TL;DR summary of stories on the internet
The world’s last wild horses, known as Przewalski’s horses, have made a triumphant return to Kazakhstan after a 200-year absence. Flown in from Berlin and Prague on a Czech air force plane, these unique horses have a rich history dating back to the domestication of horses in central Asia 5,500 years ago. Facing extinction due […]
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Concrete, the most common building material worldwide, might revolutionize energy storage. Damian Stefaniuk, from MIT, discovered how to create supercapacitors from water, cement, and carbon black, replacing lithium batteries. These supercapacitors can rapidly charge and store energy efficiently. The potential applications are vast, from roads that recharge electric cars wirelessly to energy-storing foundations for houses. […]
The Syntax podcast delves into the rising popularity of SQLite, discussing its efficiency, speed, stability, and unique features. Special guests Brian Holt and Marco Bambini explore misconceptions about SQLite, such as it being only for single users and its limitations in enterprise settings. The episode also covers SQLite Cloud, which enhances shareability and adds enterprise […]
OpenAI recently introduced GPT-4o, raising the bar for conversational AI with sophisticated reasoning abilities. Meanwhile, PolyAI secured Series C funding for their enterprise voice assistant after significant growth. At Amazon’s Alexa, the focus on customer data protection led to challenging internal processes and bureaucratic issues. The decentralized org structure caused duplication of efforts and hindered […]
A recent discovery of medieval game pieces in a southern Germany castle gives a glimpse into leisure time activities of knights nearly a millennium ago. The find includes a six-sided die, flower-shaped game pieces, and a well-preserved chess piece made from antlers. The pieces show signs of use, highlighting their practicality in gameplay. Experts are […]
Databases like Postgres can be memory-hungry, with shared buffers being a major RAM segment. To optimize this, setting shared_buffers to 25% of available RAM is a solid starting point. Work memory, controlled by work_mem, is essential for query processing and tuning this parameter is key. Maintenance_work_mem, dedicated to operations like VACUUM, should be set based […]
In the 1950s, the US Air Force launched a top-secret program involving spy balloons equipped with cameras to photograph the Soviet Union. The Genetrix balloons were ultimately shot down by Soviet MiG fighter pilots, leading to a brief but impactful program. However, the US Air Force managed to recover some camera gondolas containing specialized film […]
In this blog post, the author explores the lack of a canonicalization rule for wheel filenames in Python packaging, despite extensive rules for package names and versions. The post delves into the differences between parsing and canonicalizing wheel filenames for comparison, highlighting the complexity of the wheel filename format compared to source distributions. Surprisingly, the […]
The author has been observing how language models are revolutionizing software development, suggesting a shift towards a new era of local, DIY software creation. They introduce the concept of the “barefoot developer,” hinting at a future wave of innovative, independent creators. The talk offers a bold theory on the potential impact of these advancements, promising […]
Revideo is an open-source framework for programmatic video editing, evolved from Motion Canvas editor to a library for developers to create entire video editing apps. Users can develop video templates in Typescript, create an API endpoint for rendering with dynamic inputs, and use a React player component for real-time browser previews. Some differences from Motion […]