Signal has announced strong opposition to a new proposal, stating they would rather leave the EU market than compromise their privacy standards.
The company argues that the proposal would force them to choose between compliance and user privacy, which they liken to "surveillance wine in safety bottles."
This stance highlights Signal's commitment to user privacy and the potential impact of regulatory changes on tech companies operating in the EU.
Signal plans to exit the EU market to uphold its privacy standards in response to a draft regulation mandating client-side scanning of encrypted content.
Critics argue the regulation infringes on privacy rights, is ineffective against criminals, and could lead to mass surveillance and data misuse, highlighting the tension between child safety and privacy.
The debate emphasizes the challenges of secure encryption, the potential misuse of surveillance laws, and the ethical implications of extensive data processing, stressing the need for public awareness and mobilization against invasive laws.
The author shares an experience of refurbishing a 25-year-old leather sofa by replacing its cushions through a local business, Luxcious, for $1100 CAD, instead of buying a new, low-quality sofa.
The piece criticizes modern capitalism for promoting disposable, cheaply made furniture and highlights the importance of supporting small, family-run businesses for a more sustainable and humane economic model.
The author advocates for policies that support such businesses, emphasizing their role in creating a more resilient and pleasant economy, while also addressing broader issues like globalization and environmental concerns.
The discussion contrasts small businesses' personalized, high-quality service with big brands' profit-driven, lower-quality products and planned obsolescence, which undermine repair culture and consumer convenience.
It critiques large companies for misleading consumers, poor customer service, and prioritizing growth over quality, while small businesses offer sustainable, adaptable solutions but face scalability challenges.
The conversation suggests reforms like banning misleading ads, implementing carbon taxes, and improving transparency to enhance product quality and consumer trust.
Cambridge researchers have created a controllable prosthetic "Third Thumb" that enhances hand functionality, tested on 596 participants at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition.
The device, controlled by foot pressure sensors, was user-friendly, with 98% of participants successfully manipulating objects within the first minute.
The study emphasizes the importance of inclusivity in technology design, showing performance varied with age but not with gender or handedness, highlighting the potential of motor augmentation to improve life quality.
The discussion highlights the brain's adaptability in controlling extra or altered body parts, using personal anecdotes and comparisons to illustrate this point.
It debunks the misconception that skill proficiency is conscious, emphasizing subconscious mastery in activities like sports and the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) in coaching.
Topics include human adaptation, extended cognition, technological innovations like haptic devices, ethical concerns with augmentation technologies, and the potential evolutionary implications of humans having extra body parts.
David Thompson's blog post reviews the Spring Lisp Game Jam 2024, which saw a record 48 game submissions, with Guile leading in popularity due to the Hoot Scheme-to-WebAssembly compiler.
Thompson identifies two patterns for using Lisp in game development: as "icing" (a scripting layer) and as "cake" (writing most of the software in Lisp), highlighting various Lisp-based game development stacks.
The post emphasizes the benefits of using Lisp for hackability and memory safety, advocating for continued innovation in Lisp, especially in game development, and expressing a preference for Lisp over Rust.
The discussion highlights the s7 Scheme interpreter's advantages, including ease of embedding, BSD licensing, and suitability for WebAssembly and music pedagogy.
Users compare s7 with other languages like Fennel for mobile development and Janet for gaming, while also discussing Lisp's performance on modern CPUs and game development challenges.
Nostalgic references to classic games and a playful idea to combine Snake and Tetris into "SnakeTris" add a light-hearted touch to the conversation.
Professor Juan Manuel Corchado, the new rector of Salamanca University, has been exposed for manipulating academic citations to falsely enhance his scientific standing.
Internal messages revealed Corchado coerced collaborators to frequently cite his work, leading to high rankings on platforms like Google Scholar.
Publishers are investigating or retracting his works, and the Spanish Research Ethics Committee is scrutinizing his actions, highlighting the need for reforms in academic evaluation to prevent such unethical practices.
The new head of a historic university is accused of organizing a citation cartel, where academics excessively cite each other's work to boost metrics, highlighting systemic issues in academic culture.
The discussion emphasizes the need for diverse efforts like journalism, activism, and political movements to enact large-scale social and political change, rather than relying solely on algorithmic solutions.
The debate underscores the complexity of academic misconduct, the impracticality of verifying all citations, and the need for improved metrics, while also questioning the necessity of college degrees for many professions.
The FMP Notebooks are educational resources designed to complement the "Fundamentals of Music Processing" (FMP) textbook, offering detailed explanations and Python code examples for Music Information Retrieval (MIR) techniques.
Organized into chapters, the notebooks cover topics such as Fourier analysis, music synchronization, and chord recognition, and are available in both static HTML and interactive Jupyter Notebook formats.
Maintained by Meinard Müller, the project is continuously updated and licensed under Creative Commons and MIT licenses, making it suitable for students, teachers, and researchers in music processing.
The discussion provides a curated list of resources for learning audio digital signal processing (DSP) and machine learning (ML), particularly in the context of music but also applicable to speech and environmental sounds.
Key resources include Python notebooks from audiolabs-erlangen.de, Allen Downey's "Think DSP," and repositories like Awesome-Audio-DSP, along with tools such as SonicPi, PyGame, Godot game engine, BespokeSynth, and Pure Data (PD).
Educational materials like "The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music" and Eli Fieldsteel's SuperCollider tutorials are recommended for both beginners and experienced programmers interested in audio and sound generation.
The article by Allen Pike dispels the myth that Large Language Models (LLMs) are only "trained on the internet," highlighting that newer models use custom, non-public data.
Newer LLMs incorporate annotated data, human feedback, usage data, and synthetic data, often generated by larger LLMs, to enhance their capabilities.
Companies are investing in specialized training data through services like Scale.ai, which employs experts to create high-quality, domain-specific content, promising future LLMs that surpass the limitations of earlier models like GPT-3.
The discussion examines the evolution and performance of large language models (LLMs) such as Phi-3, Opus, and GPT-4, noting advancements beyond mere internet training.
Users debate the strengths and weaknesses of these models, with Opus favored for creative tasks and GPT-4 preferred for technical queries, while also raising concerns about training data integrity and the need for standardized evaluation metrics.
The conversation highlights the ethical implications of using expert-produced data, the financial and practical aspects of AI development, and the limitations of LLMs in understanding and generating code.
The author recounts their positive experience at PyCon US 2024 in Pittsburgh, praising keynotes by K. Jay Miller and Simon Willison, technical sessions, and social activities like the PyLadies Auction.
Key technical insights from the conference include discussions on Large Language Models (LLMs), Python's Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), and performance improvements in Python 3.13.
The author highlights the vibrant and supportive Python community, the well-organized event led by Mariatta, and expresses enthusiasm for future conferences, including PyCon US 2026 in Long Beach.
PyCon US 2024 emphasized extensive networking opportunities and the welcoming nature of the Python community, despite the event's size and social demands.
Key discussions included Python 3.11's speed improvements, no-GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) Python development, and the availability of PyCon talks on YouTube.
The mask mandate at PyCon sparked debate, with some questioning its necessity post-pandemic, while others highlighted ongoing risks like "long COVID." Financial aid and travel grants were available, though visa issues were noted for international attendees.
The author undertakes a nostalgic project to restore an iconic '80s Macintosh computer, originally envisioned by Jef Raskin and transformed by Steve Jobs into a user-friendly, graphically advanced machine.
The restoration involved significant challenges, including troubleshooting hardware issues, replacing faulty memory chips, and addressing the yellowed plastic casing using the Retrobright method, which ultimately led to painting the plastics.
The project successfully culminated in making the Macintosh look almost new, coinciding with its 40th anniversary, highlighting the enduring appeal and historical significance of the vintage computer.
A new open-source, stateful load balancer has been developed specifically for llama.cpp, featuring a reverse proxy and concurrent request management by dividing the context window into smaller "slots."
The load balancer currently runs on a single in-memory instance, with future plans for high availability and distributed state storage.
It supports CPU, GPU, and mixed-mode operations, with queuing functionality in progress and feedback encouraged for further improvements.
The article describes a method to overclock AMD Athlon and Duron CPUs using a "Pencil Trick," which involves reconnecting the L1 bridges with graphite from a mechanical pencil.
This technique allows the CPU clock multiplier to be adjusted for better performance, as Athlon and Duron CPUs do not respond well to front side bus (FSB) adjustments, unlike Intel CPUs.
The process is straightforward, safe, and requires minimal tools, making it accessible to those with limited technical skills, though proper cooling and voltage adjustments are recommended for system stability.
The discussion centers on early 2000s computer hardware, particularly overclocking CPUs like the Celeron 300A and AMD Duron, and the DIY spirit involved in enhancing performance.
Users share nostalgic experiences of BIOS tweaks, hardware hacks, and debate the ethics of chip binning and the impact of locked multipliers on overclocking.
The conversation also highlights the shift in modern CPUs towards pre-optimized features, reducing the need and impact of manual overclocking.
The article discusses the potential for artificial intelligence (A.I.) to replace high-level executive roles, such as CEOs, due to its advanced capabilities in market analysis, trend discernment, and decision-making.
Companies are experimenting with A.I. leadership to cut costs and improve efficiency, with some already appointing A.I. as CEOs, though human oversight remains crucial for accountability and strategic thinking.
The shift towards A.I. leadership is gaining acceptance, driven by the pandemic's normalization of remote work and technology-mediated communication.
The discussion on GPT-4's potential for business advice shows mixed opinions, with some valuing it for non-technical guidance but concerns about its reliability due to incorrect information.
AI, including Large Language Models (LLMs), is seen as useful for basic information and practical tasks but often unreliable in specialized fields, requiring user expertise for validation.
The debate highlights AI's limitations in accuracy-dependent fields and its inability to replace nuanced, context-dependent decision-making roles like CEOs, emphasizing its role in augmenting rather than fully replacing human expertise.
"gcss" is a tool for writing CSS in Pure Go, removing the need for JavaScript builders, preprocessors, and other dependencies.
It aims to simplify CSS management by handling it server-side, keeping CSS clean and maintainable without excessive classes and variables.
Installation is straightforward via go get, and usage involves defining styles in Go and serving them through HTTP handlers, with future plans to add more CSS properties and mixins.
A Hacker News discussion examines a project that allows writing CSS in pure Go, eliciting mixed reactions from the community.
Enthusiasts see potential for integration with languages like Haskell, while critics highlight the added complexity and limitations of CSS.
The conversation also touches on CSS's lack of class composition, the use of third-party tools, and debates on HTML practices and utility-first frameworks like Tailwind.
The author built a dedicated SPI flash reader using a Teensy microcontroller and an 8-SOIC chip-clip to efficiently read/write multi-megabit ROMs, addressing the speed limitations of the Dangerous Prototypes buspirate.
The setup includes detailed pinout information for 8-pin and 16-pin chips, instructions for handling power cycling issues, and connects as a serial device with simple commands for various operations like reading chip IDs and dumping memory.
The author also discusses probing MacBook debug ports and provides resources for reverse engineering ROMs, with sources available on Bitbucket and references to their Thunderstrike talk at 31c3.
The discussion highlights the mixed experiences of using Pomona SOIC test clips for in-circuit SPI flashing of laptops, especially for Coreboot.
Users reported issues with pin deformation and poor contact, while some had better success with simpler or genuine Pomona clips.
Additional insights included the risk of damaging onboard components when powering chips and alternative methods for attaching wires without soldering, such as Tag Connects, PCBite probes, and pogo pins.
The paper "Copy-and-Patch Compilation" by Haoran Xu and Fredrik Kjolstad introduces a new compilation technique that rapidly compiles high-level languages and bytecode into binary code using pre-assembled code variants called stencils.
Demonstrated through two compilers, one for a high-level C-like language and another for WebAssembly, the technique shows negligible compilation cost and significantly outperforms existing compilers like LLVM and Google's Liftoff in speed and efficiency.
The method has potential applications in enhancing runtime compilation for database systems and web browsers, indicating a significant advancement in compilation technology.
The "Copy-and-patch" technique is a fast compilation method that generates efficient code by copying object code and patching it with runtime values.
This method is being adopted in projects like Python's new JIT (Just-In-Time) compiler and the Deegen toolkit for LuaJIT, indicating its growing popularity.
The technique involves making code writable for transformations and then executable, adhering to security rules like W^X (Write XOR Execute), and is a topic of active discussion and implementation in the developer community.