Kagi, a search engine, has updated its offerings with a Professional plan that includes unlimited searches for $10 per month and a revamped Starter plan of $5 per month for 300 searches.
New tools are being introduced in the Ultimate plan, and users are invited to participate in a closed beta. Additionally, Family and Duo plans offer unlimited searches have also been launched.
Kagi stresses its user-focused approach and dedication to privacy, indicating that it is open for collaboration and investment opportunities.
The text encompasses conversation around various topics, including search engines like Kagi and Google, ad blockers, and the deteriorating quality of product reviews on Reddit.
A different section of the discussion focuses on the influence of advertising, operating system usability (particularly between Windows and Linux), and the concept of a lottery.
This range of subjects indicates a diverse array of user opinions and perspectives are being shared and discussed.
Splunk and Cisco have formed a partnership with the intent of improving digital resilience amidst challenges brought by artificial intelligence and digital transformation.
By integrating their leading solutions, the companies aim to provide comprehensive visibility across security, observability, and network operations, fast-tracking innovation and creation of transformative data solutions.
Leveraging Cisco's global network and market capabilities, Splunk aims to boost its resources to better serve customers and bolster their digital resilience.
Cisco has acquired data analysis software company Splunk after a failed attempt to buy Datadog, with rumors of insider trading connected to the acquisition.
Discussion centered on Splunk's high pricing, increased costs, customer dissatisfaction, and potential changes to the service due to Cisco's acquisition. Notwithstanding, some customers still find value in Splunk despite the costs.
Mentioned within the discussion are alternative log analysis tools and platforms, as well as the development of an IP address search tool as a potential replacement for Splunk.
Japanese network Nippon TV is set to acquire the prestigious anime studio, Studio Ghibli, positioning it as a subsidiary.
This acquisition follows speculation surrounding Studio Ghibli's future leadership due to the aging of its founder Hayao Miyazaki and president Toshio Suzuki.
As part of the deal, Nippon TV will own 42.3% of Studio Ghibli's shares and manage its operations, enabling the studio to concentrate on its creative work.
Nippon TV has purchased Studio Ghibli, as confirmed by director Hayao Miyazaki.
This acquisition has garnered mixed feelings from fans, with concerns about the quality of future productions under the new ownership.
The discussions in reaction to the purchase involve the influence of new productions on classic ones, Hayao Miyazaki's opinion on AI-generated animation, preference for subtitles over dubbing in international films, and the impact of Japanese animation in the West.
Matrix, a platform for open standard communication often used for secure, decentralized communication, has launched an updated version: Matrix 2.0. This update improves usability and performance.
Matrix 2.0 introduces features like Sliding Sync and Native Group VoIP, designed to provide faster and more efficient communication than typical messaging services. This release is a significant development for Matrix.
Element X, a Matrix client, emphasizes a fast user interface using the Sliding Sync feature, while Matrix 2.0 also incorporates native Matrix Group VoIP calling. The Matrix team is working on more improvements and sourcing funds for continuous development.
The discussion revolves around the Matrix messaging platform and its integration into the Element X client, touching on concerns about complexity, notification delays, encryption, app renaming, commercial aspects, and self-hosting difficulties.
Developers acknowledge existing bugs and vow to enhance user experience and performance through code rewrites, albeit some users raise concerns about frequent changes.
The conversation also centers on the challenges and prospective solutions of implementing peer-to-peer functions, funding for Matrix development, and the platform's cooperation with law enforcement and government bodies, highlighting the importance of trust and transparency.
Delta Air Lines has modified its SkyMiles program making it more challenging for customers to earn status and benefits, reflecting broader issues within the American air-travel industry.
Deregulation of airlines in 1978 led to creation of loyalty programs and sale of airline points, partnering with banks and credit card companies, which became a significant revenue source. This shift towards spending focus, rather than mileage, can be disadvantageous to consumers without points-earning cards.
The article suggests that the promised benefits of airline deregulation have not materialized and that revisiting regulations could help improve the financialization of airlines and consumer air travel experience.
The discourse encompasses a variety of airline industry topics, ranging from the influence of regulations on cost reduction and pricing to the impact of additional coding lines on programs.
The dialogue explores the connection between competition and innovation, airline pricing techniques, their profitability, and its influence on consumers, as well as providing subsidies to airlines.
Other topics discussed include command economies, optimizing business practices, wealth distribution, and innovation's role in the economy, illustrating the complexity and nuances of these subjects.
A new study indicates that the effects of lead poisoning on global health are more severe than previously believed, possibly causing over five million deaths annually and a significant decrease in child IQ.
According to the study, 5.5 million deaths in 2019 were due to heart disease caused by lead exposure, six times higher than old estimates. It also led to an aggregate loss of 765 million IQ points among children under five globally in 2019.
This research is the first to appraise the influence of lead exposure on heart disease mortality and IQ loss in children across developed and under-developed nations, yet it is subject to uncertainties and needs further validation.
This discourse explores the various impacts of lead poisoning, including its correlation with crime rates in preschool children and its presence in car pollution and various products.
Focus points include the dangers of lead in plumbing fittings and the use of leaded gas, while also highlighting concerns with asbestos, mineral deposits in kettles, and challenges with electric water heating.
The discussion stresses the importance of regulation and awareness in addressing these environmental and health concerns tied to lead poisoning.
A trader invested $22,000 into call options on Splunk (SPLK) stock, set to expire the next day.
Upon Cisco Systems (CSCO) announcing their acquisition of Splunk for $28 billion, Splunk's stock rose by 20%, significantly boosting the value of those calls.
Consequently, the trader was able to exit their position with an impressive 45,650% return, showing the potential high-risk, high-return nature of trading stock options.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has found carbon on the surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa, suggesting a potentially habitable environment in its subsurface ocean.
The presence of carbon, a crucial element for life, was unconfirmed until this discovery; it's assumed to originate from Europa's ocean beneath the icy crust.
NASA plans to launch the Europa Clipper spacecraft in 2024 for further exploration, even though the Webb telescope did not observe evidence of water vapor plumes on Europa's surface.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered signs of a carbon source on the surface of Europa, Jupiter's moon. This is significant since Europa is speculated to possess an underground ocean of liquid water.
The discussion dives into "new water" entering Earth and the multitude of water sources on our planet, emphasizing the global hydrological perspective.
The potential for life on Europa, forthcoming missions to study Jupiter's moons, and the implications and incentives for research beneath Europa's ice are also explored, hinting at a burgeoning focus on astrobiology.
Android 14 is integrating support for using smartphones as webcams natively, eliminating the need for third-party apps for this functionality.
This feature will be managed by the Webcam Service app in Android 14, but it won't be universally accessible as it relies on kernel configuration and system app prerequisites.
This addition of native USB webcam functionality is a significant development in Android 14, potentially transforming Android devices into widely recognized USB webcams.
The conversation revolves around using Android and iPhone devices as webcams, highlighting the limitations and possible benefits of this practice.
Discussions also cover differences between the two platforms, including factors such as software updates, device lifespan, customization options, and privacy concerns.
Participants delve into technical aspects like video quality, compression methods, and the role of webcams and HDMI capture cards, expressing a general desire for greater versatility and customization in mobile devices.
Google has put out a security update for Chrome to mend a heap buffer overflow vulnerability in the WebP image library, which was actively exploited.
This vulnerability was associated with a zero-click exploit for iMessage named "BLASTPASS", utilized to run the NSO Group's Pegasus spyware.
Although the vulnerability has been patched, it may take some time for the fix to propagate to all systems. This serves as a reminder of the importance of source code reviews and stricter sandboxing for image decoding and complex parser code.
A security bug has been identified in the WebP image format, posing a potential risk across multiple platforms including key browsers and operating systems.
This bug has escalated discussions about the utilization of formal verification, memory-safe languages, sandboxing and the effectiveness of type systems for better software security.
Some Linux distributions have released security patches to combat this issue, however, concerns remain about other vulnerable distributions and applications. There's also broader discourse on employing virtual machines for improved browser security, despite associated challenges and limitations.
The discussion emphasizes the necessity for a universally consistent labeling system for familial relationships throughout different languages.
Suggestions presented involve translation, categorization, and user input to accommodate the variances and complexities in family relations terminologies, like grandparent distinctions and cousin classifications.
Cultural practices and linguistic nuances have been underscored, demonstrating the difficulties yet significance of accurately portraying these relationships.
The author has developed a Python script for log collection and analysis, positioning it as superior to the software Splunk.
They plan to refine the script further and release it as an open-source tool, signaling opportunities for tech enthusiasts to enjoy a free alternative to Splunk.
The author, however, admits that the script is more fitted for smaller operations and is not ideal for large-scale enterprise use.
The poster narrates their achievements in substituting Splunk, a software used for monitoring, searching, analyzing, and visualizing machine-generated big data, with a self-built Python script at their startup to collect, analyze, and store log data in SQLite, plus supplying a web interface.
The dialogue extends into employing SSH (Secure Shell) and subprocess for remote server utilization, significance of thorough comments and documentation in programming, magnitude of log production, and potential alternatives to Splunk.
SQLite, a software library that provides a relational database management system, is lauded for data storage use. An upcoming YC (Y Combinator) Winter 2024 applications is also alluded to.
The article delves into the architecture and binding system of the Godot game engine, underlining a specific use case and efforts to optimize it.
The piece disputes perception of Godot's efficiency, discussing garbage collection, memory allocation, and debates around the value of certain features.
A comparison is made between Godot and Unity, with the article also mentioning the possibility of changing Godot's main scripting language in the future.
This post tackles a critique on the Godot game engine's raycasting performance, offering a defense for raycasts and possible optimization strategies in game development.
A healthy debate between developers features not only on the application of raycasts in Godot but also possible alternative methods and the professional conduct of the Godot team.
The article contrasts the performance and scripting abilities of Godot with other game engines like Unity and Unreal, underscoring varying viewpoints on the balance between simplicity and performance.
The article offers a comprehensive overview of the Nintendo 3DS's architecture, explaining its distinctive features, models, and stereoscopic screens alongside its technicalities, including CPUs, GPUs, memory layout, and audio blocks.
It delves into the 3DS's firmware functionality, its boot process, user interface, and capabilities ranging from game updates to the utilization of virtual console games.
It additionally provides insights into the system's vulnerabilities, the historical progression of homebrew hacking, and the different exploits and tools useful for hacking the console. Included is a list of additional sources for further exploration on the topic.
The article covers various aspects of the Nintendo 3DS, including its backward compatibility feature, which allows the use of previous generation hardware.
Users share their experiences on homebrew techniques for playing games from different consoles, address challenges and elude to potential advancements within the domain of handheld gaming.
Discussion also involves the evolving gaming industry – from the perceived decrease in unique consoles and increase in mobile gaming, to the rise of the Nintendo Switch leading to lower demand for smaller portable devices.
The issue at hand is the unnecessary inclusion of polyfills in npm packages, resulting in larger than required node_modules folders.
Numerous packages, including "eslint-plugin-react", are importing and directly calling polyfill functions, an inefficient practice as these jobs are already widely supported in JavaScript.
The post suggests the JavaScript ecosystem needs a reevaluation of dependency use to improve efficiency and decrease wasted disk space. By eliminating unnecessary polyfills, the dependency count in projects can significantly drop.
The article delves into the issues of automatic polyfilling in JavaScript and how unnecessary polyfills, catalyzed by tools like swc and Babel, lead to increased library sizes.
It discusses the struggle of maintaining backward compatibility with older browsers like IE6, suggesting the possibility of forking libraries to eliminate nonessential backwards compatibility.
The piece emphasizes challenges in the JavaScript ecosystem such as high dependency, inexperienced developers, and outdated browser support. It suggests workarounds such as reducing dependencies, adopting less dependent libraries, and possibly utilizing WebAssembly (WASM) to deal with dependency problems.
The anecdote revolves around a customer's request for assistance to connect to a server using SSH from an airport, where the default port access was unfortunately blocked.
In response, the support team adeptly leveraged iptables to enable SSH on an alternative port, thus ensuring the customer could successfully establish the server connection.
The customer thanked the support team and pledged to revert the changes once their predicament was resolved.
Google's Cloud AI Team introduces a technique named "distilling step-by-step" that facilitates the training of compact, task-specific models with less data.
This technique works by extracting informative parts known as "rationales" from large language models (LLMs) to supervise the training of smaller models.
The research shows that this method performs better than LLMs with considerably smaller models and less training data, providing a more resource-efficient solution for deployment challenges posed by large models.
The debate focuses on Google's AI capabilities, drawing attention to how research success might not guarantee product dominance.
Importance of domain-specific models, multimodal training, and a proficient manager model for processor-intensive large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3+ from OpenAI is emphasized, alongside the need for batch processing frameworks.
Future possibilities include Apple and Intel entering the LLM market and increased RAM capacity in hardware to better accommodate LLMs.
The "Think Family Education" (TFE) app, utilized by over 100 schools in Bristol, to monitor students and their family backgrounds, has spurred concerns.
Critics argue that the app, providing access to family contacts with police and welfare services, could potentially enhance discrimination against students from minority ethnic or working-class backgrounds.
While Bristol city council and Avon and Somerset police uphold that the app is for child protection, not criminalization, critics counter that it may inadvertently profile minority children as involved in criminal activities.
The main topic revolves around an app used in Bristol schools that harvests and shares student and family data, sparking worries about privacy, potential profiling, and unfair treatment.
It further expands into a broader discussion about the roles of surveillance in schools, digital devices, safeguarding officers, and the negative effects of data sharing systems.
Also, issues are raised about heavy policing in impoverished neighborhoods, systemic poverty, current system limitations in protecting vulnerable individuals, potential racial profiling, transparency issues, and the responsibility of corporations and government departments in managing personal data.
USPS.com provides a plethora of services and tools, such as package tracking, finding USPS locations, stamps purchase, pickup scheduling, price calculation, and more.
The website additionally supplies information on tasks like sending and receiving mail, managing mail, and purchasing necessary stamps and shipping materials.
USPS.com supports in-person identity proofing services for Login.gov registrants to verify identities securely when online verification is not feasible, available for free at participating USPS retail outlets.
This summary highlights the United States Postal Service (USPS) introducing an in-person identity proofing process to tackle online identity verification issues.
The article also focuses on the challenges with address verification, flaws in code signing certificate systems, and the demand for remote identity proofing.
It discusses topics such as the role of the government in identity verification, the potential benefits of centralized systems, and the ongoing debate surrounding voter ID laws highlighting the complexities and trade-offs in the process.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has initiated a rule against "greenwashing," ensuring that 80% of a fund's portfolio corresponds to the asset specified in the fund name. This rule is devised to prevent misleading environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investments portrayal.
In a move against greenwashing, the European Union (EU) has also ruled out claims of being "climate neutral" or any extensive environmental claims by 2026.
Aside from greenwashing, geopolitical tensions are escalating, such as visa suspension between India and Canada, potential U.S. and Saudi Arabia defense treaty drawing concerns due to human rights issues, and a dispute over grain imports between Ukraine and Poland.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is enforcing stricter regulations on "greenwashing" within carbon markets, as non-profits allegedly make false claims regarding environmental sustainability.
There's a growing debate over the credibility and effectiveness of carbon credits and the need for further regulation in the carbon offset market. Concerns about deforestation credits and scams are also rising.
The article and comments discuss potential solutions like carbon taxation, but acknowledge associated challenges including quantifying carbon emissions reliably, risks of black market emergence, and complications posed by nuclear states.