Teenage Engineering has released a new product called the EP-1320: Medieval, a quirky, medieval-themed sampler.
The EP-1320 features 128MB memory, including 96MB ROM sounds and 32MB user sample memory, compared to the EP-133 K.O. II's 64MB memory.
The product has generated significant interest due to its unique design and aesthetic, appealing to collectors, audiophiles, and those seeking novel musical experiences.
The Kubernetes PersistentVolume (PV) controller code is intentionally verbose and follows a "space shuttle style" to ensure every condition is accounted for, similar to NASA's coding practices.
This design emphasizes the bi-directional relationship between PersistentVolumes (PVs) and PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs), which is crucial for maintaining consistent behavior in a transactionless system.
The code includes detailed comments and explicit branches to help future maintainers understand the complexities of the binding behavior, ensuring robust and reliable volume management.
Discussion centers around the explicitness and verbosity of code in the Kubernetes project, written in Go, and whether such style is beneficial or excessive.
Some developers argue that explicit code with detailed comments aids in understanding and maintaining the code, especially for future developers who may lack context.
Others counter that comments can become outdated and suggest that tests are a more reliable way to document and enforce intended functionality.
The Oroville Dam spillway damage in 2017 highlighted the importance of effective drainage systems to prevent structural damage from water pressure.
French drains, named after Henry French, are subsurface systems using gravel-filled trenches and perforated pipes to manage water flow and prevent soil erosion.
Properly designed French drains use filters like geotextile fabric to prevent clogging and are crucial for structures such as dams, retaining walls, and agricultural fields.
The showcase highlights the creation of stunning visualizations for homes and offices, including interactive spaces, 3D plans, images, video tours, and AI interior design.
The fast 3D technology is compatible with most mobile and VR devices, enhancing accessibility and user experience.
A "Try It Out" feature is coming soon, indicating upcoming interactive opportunities for users to engage with the technology.
Roometron is a web app developed over nearly 5 years that converts floor plans into 3D apartment models.
Users have provided feedback on issues such as lack of PDF support, multiple room handling, and checkout problems, along with suggestions for UI improvements and new features like WASD support.
The app aims to be a user-friendly, VR-ready tool for real estate and interior design, offering a cost-effective alternative to services like Matterport, and has received positive feedback for its smooth demo and potential applications.
In April 2024, the Phylum Research Team identified a surge of spam packages in npm linked to the Tea protocol, which rewards developers in cryptocurrency for open-source contributions.
Approximately 70% of new npm packages published between February and August 2024 were identified as Tea-related spam, posing risks such as skewed AI training and obscured malicious packages.
Despite efforts by the Tea protocol and npm to address the issue, the rate of spam package publication remains high, prompting ongoing research and mitigation efforts by Phylum.
70% of new NPM packages in the last six months were identified as spam, causing significant strain on the ecosystem.
A flawed incentive model in the Tea protocol is encouraging developers to flood NPM with spam packages.
Users recommend that NPM enhance its checks and user interface, and consider removing spam packages and banning spam accounts to maintain a healthy ecosystem.
Y Combinator (YC) has opened applications for its Fall 2024 batch, with a deadline of 8/27 at 9 PM PT.
The Fall 2024 batch starts on 9/29 in San Francisco, offering a $500,000 investment and over $1M in exclusive credits from partners like Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and AWS.
This batch aims to meet the growing opportunities for startups, with fewer companies but similar terms to other batches; Winter 2025 applications will open in early October.
Y Combinator (YC) is accepting applications for its inaugural Fall batch, with a deadline of August 27.
Discussions revolve around whether YC only supports already-successful companies or genuinely boosts success chances through its network, venture capital, and educational opportunities.
Users shared mixed experiences with YC and debated the merits of applying, including the potential use of AI-generated applications and the challenges of limited application time.
Uber tests its payment systems directly in production to catch unknown issues quickly, a method that contrasts with the more common use of staging environments.
This approach involves incremental rollouts in small, representative regions and uses tools like Cerberus and Deputy for transparency and monitoring.
Uber's strategy focuses on resilience and quick rollbacks, ensuring high-quality software by addressing real-world issues, as demonstrated by their successful GooglePay rollout in Portugal.
Uber is testing payments in production using real cards and API endpoints because testing APIs are often inadequate for catching certain bugs.
This practice, though common, involves using corporate cards and faces legal and procedural challenges, highlighting the need for careful management to avoid fraud and compliance issues.
While companies like Stripe provide robust sandbox environments, transitioning to production can still present unforeseen issues, making real-world testing crucial for accuracy.
BudgetFlow is a new app in beta that helps users manage their budgets visually using flow charts, specifically sankey diagrams.
Features include Smart Pockets for automatic cash transfers, and Shared Budgets for collaboration, making it easier to manage finances with others.
The app allows users to create and visualize budgets on various time scales (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) and categorize expenses and income sources.
BudgetFlow uses interactive Sankey diagrams for budget planning, which users appreciate for visualizing money flow dependencies.
Users desire more detailed and customizable visualizations, automatic data feeds from bank accounts, AI-based expense categorization, and alerts for significant changes.
The creator plans to add features like budget development timelines, future expense planning, and a retirement calculator, but progress is slow due to time constraints.
Carvings at Gobekli Tepe, dating back to 9530 BCE, may represent the oldest known calendar, potentially used to track seasons by observing animal behaviors.
Gobekli Tepe is older than Stonehenge and is part of a broader record of early architecture, indicating complex early human civilization and migration.
Discussions also include ancient art like Venus figurines and various theories about early human societies, with references to YouTube channels and books for further exploration.
The MNT Pocket Reform is a 7-inch portable Linux system with open hardware, designed for hackers and tinkerers.
It features a solid construction, ortholinear keyboard, responsive trackball, and various ports, including USB-C and micro-HDMI.
Despite some issues like a problematic NVMe SSD and corrupted uboot, the open-source community has been supportive, making it a promising device for further exploration.
DigiCert identified a DNS-based validation issue with CNAME records lacking an underscore prefix, potentially leading to certificate mis-issuance, affecting 83,267 certificates and 6,807 subscribers.
The root cause was a system update error due to siloed teams and insufficient compliance checks; immediate actions included revoking all affected certificates and planning to open-source their domain validation system.
As a result, DigiCert's compliance head resigned, and a task force was established to enhance technical compliance controls.
Jeremy Rowley has resigned from DigiCert after a mass-revocation incident, sparking debate on accountability and the role of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
Critics argue that Rowley ignored engineering consultations and warnings from a researcher, while others believe the issue was systemic rather than individual.
The incident underscores the importance of team collaboration and proper processes in cybersecurity management.
The post details Ryan Miceli's journey in hacking the original Xbox using game save exploits, focusing on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 to achieve code execution through buffer overflows.
It describes the progression from local exploits to remote code execution and the development of the first software-only exploit for the Xbox 360, showcasing the impact of a single bug across multiple platforms.
The post highlights the educational value of these exploits, with full source code and patched game save files available on GitHub, emphasizing the importance of understanding older security vulnerabilities.
The habibi key's public key modulus is only slightly different from Microsoft's RSA key, but the exploit does not change the exponent from 65537, requiring more analysis.
The exploit affects THUG PRO, a mod still played today, which has not been fixed in over 10 years, making it risky to use.
Discussions include technical details about string copying functions (strcpy vs. strncpy) and their safety implications, with some preferring strncpy despite its potential issues.
AMD is launching the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X, which show significant performance improvements, especially in single-threaded Linux workloads.
These Zen 5 processors outperform Intel's 14th Gen Core CPUs across nearly 400 benchmarks and are competitively priced at $279 USD and $359 USD, respectively.
Despite minor issues like the lack of mainlined RAPL/PowerCap sysfs monitoring and delayed compiler support in LLVM/Clang, the overall Linux performance and support for the Ryzen 9000 series are excellent.
AMD's Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X CPUs show excellent performance on Linux, with benchmarks indicating higher multi-threaded performance and lower power consumption compared to previous models.
Zen 5 CPUs match or exceed Intel's Raptor Lake in single-threaded benchmarks and excel in floating-point computations, cryptography, and machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI), making them ideal for professional use.
Upgrading from Zen 4 to Zen 5 may not be necessary for gamers, but Zen 5's energy efficiency and support for AVX-512 instructions offer significant benefits for specific applications and professional environments.
Jake Seliger's life ended as his daughter's began, a poignant story shared by his wife Bess on her Substack.
The post has resonated deeply with readers, prompting reflections on health, life, and the impact of personal writing.
Community members have expressed condolences and shared their own experiences, highlighting the emotional connection and influence of Jake's and his family's writings.
Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) is a phenomenon where individuals feel compelled to buy multiple items out of fear they might become unavailable or break.
This behavior spans various hobbies, such as photography and music, and can even extend to everyday items like shoes, often leading to regret when items become obsolete.
GAS is driven by fear of missing out, the allure of new gear, and the belief that better equipment will enhance skills, but it often results in clutter and financial strain without significantly improving abilities.