone and tablet makers currently seal the battery away and require specialist tools and knowledge to access and replace them safely.
>Apple has already been forced by the European Union to change from a Lightning port to a USB-C port on iPhones, with the iPhone 15 expected to be the first to make the switch. Now it seems Apple will need to figure out how to allow access to the battery inside future iPhones, as will every other smartphone manufacturer.
>The new rules also stipulate strict targets for collecting waste and recovering materials from old batteries. The percentages for each increase at set intervals between now and 2031, at which point 61% waste collection must be achieved and 95% of materials must be recovered from old portable batteries. There will also be minimum levels of recycled content used in new batteries required, but only "eight years after the entry into force of the regulation."
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The Verge: "We spoke with Huffman for nearly 30 minutes about the platform’s API changes and ongoing user protests."
www.theverge.com Reddit CEO Steve Huffman isn’t backing down: our full interview“The blackouts are not representative of the greater Reddit community.”
>Reddit is fighting for its soul. Many users are in revolt over API pricing changes that will shut down some of the most popular third-party Reddit apps, and they’re furious at CEO Steve Huffman after last week’s AMA that made it clear the platform wouldn’t budge. Huffman has argued the changes are a business decision to force AI companies training on Reddit’s data to pony up, but they’re also wiping out some beloved Reddit apps, and thousands of subreddits have gone dark for days in protest.
>On Thursday, Reddit offered me an interview with Huffman (who goes by u/spez on Reddit). I’ve already published one story from my conversation about how Reddit was apparently never designed to support third-party apps. But here is a lightly edited transcript of the entire interview — which, at times, was contentious.
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9To5Google: Google Domains to discontinued, assets to be sold to Squarespace
9to5google.com Google Domains shutting down, assets sold and being migrated to SquarespaceGoogle Domains is "winding down following a transition period," with Squarespace taking over the business and assets...
>In an unexpected announcement today, Google Domains is “winding down following a transition period,” with Squarespace taking over the business and assets.
>Squarespace announced today that it “entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement with Google, whereby Squarespace will acquire the assets associated with the Google Domains business.” This includes “approximately 10 million domains hosted on Google Domains spread across millions of customers.”
>Google cited “efforts to sharpen our focus” in selling the Google Domains registrar business, which launched in 2014 as a big proponent of HTTPS and top-level domains (TLDs) as of late. The service exited beta in 2022.
>This makes sense in the context of Google trying to be more efficient with resources and is at least better than shutting down the service without a guided migration path.
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Defector: "We are living through the end of the useful internet."
defector.com The Last Page Of The Internet | DefectorGradually over the last decade, Reddit went from merely embarrassing but occasionally amusing, to actively harmful, to—mainly by accident—essential. As the platform that swallowed niche message boards, it became home to numerous small communities of surprisingly helpful enthusiasts, and grew into a ...
> Gradually over the last decade, Reddit went from merely embarrassing but occasionally amusing, to actively harmful, to—mainly by accident—essential. As the platform that swallowed niche message boards, it became home to numerous small communities of surprisingly helpful enthusiasts, and grew into a repository of arcane knowledge about, and instantly available first-hand expertise on, a staggering number of topics, from the demographically predictable to the somewhat more surprising. And now that is all set to come to an ignominious, self-inflicted end.
> The internet’s best resources are almost universally volunteer run and donation based, like Wikipedia and The Internet Archive. Every time a great resource is accidentally created by a for-profit company, it is eventually destroyed, like Flickr and Google Reader. Reddit could be what Usenet was supposed to be, a hub of internet-wide discussion on every topic imaginable, if it wasn’t also a private company forced to come up with a credible plan to make hosting discussions sound in any way like a profitable venture.
> We are living through the end of the useful internet. The future is informed discussion behind locked doors, in Discords and private fora, with the public-facing web increasingly filled with detritus generated by LLMs, bearing only a stylistic resemblance to useful information. Finding unbiased and independent product reviews, expert tech support, and all manner of helpful advice will now resemble the process by which one now searches for illegal sports streams or pirated journal articles. The decades of real human conversation hosted at places like Reddit will prove useful training material for the mindless bots and deceptive marketers that replace it.
Found via Twitter: https://twitter.com/DefectorMedia/status/1668017737895911425
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WSJ: Instant Brands kitchen appliances company files for bankruptcy, after sales decline over the last two years
> Instant Brands, the maker of kitchen appliances known for its Instant Pot cooker, filed for bankruptcy Monday after succumbing to financial headwinds made worse as consumers slowed their discretionary spending to cope with inflation.
> The Illinois-based home appliance maker filed for chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, listing more than $500 million in both assets and liabilities. Private-equity firm Cornell Capital bought the company in 2019 and combined it with Corelle Brands, another kitchenware company.
> The company’s net sales decreased 21.9% in the first quarter this year compared with the same period in 2022, the seventh consecutive quarter of declining year-over-year sales, S&P Global said in a ratings downgrade of Instant Brands last week. The company ended March with roughly $95 million in liquidity and the business hasn’t been generating cash, according to the ratings report.
> Instant Brands was founded in 2009 by Robert Wang, Yi Quin and three other partners in Canada before it was sold to Cornell Capital a decade later.
Original link (paywalled): https://www.wsj.com/articles/instant-pots-slower-sales-tip-gadget-maker-into-bankruptcy-1ef2c7d1
Found via Twitter: https://twitter.com/tomgara/status/1668611912458813444
> It's the pinnacle of private equity brain to take Instant Pot, one of the the simplest, most no-drama businesses of all time, and somehow turn it into a $500 million bankruptcy
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Vice: Iran's military unveils what it calls quantum processing technology. It appears to be an ordinary SoC.
www.vice.com Iran Unveils 'Quantum' Device That Anyone Can Buy for $589 on AmazonWhat Iran's military called “the first product of the quantum processing algorithm” of the Naval university appears to be a stock development board.
> Last week, Iran’s military unveiled what it called “the first product of the quantum processing algorithm” of the Imam Khomeini Naval University of Nowshahr. During a ceremony at the university, the Islamic Republic’s military revealed a bit of electronics sealed under glass. It appeared to be a common development board, available widely online for around $600.
> According to multiple state-linked news agencies in Iran, the computer will help Iran detect disturbances on the surface of water using algorithms. Iranian Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari showed off the board during the ceremony and spoke of Iran’s recent breakthroughs in the world of quantum technology.
> The touted quantum device appears to be a development board manufactured by a company called Diligent. The brand “ZedBoard” appears clearly in pictures. According to the company’s website, the ZedBoard has everything the beginning developer needs to get started working in Android, Linux, and Windows. It does not appear to come with any of the advanced qubits that make up a quantum computer, and suggested uses include "video processing, reconfigurable computing, motor control, software acceleration," among others.
> It’s impossible to know if Iran has figured out how to use off-the-shelf dev boards to make quantum algorithms, but it’s not likely. True quantum devices are experimental pieces of equipment that don't typically resemble circuit boards of the kind you'd find in a home desktop, although researchers have reported being able to simulate some quantum processes on classical computers. Even if Iran is merely claiming that the device was manufactured with the help of quantum algorithms, they may not have been needed—the device is still a ZedBoard that anyone can buy, without any visible modifications.
> This isn’t the first time Iran has shown off tech with a less than credible pedigree. In 2020, the Iranian Army revealed a device it claimed could detect COVID and AIDS. It appeared to be similar to another device that was previously sold as a bomb detector.
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TechCrunch: "Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMA"
techcrunch.com Reddit CEO doubles down on attack on Apollo developer in drama-filled AMAReddit’s unpopular decision to revise its API pricing in a move that’s forcing third-party apps out of business has taken a weird turn. In an AMA hosted today by Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman, aka u/spez on the internet forum site, the exec doubled down on accusations against the developer...
Link to the Reddit AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/145bram/addressing_the_community_about_changes_to_our_api/
> Reddit’s unpopular decision to revise its API pricing in a move that’s forcing third-party apps out of business has taken a weird turn. In an AMA hosted today by Reddit co-founder and CEO Steve Huffman, aka u/spez on the internet forum site, the exec doubled down on accusations against the developer behind the well-liked third-party app Apollo, which the company had previously accused of operating inefficiently and not being a good “API” user.
> Despite community backlash — which includes a site-wide protest from thousands of communities known as subreddits — Huffman’s AMA confirmed the company has no plans to revise its coming API changes. What’s more, Huffman continued his accusations against Apollo, calling out the developer, Christian Selig’s, “behavior and communications” as being “all over the place” and saying he couldn’t see Reddit working with the developer further.
> Other third-party apps are also closing down, including Sync, RIF and Reddplant, to name a few.
> But Huffman seemingly has an ax to grind with Selig in particular, first accusing the developer of extortion, per Selig’s extensive post on the situation between himself and Reddit.
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"Tech hype debunked" - Dan Olson (of Folding Ideas) on Factually! podcast with Adam Conover
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
> From the Metaverse to AI, tech giants continue lure us with false promises of "the next big thing." This week, Adam is joined by Dan Olson, a perceptive YouTube personality known for deconstructing narratives and the modern tech landscape. Together, they unravel the reasons behind this technological hype cycle and discuss potential pathways to break free from its grip. Find Dan's channel at Folding Ideas.
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Bing search misleadingly labels advertisements as AI interaction
www.theverge.com Microsoft has no shame: Bing spit on my ‘Chrome’ search with a fake AI answerI typed Chrome — and got an Edge ad written by “AI”
> Microsoft just gave itself a full-screen ad in search results by faking an AI interaction. This “search result” is juicing Microsoft’s own product instead of respecting its users’ intent.
> We recently worried out loud whether Google’s new Search Generative Experience would prioritize ads over actual answers, but it looks like we won’t have to wait to see how brazen these companies can get. Unless there’s strong pushback, I would expect the ads to win whenever it’s profitable or convenient.
Spotted via https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/3259
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Google search results have been presenting generative AI images in a way that suggests they were examples of a real artist's work
futurism.com Google's Top Result for "Johannes Vermeer" Is an AI-Generated Version of "Girl With a Pearl Earring"Google "Johannes Vermeer," and you'll be met with an AI-generated rendition of "Girl with a Pearl Earring" as the top search result.
> For the second time in just one month, Google's search engine has allowed an AI-generated fake of a famous artist's work to rise to the top of its search results.
> Earlier this May, we reported that when Google users searched for the iconic American realist artist "Edward Hopper," the search engine's top result was an AI-generated knockoff in the style of the American painter. Google fixed the issue — but not before the phony Hopper had become the featured image in its overview of the artist and his work.
> Now, just a few weeks later, it's happened again with a different artist. Google the Dutch baroque master "Johannes Vermeer" — no mention of AI, no mention of a specific painting — and you'll be met with an AI-produced rendition of the painter's classic "Girl with a Pearl Earring" as the top result.
> And yes, just like the fake Hopper, the AI-generated Vermeer — first spotted by a sharp-eyed art fan — currently sits as the featured image in the Google overview. Here's what it looks like:
- arstechnica.com Reddit’s plan to kill third-party apps sparks widespread protests
Users revolt over Reddit's API pricing as third-party apps face shutdowns.
Crossposted from https://lemmy.ml/post/1157495?scrollToComments=true
- www.theverge.com Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps
Moderators say third-party apps are essential for their work.
cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/604386
> Glad to see so many popular subreddits hopping on board. I honestly don't know what kind of actual impact it will have.
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Demystifying some of the math and jargon surrounding generative AI large language models
Here's a blog post that I found interesting:
> I find this literature irritating and opaque. This is at least somewhat because I do not yet understand it well, and there's too much of it. But clearly I need to wrap my head around it, before I become technically obsolete. My scare quotes in the title of these notes thus derive in part from jealousy and fear. But only in part: the names here seem like proof positive that McDermott's critique of "wishful mnemonics" needs to be re-introduced into the basic curriculum of AI.