The Naming of America (2023)
The naming of America, first appearing on a map in 1507, involves complex origins beyond Amerigo Vespucci, reflecting cultural identity and colonial legacies, with various explorers potentially influencing the name.
Fukushima Reactor: TEPCO robot aims to extract nuclear fuel
TEPCO is progressing in extracting melted nuclear fuel from Fukushima Dai-ichi using a specialized robotic arm. Initial efforts focus on Unit 2, with decommissioning expected to take 30 to 40 years.
What's New in Ruby on Rails 8
Ruby on Rails 8 beta has been released, featuring Kamal 2 for simplified deployments, Propshaft for asset management, enhanced SQLite for production, Solid adapters, and streamlined authentication setup.
How do HTTP servers figure out Content-Length?
HTTP servers determine Content-Length by calculating response body size. Small responses use a Content-Length header, while larger ones utilize chunked transfer encoding, allowing data to be sent in segments.
Ptxdist – "Professional Embedded Linux Made Easy"
PTXdist is an open-source embedded Linux build system developed since 2001, featuring a Kconfig interface for package selection, supporting various platforms, and offering community support through mailing lists and IRC.
Fast B-Trees
The article compares hashmaps and b-trees in scripting languages, highlighting hashmaps' vulnerabilities and b-trees' stability. Benchmarks show b-trees can compete under certain conditions, influenced by key types and optimizations.
Silicon Valley, the new lobbying monster
Silicon Valley is leveraging super PACs like Fairshake to influence politics, notably defeating Katie Porter in a primary, highlighting the tech industry's significant role in political donations and engagement.
We'll buy back your Typewriter for Uncle Sam
During World War II, the U.S. government initiated a buy-back program for typewriters due to shortages, with Smith-Corona purchasing them at 1941 values. Rationing ended in April 1944.
Sq.io: jq for databases and more
sq is an open-source data wrangling tool that facilitates data inspection, querying, and manipulation across various databases and file formats, featuring a user-friendly command structure and comprehensive documentation.
Waverley, the last seagoing paddle steamer
The Waverley, the last seagoing paddle steamer, celebrated its 78th anniversary, offering special voyages until October 13, 2024, with many sailings fully booked and various hospitality options available.
Unoffice Hours (2020)
Matt Webb's "Unoffice Hours" offers informal video calls for networking, allowing participants to book 30-minute slots without agendas, emphasizing peer-to-peer interaction and fostering creativity in a remote work environment.
The Book of Kells, now digitized and available online
The Book of Kells, a medieval manuscript created around 806 AD, is now digitized and accessible online, featuring high-resolution images and offering insights into its historical and cultural significance.
Ants learned to farm fungi during a mass extinction
Ants have cultivated fungi for millions of years, starting after the dinosaur extinction. Advanced farming species emerged 35 million years later due to climate changes, necessitating further genetic research.
Task-Switching Experiment (2015)
Multitasking involves performing multiple tasks simultaneously or by switching rapidly. Research suggests women may excel in multitasking. An experiment assesses performance through a cued task-switching paradigm, collecting response data.
AVX Bitwise ternary logic instruction busted
The blog post examines the AVX-512 vpternlogd instruction for complex Boolean logic operations, comparing it to the Amiga blitter chip and providing methods for calculating minterm values.
Gleam Is Pragmatic
Drew Olson discusses the Gleam programming language, which merges Haskell and OCaml features, supports immutable data, simplifies callbacks, and enhances usability with custom types, showing promise for functional programming.
Starbase: SQLite on the Edge
Starbase is a scalable database solution utilizing SQLite and Cloudflare Durable Objects, supporting ACID transactions, easy installation via command line, and resources for creating HTTP-accessible SQLite servers.
Ziggy: Data serialization language for expressing API messages, config files
Ziggy is a data serialization language for API messages and configuration files, featuring distinct key notations, struct unions, tagged literals, schemas for data validation, and a CLI tool for various tasks.
Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars
Congress is deliberating the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act to mandate AM radios in cars, addressing concerns over their removal by automakers and the importance of AM stations for emergencies.
Sorbet: A neuromorphic hardware-compatible transformer-based spiking model
The paper presents Sorbet, a neuromorphic transformer-based language model focused on energy efficiency for resource-constrained environments, utilizing innovative techniques like PTsoftmax and BSPN to enhance performance and reduce energy consumption.