2281
Frances Hesselbein's leadership story (2022)
A life by example
2282
LLMs know more than what they say
... and how that provides winning evals
2283
Programming a CH32v003 with light
A comedic example, parked nicely on the thinnest wedge of the venn diagram, is the HamFurs – people who do amateur radio while wearing fur suits. While it isn't my cup of tea, I love that such a group exists. They seemed like nice people when I chatted to them.
2284
2285
Ozempic will disrupt big tobacco, candy companies, and alcohol brands
Are GLP-1 drugs the first real threat to the hyper-processed food and alcohol industries?
2286
"AI, no ads please": 4 words to wipe out $1T
Introducing a series on AI vs. ads
2287
Why is no one making a new version of old Facebook?
12 Challenges readers Thandeka Xaba and Toby Mather raised some great points in the comments for yesterday’s Typology piece (thanks so much!).
2288
Why Is Light So Fast?
The speed of light is much faster, and the energy in ordinary objects far greater, than what daily life accustoms us to. Why? Step 1: new perspectives
2289
Revitalizing US Navy Shipbuilding
The consensus is that the US does not build enough ships, civilian or military. The lack of production raises alarm as tension with China in East Asia rises. And the US will need ships if we choose to fight in East Asia.
2290
What Is a Staff Engineer?
"I've worked with a couple of Staff Engineers on different teams in the past and I've seen them do different things, but I've not been able to pin down exactly what they do." I get this question quite frequently. Sometimes from engineers looking to elevate their roles.
2291
Descent: A classic 3-D first-person shooter (2012)
DESCENT is a classic 3-D first-person shooter for DOS that was released in 1995, developed by Parallax Software and published by Interplay Productions. DESCENT is a contemporary of the other very popular FPS of the time, DOOM by id Software, released just over a year before. However, it is not based on DOOM; the…
2292
A Model of a Mind
This article explains a simple model of how minds might work. I’m motivated by the success of AI-based language models to look at the future of digital minds. I’ll present a conceptual data-flow architecture that can account for several key features of minds: the ability to initiate actions (agency), learning…
2293
Can life emerge around a white dwarf?
Yes the tidal forces would be a problem with the Roche limit and Hill Sphere. The planet might break apart in the life belt around a white dwarf star or crash into the white dwarf. The planet has to be too close to the white dwarf to be in the life belt.
2294
How did authorities identify the alleged LockBit boss?
Last week, the United States joined the U.K. and Australia in sanctioning and charging a Russian man named Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev as the leader of the infamous LockBit ransomware group. LockBit’s leader “ LockBitSupp ” claims the feds named the wrong guy, saying the charges don’t explain how they connected him to…
2295
Apple Rejects the Hey Calendar from Their App Store
There should at least be a standard of double jeopardy when it comes to the app store monopoly regimes. If you’ve managed to overturn a rejection of your service once, they can’t come after you on the same service again later. We could have used that today! But unfortunately there is no rule of law with the app…
2296
Swift for C++ Practitioners, Part 1: Intro and Value Types
Swift for C++ Practitioners, Part 1: Intro & Value Types
2297
2298
IPC in Rust – A Ping Pong Comparison
I wanted to explore different ways of communicating between different processes executing on the same machine, and doing so as fast as possible. We're focussing on high speed inter-process communication (IPC), but some of these approaches can be extended across a network. We'll do this exploration in Rust.
2299
Refactoring Python with Tree-sitter and Jedi
I was toying around with a refactor the other day that would have taken me ages by hand as it involved 100s of files. I wanted to rename every instance of...
2300
Everything I've learned so far about running local LLMs
Over the past month I’ve been exploring the rapidly evolving world of Large Language Models (LLM). It’s now accessible enough to run a LLM on a Raspberry Pi smarter than the original ChatGPT (November 2022). A modest desktop or laptop supports even smarter AI. It’s also private, offline, unlimited, and…
2301
Behind the scenes: the struggle for each paper (2021)
The start of my sabbatical has given me a moment to reflect on my publications. But my CV only shows a list of neatly cataloged papers: title, authors, conference. Each one appearing no different from another. But how each paper ended up published is its own story, a story about people and opportunity.
2302
Smart Pointers in (GNU) C
I am a big fan of C, but some part of me always yearn to have just enough higher level constructs.
2303
2304
Coming home from the South Pole
Emerging from winter and preparing for our first flight!
2305
The number given as % CPU in Activity Monitor
One of the most common reasons for opening Activity Monitor is to check the % CPU of processes that might be running out of control. How accurate are those figures, though, and should you believe t…
2306
2307
Fruits (2020)
Fruits - Graph All The Things, a math blog by Martin Loncaric
2308
Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect
Reflections and community quotes from a decade in the Bay Area dating landscape.
2309
BlackCat ransomware group implodes after apparent payment by Change Healthcare
There are indications that U.S. healthcare giant Change Healthcare has made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous BlackCat ransomware group (a.k.a. “ ALPHV “) as the company struggles to bring services back online amid a cyberattack that has disrupted prescription drug services nationwide for weeks. However…
2310
Fossil fuels could have been left in the dust 25 years ago
Gordon Moore’s famous prediction about computing power must count as one of the most astonishingly accurate forecasts in history. But it may also have been badly misunderstood — in a way that now l…