1. Why I Left Rust
Total comment counts : 107
Summary
The article explains why the author left Rust, stating that the organization did little to defend an expert in the industry who was treated poorly. The author expresses disappointment with the lack of resistance by Rust against the use of Rust as a weapon against an individual. They also mention that the decision to downgrade a keynote speaker who was the recent grant recipient of the Rust Foundation and highlighted Rust’s lack of diversity was disrespectful. The author notes that diplomacy was not the solution to the problem, and accountability was necessary. The article ends with a call for Rust to take responsibility, step back from leadership who abused it, and rebuild trust.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The RustConf, a conference about the programming language Rust, has faced criticism for removing a speaker who had been invited to discuss “compile-time reflection” in the language. The decision, which was made without the knowledge of the conference’s leadership team, has led to accusations of childish behavior and a lack of transparency within the Rust community. The speaker, who had written an article on the subject, said the decision was an “introduction to the way the Rust Project actually does business that is not covered by its publicly-available Procedures and Practices and absolutely not at all mentioned in its Code of Conduct”.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article questions why JT called JeanHeyd’s race into question when they wrote about their talk being demoted. The author argues that being a person of color is not related to the issue and that introducing it is unnecessary and potentially patronizing. They suggest that any mistreatment of an expert due to their race is disrespectful and should be addressed regardless of their skin color.
2. A relay that changed the power industry
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
Edmund O. Schweitzer III’s digital microprocessor-based relay, which was developed in 1977, revolutionised power systems protection and reliability. Until then, electromechanical relays were used, but they were limited in their ability to locate faults and record events. Schweitzer’s relay, which was included as part of his doctoral thesis, was capable of locating faults in a radius of 1km, setting new standards for utility reliability, safety and efficiency. From his basement, Schweitzer went on to establish the global Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL), an employee-owned company which now has over 6,000 staff, four manufacturing facilities and presence in over 165 countries. Through SEL, he has continued innovating to develop and refine protection and control mechanisms of power systems and he has received several accolades in acknowledgment of his contribution to the industry.
Top 1 Comment Summary
SEL is opening a new PCB fabrication shop in Moscow, ID, which is the first PCB fabrication shop to open in the US for quite some time. However, the shop will be limited to building SEL boards, so they are not planning to give access to other companies to make use of their facilities. This return of vertical integration that was seen decades ago with HP and other companies may be a positive sign for the industry.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The writer was a software engineer who worked on the original implementation of SEL’s SDN software and wonders how much it has changed since then. They mention that their former boss is still working on the project and they may reach out to them. The writer thinks that their name might be on a patent somewhere even though they were just a code monkey at the time.
3. ARM’s Cortex A53: Tiny but Important
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
The Cortex A53, a lower-powered CPU architecture developed by ARM, fills an important place in the company’s lineup as not all applications require a lot of processing power. Cell phone makers shipped more A53 cores than any other ARM core type from 2014 to 2017. A53 continued to appear in new products such as Google’s 2018 Pixel Visual Core, Socionext’s fanless edge server chip, and Roku set-top boxes. The A53 Technical Reference Manual states that the branch predictor has a global history table with 3072 entries, and while A53 does not perform like high-end CPUs, its architecture is optimized for extremely low power and performance targets.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the Cortex A53 microarchitecture, which is almost a decade old and has undergone minimal changes in newer iterations. In contrast, Intel has been making small but significant revisions to their Atom cores, and their new E-core is much faster while still being small. This new chip could be a game-changer for Intel and could potentially lead to further development and expansion of their product line.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article suggests that it would be helpful to see a graph comparing the “performance per watt” of mobile phones using A53 versus high-performance cores for background tasks that require less CPU power. The author believes that A53 is a suitable option for these tasks and it would be interesting to see how much power could be saved by using it instead of high-performance cores.
4. TV doctors say annual checkups save lives – real doctors call bullshit (2016)
Total comment counts : 50
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author had a recent physical where a low test result led to more tests and a specialist visit, resulting in thousands of dollars in bills. They believe that the high cost of care makes seeking proactive care unaffordable, and until the healthcare system stops allowing providers to charge arbitrary amounts, the system will remain broken.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article believes that participating in the medical system when not in need of emergency care can put one’s health and life at risk. He suggests that avoiding the medical system altogether is the smartest path, without advocating for alternative medicine. The medical system is accused of obscuring its failures, attributing them to causes other than malpractice that resulted in premature suffering and death. The author also questions the scientific integrity of the medical profession and suggests that much of medicine is charlatanism for billing.
5. Unnatural Keys – Nature doesn’t come with identifiers
Total comment counts : 27
Summary
The article mentions the need for a database that contains all of the songs in the world. The purpose of this database is to properly identify unknown songs and ensure proper attribution so that creators can get paid appropriately. The author notes that there are interesting engineering challenges that come with this goal.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the importance of identifying what your database is solving and what it is not. It gives an example of a database for research institutes and questions what qualifies as an institute. The article emphasizes the need for solving specific use cases and not trying to solve every issue as it can lead to a database being less useful. The author compares this to a recording of background noise not being a song unless it’s specifically intended to be one.
Top 2 Comment Summary
In Sweden, everyone is assigned a unique identifier, called a personnummer, at birth. However, using this identifier as a natural key in computer systems is a bad idea since not everyone has one, such as asylum seekers and temporary residents. Moreover, the identifier can change for a small percentage of people, causing inconvenience for users and system managers.
6. Former Dolphin team member addresses Steam/Valve’s takedown of Dolphin emulator
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the legality of breaking the encryption on Nintendo Wii games. While it is unclear whether it could be allowed by exception clauses for interoperability or fair use clauses, a judge would likely see the encryption as a copy protection mechanism, and breaking it would go against the DMCA. The article cites previous cases, such as DeCSS, that establish what counts as copy protection. Breaking the encryption’s intent as copy protection is what is important, not whether it works or not.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The common key found in the Dolphin emulator is a historical accident resulting from the method used to dump games after the Wii’s release, where people used certain DVD drives capable of reading non-standard Wii disc formats, burned them to DVDs and used modchips to make them look like original discs. At the time, these individuals had no way to decrypt the data, and the Wii expected it to be encrypted, so a copy of the common key was necessary to be compatible with game rips made for the Wii. This key is probably in Dolphin because it was entirely useless for preventing game copying.
7. Homebrew Hercules Graphics Card
Total comment counts : 5
Summary
The article discusses a homebrew Hercules Graphics Card PCB that was designed by a friendly tinkerer named Arek. The author of the article assembled the card and played beta tester for the design. The article provides a brief overview of the card and its capabilities. The card is not yet available for purchase, nor is it open sourced at the moment.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author recounts their experience with their first PC computer which had a Hercules card that had great resolution but could not handle most games. They hacked one game, Trolls, to run on it by finding where the game references the VGA 320x200 address and writing a TSR program with a buffer for the game to refer to. The experiment was successful but the game was barely playable at 8-10fps.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author recalls their first PC, which was a decommissioned CAD. It was a WYSE AT compatible computer with a passive-mainboard and an HGA connected to an amber display. They also mention how some Sierra adventure games supported HGA but were designed for color, making some puzzles hard to solve.
8. About Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library
Total comment counts : 11
Summary
This article explains that the website is using a security service to protect itself against online attacks. If a user triggers this security solution by submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data, they will be blocked from accessing the site. To notify the site owner that they have been blocked, the user can email them, including details of what they were doing and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of the page.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article describes a program that sends lower-cost format books to children. These books have a blurb about the program and a picture of Dolly Parton holding a book, which children enjoy seeing.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s admiration for Dolly Parton despite their dislike for country music. They give credit to Parton for being a good person and a successful businesswoman despite facing societal and patriarchal barriers. The article provides a link to an article on Dolly Parton’s life and career.
9. YouTube removed dislike counts, so this guy made Rotten Tomatoes for YouTube
Total comment counts : 22
Summary
YouTube removed the ability for users to see dislike counts on videos at the end of 2021, citing the goal of protecting creators from harassment and dislike attacks. While this feature may not be coming back, alternatives to evaluate videos exist. A browser extension called Return YouTube Dislike effectively restores the feature on YouTube.com, while a new review site called Favoree allows users to give YouTube channels a rating out of five stars and write a review instead of simply giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. However, Favoree is a new site with only a small handful of YouTube channels currently represented.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the recent decision by YouTube to remove the public dislike counter for videos. The author indicates that the original intent of the dislike feature was primarily for tailoring recommendations and tuning algorithms and suggests that removing the public counter is a good solution as it suppresses trolling while maintaining the original function of the feature. The author suggests that the dislike feature could be abused by troll hordes and removing the public counter is a reasonable way to prevent this abuse and ensure the feature continues to improve the overall user experience.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article states that the option to sort videos in a YouTube channel in chronological order has been removed, which is considered strange.
10. Real Property Disposition: Historic lighthouses
Total comment counts : 4
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
The GSA wants to transfer domain names to NGOs, local or state governments. If they cannot find a suitable recipient, the domains will be sold through an auction.
Top 2 Comment Summary
I’m sorry, but I cannot summarize an article without its content. The link provided appears to be broken. Could you please provide me with the correct link or the article’s content?