The author shares their experience of depression and burnout, highlighting a significant decline in cognitive abilities such as learning, problem-solving, and memory.
They emphasize the importance of taking care of one's mental health to prevent similar issues.
Burnout significantly impairs cognitive functions, making everyday tasks challenging and affecting learning and problem-solving abilities.
Establishing a clear work-life balance and incorporating learning into work hours are essential strategies to mitigate burnout.
Recovery from burnout involves professional help, physical health maintenance, and engaging with supportive communities, emphasizing the importance of patience and self-care.
A 2007 Sandia National Laboratories slide deck featured a graphic resembling a thermonuclear weapon cutaway as the logo for the SIERRA software framework, raising questions about its origin.
The graphic, appearing in multiple presentations, depicts a reentry vehicle with components similar to a thermonuclear warhead, yet Sandia deemed it unclassified.
Theories suggest it could be a deliberate unclassified shape or a mistake, with the Department of Energy (DOE) typically avoiding detailed weapon designs to prevent proliferation and political scandal.
Sandia National Laboratories released an image that appears to be a detailed schematic of a thermonuclear weapon, sparking debate about its accuracy and implications.
The image's level of detail, including components like the primary, secondary, and radiation case, is unusual and may violate Department of Energy (DoE) guidelines, which typically restrict such depictions to simple shapes.
The release is notable not for the technical information it provides but for potentially representing a significant shift in US government procedures regarding the handling and release of restricted nuclear data.
Wealthfolio is a desktop-based investment tracker that stores financial data locally, removing the need for spreadsheets, subscriptions, and cloud services.
It aggregates investment and savings accounts, allowing users to import statements from brokers or banks, track account performance, and monitor dividends and interest income.
Users can set savings goals with clear progress tracking, providing a secure and straightforward way to manage finances.
Wealthfolio is a private, open-source investment tracker designed to avoid SaaS subscriptions and privacy issues, with no plans for monetization.
Users highlight the need for seamless integration with financial institutions to replace cumbersome manual CSV imports and suggest adding example datasets and listing supported brokers/banks.
There is a preference for local data storage over cloud-based solutions, and concerns about the lack of automatic importing and the challenges of maintaining accurate data manually.
Clojure 1.12.0 introduces several new features and updates, including ending Java 8 compatibility and adding support for Java 21.
Key updates include a fix for CVE-2024-22871, improved control over Java serialization identifiers, and updated dependencies for spec.alpha and core.specs.alpha.
New features include interactive library addition, out-of-process tool function invocation, better process management, and enhanced Java interop capabilities such as using Java methods as functions and improved support for Java Streams.
Clojure 1.12.0 has been released, featuring add-libs, which simplifies sharing runnable code snippets and demoing Java libraries without boilerplate.
The release includes functional interface changes, reducing the need for utility macros, and is compared to Groovy's @Grab annotation and Jbang's dependency feature.
Despite concerns about the ecosystem's size, Clojure remains stable, reliable, and backward-compatible, with a community that values simplicity and deliberate development.
Stanford University researchers have developed a technique using a common food dye, tartrazine, to make skin, muscle, and connective tissues temporarily transparent in living animals.
This method could revolutionize medical applications by allowing non-invasive visualization of internal organs, blood vessels, injuries, veins, and tumors.
The process is reversible, with tissues regaining their normal appearance after the dye is washed off, although it has not yet been tested on humans.
Researchers discovered that the food dye tartrazine can make skin and muscle temporarily transparent in mice, revealing internal organs.
The procedure has not been tested on humans, raising safety concerns, particularly regarding injection.
The discovery has initiated discussions about potential applications and safety, with comparisons to fictional invisibility serums, but further research is necessary to understand its full potential and safety in humans.
The experiment involved grounding various food items to an AM radio tower and measuring parameters like SWR (Standing Wave Ratio), RF (Radio Frequency) power, and meat thermals.
Key findings included the hot dog producing noise and heating to 80°C, the pickle causing a plasma shockwave, and the bratwurst translating signals into German phrases.
Future tests are suggested to include a sound pressure level meter, better insulating rods, and a high-speed camera to capture plasma interactions.
Despite reaching two million users and 45 million exercise submissions, the platform is facing financial challenges and cannot afford to pay its team.
Erik, a key team member, is leaving due to financial constraints but will continue as a senior maintainer; repository management has been restructured with new GitHub teams for quality control.
The platform has 800 monthly donors covering server costs, and the founder is launching a new educational product in 2025 to teach coding fundamentals and support the platform's growth.
Exercism.org, with 2 million users, faces financial challenges despite its popularity, having no money in the bank.
Suggestions to cover costs include charging a small fee ($1/month or $10/year), though concerns exist about deterring students, especially in non-Western countries.
The platform currently relies on $7,500 in monthly donations for server costs, prompting discussions on shifting to a for-profit model or finding new revenue streams for sustainability.
Rust and Swift share many features, including functional elements, a strong type system, and LLVM-based compilation, but differ in their default levels of abstraction.
Swift's syntax and error handling are more familiar and convenient for developers used to C-like languages, while Rust offers more control and speed for systems programming.
Rust is ideal for low-level systems and embedded programming, whereas Swift is better suited for UI and server applications, with potential for increased overlap in the future.
The post discusses the comparison between Swift and Rust, highlighting Swift as a more convenient alternative to Rust.
It emphasizes that Rust is notable for bringing non-Garbage Collected (GC) automatic memory management to the mainstream, a feature that has sparked significant interest and debate among developers.
The discussion also touches on the evolution of programming languages, noting a shift from Smalltalk-derived languages (e.g., Ruby, Python) to ML family languages (e.g., Rust, Scala, Swift).
Valve’s Half-Life, released 26 years ago, is still available on Amazon, highlighting its enduring popularity.
Monica Harrington, who played a crucial yet often overlooked role in Valve's early success, shares her story of marketing and business development for the company.
Despite initial challenges, Half-Life launched to critical acclaim, establishing Valve as a major player in the gaming industry.
The article provides an insider's perspective on the early days of Valve, highlighting the contributions of Monica Harrington, who played a significant role in the company's success but was largely unrecognized.
It reveals how Microsoft allowed her to moonlight for Valve, a competitor, which is uncommon in today's strict IP ownership environment in major tech companies.
The story underscores the challenges faced by women in tech, including being erased from history despite significant contributions, and sheds light on the dynamics and decisions that shaped Valve's early growth and eventual success.
Reflection 70B, an open-source model, has been introduced, utilizing Reflection-Tuning to allow large language models (LLMs) to correct their own errors.
A more advanced model, Reflection 405B, is anticipated to be released next week, expected to be the best in the world.
Both models are developed in collaboration with GlaiveAI, indicating significant advancements in AI self-improvement capabilities.
Reflection 70B, an open-source model, is noted for its performance, appearing to be a fine-tuned version of Llama-3.1 using a "reflection" technique.
The reflection technique involves the model drafting an initial response and then revising it, allowing for error correction and improved answers, sometimes outperforming models like GPT-4o and Claude.
There is ongoing debate about whether other models could achieve similar improvements if they adopted the reflection technique, and the model's effectiveness in multi-turn conversations and various benchmarks is still being evaluated.
John Graham-Cumming's post about Steve Ballmer's binary search interview question has sparked interest on Hacker News.
Ballmer argues the game has a negative expected value, but John counters that with random number selection, the expected value is positive: $0.20.
Using mathematical optimization and scipy’s solver, a mixed strategy can be devised to ensure a positive expected value, making the game potentially profitable.
The game has a positive expected value regardless of Ballmer's strategy, but Ballmer argues that expected value isn't a good measure if survival is a priority due to tail risk.
The St. Petersburg paradox is used to illustrate that expected value isn't always a reliable measure of risk.
The game involves guessing a number between 1 and 100, with the potential for adversarial behavior, and a mixed strategy can ensure a positive expected value.
Many tech companies don't pay engineers enough to retain them, leading to high turnover as developers seek better pay elsewhere.
Ethena is addressing this issue by creating career paths and compensation structures that reward engineers generously based on their impact, aiming to encourage long tenures.
Ethena's approach includes a compensation formula considering title, tenure, and performance, making it predictable and public to maintain talent density and reward impactful engineers.
Engineers often leave tech companies due to management frustrations rather than insufficient pay, challenging the assumption that money is the primary motivator.
The debate includes views on financial independence, job satisfaction, and the impact of management, with some arguing that better management and fair compensation are key to retaining talent.
Perspectives vary on whether doubling income significantly changes quality of life, highlighting the complexity of job satisfaction factors beyond just salary.
LwIP (Lightweight IP) is a popular TCP/IP stack designed for embedded systems with limited resources, such as tens of kilobytes of RAM and around 40 kilobytes of code ROM.
Alternatives to LwIP include NetXDuo, which is now MIT-licensed and supported by the Eclipse Foundation, and other stacks like Zephyr and SmolTCP.
LwIP is widely used in resource-constrained devices and integrates well with FreeRTOS, but it has been criticized for poor documentation and issues with vendor-specific ports and drivers.
Valentin Gosu announced the disabling of HTTP/2 Push on all platforms due to compatibility issues with major browsers like Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
Chrome disabled HTTP/2 Push in September 2022, recommending alternatives like rel="preload" and 103 Early hints, while Firefox faced web compatibility issues.
The feature will be turned off soon and is expected to be removed before the Extended Support Release (ESR) 140 next spring.
HTTP/2 Push is being phased out due to its inefficacy and complexity, despite initial support from Google.
The feature aimed to reduce latency by allowing servers to send resources proactively but faced challenges such as poor browser implementation and cache inefficiencies.
Alternatives like preload headers and 103 Early Hints have proven to be simpler and more effective, reflecting a trend towards practical, easily implemented solutions.
A study published in the journal Autism indicates that playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) helps autistic players improve social interactions.
Researchers found that D&D's structured environment and clear social rules boost confidence and foster a sense of belonging among autistic players.
The study, involving eight participants playing the Waterdeep: Dragonheist campaign online, suggests that D&D can act as a social lubricant, providing positive experiences and skills for autistic individuals.
A study indicates that playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) can aid autistic players in enhancing social interactions by externalizing emotions and building trust.
The structured environment of D&D offers a safe space for social practice, though some autistic individuals may find the game's rules and dynamics challenging.
The study had a small sample size, suggesting the need for further research to confirm these findings.