Despite being declared "dead" in 1992, Cobol has persisted and outlasted many fourth-generation programming languages (4GLs), demonstrating its resilience and continued relevance.
The Y2K problem played a significant role in reviving Cobol by creating a demand for programmers familiar with the language, highlighting its importance in legacy systems.
The narrative suggests caution in labeling programming languages as "dead," especially those with a substantial user base, as they may continue to have practical applications and influence.
COBOL, often deemed obsolete, remains essential for legacy systems in sectors like payroll and banking due to its integration with reliable mainframe systems.- Despite being designed to be human-readable, COBOL requires significant domain knowledge to accurately translate business processes into code.- The language's continued relevance is underscored by the need for programmers to maintain existing systems, especially with challenges like the 2038 problem on the horizon.
A new game has been developed that can be played discreetly without visuals or sound, focusing on strict timing for a challenging experience.
The developer is considering improvements based on user feedback, such as adding constant interval ticks, a menu return option, and a way to visualize or skip rhythms.
The game is currently available on iOS, with plans for future updates, including difficulty levels, new features, and a potential Android version.
Social media platforms often alter terms or introduce paid plans unexpectedly, as seen with Twitch's "Boost" program and OnlyFans' near-ban on adult content, posing risks for content creators.- The main advice is to avoid building a business solely on external platforms; instead, prioritize developing your own website, mailing list, and intellectual property.- Creators should use social media to gain followers but ensure they redirect them to their own platforms, maintaining control over their audience and content despite platform changes.
The phrase "Don't build your castle in other people's kingdoms" advises against relying entirely on large platforms for digital presence due to their control over access and potential for sudden rule changes.
It suggests creating independent spaces, such as a personal website or mailing list, to maintain control and direct audience connection.
This strategy minimizes dependency on external platforms and safeguards against unexpected changes that could affect business operations.
"Math from Three to Seven" by Alexander Zvonkin introduces the idea of mathematical circles for preschoolers, focusing on problem-solving rather than traditional rote learning.
The book, structured as a journal, shares Zvonkin's experiences in teaching complex math concepts to young children through playful methods, highlighting their unique cognitive abilities.
Zvonkin's varied success with different groups of children underscores the individuality of each child's learning process and the importance of nurturing a love for problem-solving.
The article reviews "Math from Three to Seven," focusing on maintaining children's interest in math as they age.
Commenters suggest engaging methods like using online resources (e.g., Khan Academy, 3Blue1Brown) and participating in math circles to foster interest.
The discussion includes the role of passion in learning math and considers cultural and educational influences, referencing the historical emphasis on math and science in Soviet education.
Many companies maintain open job postings during hiring freezes to project financial health to investors, despite not actively hiring.
This practice frustrates job seekers, as firms may ignore recommended CVs or conduct interviews without the intention to hire, leading to wasted time and misleading economic data.
Both startups and large firms engage in this behavior, using job postings to signal growth or maintain a candidate pool, negatively impacting job seekers' mental health and complicating the hiring process.
Cosmopolitan Libc's mutex library demonstrates superior performance in heavily contended scenarios, outperforming Microsoft's SRWLOCK by 2.75x and Cygwin by 65x on Windows, and glibc by 3x and musl libc by 11x on Linux.
The library's efficiency is attributed to its integration with the nsync library, which employs advanced techniques like optimistic Compare-And-Swap (CAS) and futexes to reduce CPU usage and contention.
The project is supported by various sponsors, including GitHub, Patreon, Mozilla's MIECO program, and the developer community, highlighting its collaborative development and community backing.
The discussion focuses on mutex implementations, with critiques on benchmarking methods, suggesting that real-world performance should be tested in large multithreaded programs.- There is a debate on the merits of different mutex types, such as spinlocks, and the importance of uncontended performance, highlighting the Cosmopolitan C library's mutex improvements.- The conversation also explores the use of message passing versus mutexes for concurrency, with some advocating for abstractions like queues for easier reasoning and debugging.
CERN manages an enormous 1 exabyte (EB) of data from the Large Hadron Collider, utilizing open-source projects such as CERNBox and EOS for efficient data handling.
The Storage and Data Management Group at CERN is responsible for data archival, distribution, and ensuring secure access for over 30,000 users.
FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) is employed to facilitate global data access, enhancing the accessibility and usability of the data.
CERN manages an enormous 1 exabyte (EB) of data using FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace), facing challenges such as inotify issues within Docker containers.
They utilize Rucio for efficient data management across various storage systems, ensuring global data distribution with tape backups and off-site replicas.
Despite budget constraints and recent management changes favoring Microsoft, CERN continues to be a center for scientific innovation, contributing significantly to open science and technology, and is highly valued for its scientific discoveries and advancements in data science.
RadioShackCatalogs.com is a digital archive that preserves the history of RadioShack from 1921 to 2011, featuring catalogs from 1939 to 2011.
The site showcases a variety of products, including hi-fidelity stereos, communication equipment, computers, and electronic components, highlighting brands like Tandy, Realistic, and TRS-80.
The catalogs are displayed in a page-flipping format, providing a nostalgic experience of RadioShack's technological evolution, and the site invites contributions of missing catalogs or financial support for maintenance.
The Radio Shack Catalog Archive (1939-2011) has ignited nostalgia and discussions about its influence on electronics enthusiasts.
The shift from DIY electronics to a cellphone store is viewed as a poor decision, contributing to Radio Shack's decline.
The catalog was a source of inspiration, offering a curated list of parts and tools, a physical experience now missed in the era of online stores like Digikey and Mouser.
A man in Northern Ontario discovered a 1929 REO Flying Cloud car with six bottles of whisky at the bottom of a lake, solving a local legend.
The discovery has sparked discussions about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) coverage and its perceived political bias, with commenters sharing personal experiences and opinions.
The car remains underwater for divers to explore, as it is considered too fragile to remove.
Juno for YouTube, a web view app that modified YouTube's website for a "visionOS" look, was removed from the App Store on October 1, 2024, due to guideline violations claimed by YouTube.
The app's removal was a result of unresolved disagreements between the developer and YouTube, with no plans for further escalation from the developer.
Existing users can continue using Juno until potential future updates from YouTube render it non-functional, and the developer expressed gratitude for the support from Vision Pro users.
Juno for YouTube, an app developed by the creator of the Apollo app for Reddit, has been removed from the App Store due to alleged guideline violations by YouTube.
The app, which was a web view and did not block ads, underscores the difficulties developers encounter with major tech companies and their stringent policies.
This situation emphasizes the growing call for alternative app stores, as many users and developers feel that platforms prioritize their control over user benefits.
The author discusses the challenge of reducing the default installation size of NixOS, a server operating system, which initially takes up about 900MB of disk space.- Efforts to minimize NixOS involved removing unnecessary components like Nix, Perl, Python, and certain services, achieving a reduction of approximately 300MB.- Despite these reductions, the author concludes that creating a minimal NixOS system is complex and suggests that a dedicated "fork" of NixOS for server scenarios might be more effective.
NixOS is recognized as a robust server operating system, but its dependency on the Nix language is seen as a drawback due to its complexity and lack of user-friendly features.
Users appreciate NixOS for its easy system replacement and rollback capabilities, yet some have transitioned to simpler systems like Debian or Proxmox due to maintenance challenges.
NixOS provides stable releases every six months but does not offer long-term support, which can be a concern for users seeking stability over extended periods.
NVLM 1.0 Collection introduces frontier-class multimodal large language models that perform exceptionally well in both vision-language and text-only tasks.
This collection represents a significant advancement in the integration of visual and textual data processing, highlighting the evolving capabilities of AI models.
The update, made just two days ago, suggests ongoing improvements and interest in the development of these sophisticated models.
Nvidia has launched the NVLM 1.0 72B open weight model on Hugging Face, derived from the Qwen2-72B-Instruct LLM and InterViT vision encoder, with a focus on quality over scale.- The model comes in three variants: decoder-only, cross-attention, and hybrid, but only the decoder-only version is available on Hugging Face.- It is licensed under a non-commercial cc-by-nc-4.0 license, allowing for evaluation but not commercial use, and requires substantial GPU RAM, approximately 164GB, for full accuracy.
Habit formation can be either goal-oriented or identity-focused, requiring consistency to become automatic.- "Limbic friction" refers to the effort needed to start a new behavior, which can be reduced by minimizing stress and fatigue.- Strategies for building and breaking habits include task bracketing, optimizing your day, leveraging dopamine, and trying a 21-day trial with flexible goals.
SlateDB provides extremely high durability (99.999999999%) by utilizing the durability of your existing object store, eliminating the need for disks and associated failures.
It offers tunable performance options for low latency, cost efficiency, or enhanced durability, and supports a single writer with multiple readers, preventing issues with zombie writers.
Developed in Rust, SlateDB is an embeddable library compatible with multiple programming languages, and can be easily integrated by adding it to your dependencies in Cargo.toml.
SlateDB is an embedded database designed for object storage, resembling a "lakehouse architecture" similar to Apache Iceberg, and is used for stream processing and serverless functions.
It buffers writes in an in-memory log before committing to object storage, which can lead to data loss if the writer fails, though it offers configurable durability options, including synchronous writes.
Critics argue that SlateDB is more of a thin abstraction over object storage than a true database, and it currently requires Rust for implementation, lacking support for other programming languages.
An unexploded American WWII bomb detonated at a Japanese airport, causing a large crater on a taxiway, but fortunately, no injuries were reported.
The incident has reignited discussions about the challenges of retrieving digital footage from security cameras and the widespread issue of unexploded ordnance in countries like Japan, London, Germany, and France.
Concerns were raised about the stability of old explosives, as they can become more sensitive over time, posing significant risks.