דלג לתוכן הראשי

2023-07-16

  • The Ban Bread Now Foundation's website promotes a campaign against bread consumption, claiming it has negative health and societal effects.
  • The foundation proposes various measures to combat bread usage, such as a nationwide "Just Say No To Toast" campaign and health hazard warning labels on bread packages.
  • Readers can support the cause by making contributions, spreading the word, contacting their congressmen, and joining the organization for a fee, with charter members receiving a Ban Bread membership card and a Dough Boy Decoder.

Industry Reactions

  • Web 1.0 websites were known for their simplicity and usability, which can serve as inspiration for modern design.
  • Wiby.me, a curated search engine, takes users to random Web 1.0 websites, generating excitement among tech-savvy readers.
  • Users are finding interesting and unique websites on Wiby.me, showcasing the charm and creativity of Web 1.0 sites.

Signal president says company will not comply with U.K. 'mass surveillance' law

  • Signal president Meredith Whittaker opposes the proposed U.K. online safety legislation that would require backdoor access to encrypted messages.
  • Whittaker argues that implementing a backdoor is mathematically impossible and would undermine the security of communications.
  • Signal and other encrypted messaging apps may exit the U.K. market if the Online Safety Bill becomes law.

Industry Reactions

  • Signal's president announces that the company will not comply with the UK's 'mass surveillance' law.
  • The debate over encryption and privacy in relation to government surveillance has been sparked.
  • The role of technology companies in protecting user data and the potential impact on privacy are key concerns.

A third of North America's birds have vanished

  • Raw data analysis reveals that a third of North America's birds have disappeared over the past 50 years.
  • This finding is significant because it represents a massive and profound change in the natural system that was previously unknown.
  • The decline in bird populations is particularly severe for grassland and forest birds, as well as common backyard birds. The loss of these birds has important implications for biodiversity and ecosystem health.

Industry Reactions

  • A third of North America's bird population has disappeared due to habitat loss and other factors, highlighting the problem of bird population decline and the loss of biodiversity.
  • Individual actions, such as creating bird-friendly yards with natural elements and responsible pet ownership, can contribute to bird conservation efforts.
  • The post emphasizes the need for systemic solutions to address the complex issue of bird population decline, including action from governments, corporations, architects, urban planners, and schools.

PostgreSQL: No More Vacuum, No More Bloat

  • PostgreSQL is a popular database system known for its robustness and flexibility, but it has a challenge with the resource-consuming VACUUM process.
  • OrioleDB is a new engine for PostgreSQL that aims to eliminate the need for VACUUM and reduce table bloat by implementing row-level and block-level undo logs and automatic page merging.
  • OrioleDB offers significant improvements in performance, efficiency, and user experience, providing higher transaction throughput, lower CPU load, reduced IOPS, and no table or index bloat.

Industry Reactions

  • OrioleDB is a new storage engine for PostgreSQL that aims to solve the issue of vacuuming and table and index bloat.
  • The performance benchmarks show that OrioleDB provides higher throughput and lower CPU load per transaction compared to standard PostgreSQL.
  • OrioleDB uses a different approach to handling old versions of data, storing them in separate storage and automatically merging sparse pages.

Wireshark Is 25: The email that started it all and lessons learned along the way

  • 25 years ago, Wireshark, a network analyzer, was created and released as open source, changing the course of the developer's life.
  • Wireshark quickly gained popularity and developed a thriving developer community, becoming a widely used tool for analyzing networks and teaching network engineering.
  • The success of Wireshark can be attributed to meeting the needs of users, educators, and developers, as well as maintaining a solid infrastructure and support system.

Industry Reactions

  • Wireshark is a valuable tool for understanding and troubleshooting network issues.
  • It is often compared to a debugger for networking or strace for networking.
  • Many programmers and networking professionals find Wireshark essential for their work.

"Our paying customers need X, when will you fix it?"

  • Twitter has implemented a new pricing structure that restricts the option of unrolling tweets on the web to Premium members only.
  • Non-Premium members can still unroll tweets for free by visiting Twitter and replying to the tweet with "@threadreaderapp unroll."
  • This decision has been made by Thread Reader in response to Twitter's new pricing structure.

Industry Reactions

  • IBM requests a timeline for a new release of mitmproxy software for their customers, sparking a conversation about entitlement and demands from large companies in the open-source community.
  • The issue revolves around a misconception of a security vulnerability, highlighting the challenges of maintaining open-source projects.
  • The discussion delves into IBM's ownership of Red Hat and the culture of using open source software without giving back, raising questions about entitlement and responsibility in open source development.

Another World ported to FPGA

  • The author has successfully remade the game "Another World" in hardware using an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array).
  • The game runs on a custom processor implemented in hardware, with a hardware blitter and rasterizer.
  • The design makes efficient use of the FPGA resources and utilizes special memory blocks for pixel data storage.

Industry Reactions

  • Another World, a classic video game, has been ported to FPGA.
  • The game is known for its impressive graphics and innovative gameplay.
  • Fans of Another World are recommended to check out Flashback: The Quest for Identity, which has a similar cinematic vibe.

The theory versus the practice of "static websites"

  • The article discusses the difference between static and dynamic websites, arguing that static websites are more dynamic and complicated than they appear, while also being easier to build and operate.
  • The use of static files for web content has remained common and efficient over the years, creating a stable and easy-to-operate website.
  • Static websites have a clear boundary and limited dependencies, making them easier to operate and maintain compared to dynamic websites. The distinction between static and dynamic websites is still sharp, with static websites being more independent and easily re-homed.

Industry Reactions

  • Static websites offer easier maintenance, reliability, and the ability to work offline compared to dynamic sites.
  • Static site generators like Hugo and Webflow are popular tools for building and managing static sites.
  • Static sites have benefits such as faster performance, better SEO, and lower hosting costs compared to dynamic sites.

The Uxn Ecosystem

  • The Uxn ecosystem is a personal computing stack that allows users to create and run their own tools and games.
  • It is designed with a focus on portable graphical applications and can be programmed using its unique assembly language.
  • Users can download the Uxn emulators for different operating systems and explore various toys, games, and tools, or even create their own programs.

Industry Reactions

  • The Uxn ecosystem is a fascinating and elegant virtual machine design that has been ported to various hardware platforms.
  • The team behind Uxn is actively creating software, games, and art using the virtual machine.
  • Uxn is particularly appealing for retro-style gaming and provides a low-spec environment for creating Game Boy-style games without the complexity of Z80-like instructions.

The shady world of Brave selling copyrighted data for AI training

  • Brave, a search engine, offers an API called Data for AI that allows users to use copyrighted material for AI training and inference.
  • Brave's API provides generous snippets of information from websites, potentially violating copyright laws.
  • Brave's search engine may crawl and index websites without explicit disclosure, potentially selling content to third parties.

Industry Reactions

  • Brave, a popular browser, is under scrutiny for allegedly selling copyrighted data for AI training.
  • The company is accused of misrepresenting their rights to the data and selling access to it without proper attribution.
  • Brave's crawler, used for web indexing, does not identify itself to website operators, making it difficult to block.