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GTK 4.0 Released
2020 has been a very long year. What better way to end it than with a major release! Today, we released GTK 4.0. GTK 4.0 is the result of a lot of hard work by a small team of dedicated developers. We will have a separate post to go over the statistics, but the short...
Amazon Location Service
Update June 1, 2021 – Amazon Location Service is now generally available and includes routing and raster (satellite) maps. You can easily and securely add maps, geocoding, routing, tracking, and geofencing to your applications. Read more about the new features in our new blog post here or try it now in the console. We…
I Regret Quitting Astrophysics
In 2013 I decided to quit my career in astrophysics, move back “home” and become a data scientist. The blog post I wrote about my decision was probably my best read publication as a professional astronomer and it was moving to read all the reactions from people who were struggling with similar decisions. I meant every…
Firefox Was Always Enough
There are many concerns about Mozilla right now, and reason to be concerned. While I am no longer with Mozilla, it’s still a place that supported me for many years; I believe in Mozilla and want the project to succeed.
Experiments on a $50 DIY air purifier that takes 30s to assemble
You can make a DIY air purifier in 30s. To test if it works, I generated smoke, and measured how well it removes tiny particles.
Vercel raise $40M Series B
Today we announce $40M in new funding to help everyone build the next web. Next.js and Vercel help teams collaborate and move faster with greater flexibility.
Github: Token authentication requirements for Git operations
Beginning August 13th, 2021, we will no longer accept account passwords when authenticating Git operations on GitHub.com.
Scale is a fantastic book on the hidden order of complex systems
A deep dive summary into on of the most interesting books I read this year.
Why CockroachDB and PostgreSQL Are Compatible
CockroachDB is PostgreSQL compatible in order to be accessible to an ecosystem of drivers, existing code, and developer knowledge.
When will virtual reality take off? The $100 bet
Writings on artificial intelligence, personalization, recommendations, and the tech industry.
Far Cry: How the Fire Burns and Spreads (2012)
INTRO A few years ago, I got the opportunity to architect and code the fire propagation system in Far Cry 2. At that time, it was a gigantic task and it scared the hell out of me. Luckily, it turned out well enough. With the upcoming Far Cry 3, several people recently asked me how
Visa and MasterCard Are Trying to Dictate What You Can Watch on Pornhub
Pornhub is removing millions of user-uploaded videos. This action comes after a New York Times column accused the website of hosting sexual videos of underage and nonconsenting women. In response to the Times’ article, Visa and Mastercard cut ties with Pornhub, making it impossible for Pornhub to...
What I wish someone had told me about tensor computation libraries
I get confused with tensor computation libraries (or computational graph libraries, or symbolic algebra libraries, or whatever they’re marketing themselves as these days). I was first introduced to PyTorch and TensorFlow and, having no other reference, thought they were prototypical examples of tensor computation…
To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language
MIT neuroscientists have found reading computer code does not rely on the regions of the brain involved in language processing. Instead, it activates the “multiple demand network,” which is also recruited for complex cognitive tasks such as solving math problems or crossword puzzles.
Farewell, Periscope
Farewell, Periscope Periscope Community, Today, we’re sharing that we have made the difficult decision to discontinue Periscope as a separate mobile app by March 2021. First off, we want to be …
PINE64 December Update
Welcome to the last community update of the year. I want to start this month’s update by thanking everyone who helped us make this challenging year a fruitful and successful one. A special thanks goes to the core community team - our mods and admins - who keep the cogs spinning on a daily basis. Marek (gamiee) and…
Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year
New report, "U.S. Press Freedom in Crisis: Journalists Under Arrest in 2020," details how more than 117 journalists were arrested across the country in 2020.
Sponsoring Open Source Developers
We are pleased to announce today that Cognitect and Nubank will be sponsoring dozens of contributors to the Clojure ecosystem with regular monthly support.
AWS CloudShell
No matter how much automation you have built, no matter how great you are at practicing Infrastructure as Code (IAC), and no matter how successfully you have transitioned from pets to cattle, you sometimes need to interact with your AWS resources at the command line. You might need to check or adjust a configuration…
SuperRT – Realtime Raytracing on the SNES
Video links for this article: Short trailer Walkthrough and technical details Update 31th May 2021: The source code for SuperRT has now been released. I’m pleased to finally have some results to show for a project I’ve been working on in my spare time for the last year or so. The idea originated when I was trying to…
Firefox 84.0
We'd like to extend a special thank you to all of the new Mozillians who contributed to this release of Firefox.
The biggest competitor to your digital service? The Mars Bar
This post has been languishing in my drafts folder for about a decade. It has recently become relevant again. When I was at Vodafone, selling ringtones was our top priority. They cost almost nothing to produce, supply, and market. Yet people would pay through the nose for them. I say people. I mean kids. We saw a huge…
Kate is 20 years old
Kate just turned 20 today! As announced before, Kate turned twenty today. When did it start? Here again my initial request to the KWrite maintainer about my work on a 'MDI KWrite' later called Kate (sorry, German & spelling mistakes): From: Cullmann Christoph <crossfire@babylon2k.de> To: digisnap@cs.tu-berlin.de…
Welcome Yari: MDN Web Docs has a new platform
After several intense months of work on such a significant change, the MDN Web Docs’ new platform (codenamed Yari) is finally launched!