1. Messages that can only be understood under the influence of psychedelics
Total comment counts : 46
Summary
A panel of judges from QRI’s international phenomenologist network scored submissions to a Psychedelic Cryptography contest based on their effectiveness, specificity, and aesthetic value. Only three submissions showed promise, using a classic method that exploits tracer effects to “write out” images or text over time.The encoded information pops out in a psychedelic state of consciousness, presenting the first clear demonstration of a real perceptual computational advantage of psychedelic states. Judges speculated this could lead to a wave of PsyCrypt emerging in movies within five years. The confirmation is also significant for neuroscience and consciousness research.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a video that has been decoded using long exposure or faster playback. The author claims that the video becomes readable at 2.5x and is clear at 4x. They argue that this contradicts the claim that the video demonstrates a computational advantage of psychedelic states of consciousness.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article provides a link to a set of messages that were decoded using the ffmpeg tool. The messages contained the phrases “WE LOVE YOU,” “UNIVERSE IS THE GATE,” and “MIND IS THE LOCK.” The article also notes that the negative space in the messages could be used to make the puzzle tougher to solve in a hacker tournament.
2. Preparing for the Incoming Computer Shopper Tsunami
Total comment counts : 31
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article talks about how the magazine “Computer Shopper” was like a bible to some people back in the day. The author reminisces about rushing home with a new issue, looking for new PC components and checking for new BBS listings. The younger generation may not understand the idea of long-distance or phone usage being metered and billed per unit. However, the author is thrilled that the magazines are being preserved so that the legacy lives on.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article describes a project in the late 1990s to scan every LEGO instruction and catalog booklet. The curator faced challenges with Moiré patterns and concluded that 100-150dpi was the best resolution. There were concerns about LEGO’s legal team, so the website did not initially have thumbnails or HTML to avoid seeming commercial, but LEGO customer service eventually referred people to the site. Today, the archive can be found at peeron.com.
3. Reddit’s plan to kill third-party apps sparks widespread protests
Total comment counts : 50
Summary
Reddit is facing a widespread protest from hundreds of subreddits who are unhappy about the planned imposition of an API fee on third-party apps. Reddit is moving more towards a traditional social network, with an acknowledged inferior official app launched in 2016. Before this, it was up to third-party apps to provide complementary services. Now, third-party app developers such as Apollo, Narwhal and Reddit is Fun face API bills of up to $20m a year. Combined with the need to block ads and exclude adult content in third-party apps, it will likely force apps to adopt a paid subscription model.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Reddit is allegedly bumping metrics in order to generate growth in advance of its upcoming IPO. One way they are attempting to steer users towards the official app and exercising tighter control is by creating localized versions of popular subreddits such as r/offmychest and r/tooafraidtoask. Reddit administrators have been contacting moderators from community groups to elevate these new subreddits, however, some have found generic, poorly translated posts with very little activity – suggesting the use of bots to try and artificially force engagement in non-English markets before Reddit’s IPO.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The official Reddit app has several bugs that make it difficult for moderators of large communities to manage the content. These bugs include failed loading of posts or the feed, non-loading videos, and displaying moderator controls for communities not being moderated. Moderators have to resort to clearing the cache or using third-party apps to manage their communities. Reddit needs to find a solution, such as lowering API costs for developers, to prevent losing its users.
4. Passkeys now support external providers
Total comment counts : 18
Summary
Apple has launched “passkeys,” which allow users to create and share passwords in groups, and sync them with external providers. Managed Apple IDs can now support passkeys via iCloud Keychain, with access controls allowing users to restrict how they’re shared and synced. Apple claims that passkeys replace passwords with cryptographic key pairs that improve security, making them safe from phishing or server leaks. Credentials are never reused or weak, so there is no need for users to create or manage passwords. Enterprises can use Managed Apple ID support for iCloud Keychain, and passkeys can also be saved on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS via password manager apps.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the benefits of passkeys, FIDO2 and WebAuthn. It highlights that passkeys are strong, never guessable, reused or weak, and are safe from server leaks and phishing attempts. Additionally, servers are less valuable targets for hackers as they only keep public keys.
Top 2 Comment Summary
Apple’s new iOS/iPadOS 15 and macOS 12 Sierra update will allow external sync fabrics, such as password managers, to be used, which is significant news as vendor lock-in and the inability to use an outside sync was one of the biggest issues brought up when discussing passkeys.
5. US SEC sues Coinbase, one day after suing Binance
Total comment counts : 25
Summary
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a lawsuit against cryptocurrency platform Coinbase for operating as a middleman on crypto transactions while evading disclosure requirements meant to protect investors. The SEC accuses Coinbase of trading at least 13 crypto assets that are securities that should have been registered. The civil lawsuit seeks civil fines, the recouping of ill-gotten gains, and injunctive relief. The move follows the SEC having taken aim at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, the previous day. If successful, the lawsuits could transform the crypto market by asserting the SEC’s jurisdiction over the industry.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article explains that Bitcoin is not an ordinary security or financial instrument but is more like a commodity. However, a crypto currency business may engage in trading negotiable financial instruments such as stable coins that have a direct relationship to a traditional currency. More creative negotiable financial instruments such as options, derivatives, swaps, and futures are also classified as securities. The Supreme Court has a broader definition of securities, but it remains unclear whether a commodity currency like Bitcoin meets that definition. However, other products offered by crypto currency exchanges might be classified as securities.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article argues that crypto companies are wrong to believe that they do not trade securities, as their advertising indicates otherwise. People often purchase cryptocurrency without a real use for it, but with the expectation that they can sell it for a profit later. This makes cryptocurrency clearly a security, and failing to register it as such should result in legal action by the SEC.
6. Nvidia releases new AI chip with 480GB CPU RAM, 96GB GPU RAM
Total comment counts : 19
Summary
NVIDIA has introduced the GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip, an accelerated CPU designed for giant-scale AI and high-performance computing (HPC) applications. It delivers up to 10 times higher performance and can run terabytes of data. It combines technologies such as the Grace and Hopper architectures and uses NVIDIA NVLink-C2C to deliver a CPU+GPU coherent memory model for accelerated AI and HPC applications in AI training, inference, and HPC. The superchip will join more than 400 configurations on the market that will meet the growing demand for generative AI.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Nvidia has announced a new AI supercomputer, DGX- GH200, which boasts 1 exaflop of processing power and 144 TB of memory. A turnkey product with 256 of these units is also available.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article speculates about the availability of Nvidia’s new GH200 chip and its impact on the production of other high-margin products such as the H100 and 4090s. The author wonders if there will be a reduction in the production of those products due to the use of TSMC’s 4N fabrication capacity for the new chip. The author also notes the current lack of availability for ML training in the cloud due to limited GPU capacity.
7. OpenGL 3.1 on Asahi Linux
Total comment counts : 24
Summary
Asahi Linux has upgraded its graphics drivers from OpenGL 2.1 over OpenGL 3.0 up to OpenGL 3.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 support is bumping up to OpenGL ES 3.0, allowing for more playable games and more efficient applications. The drivers are experimental and not yet conformant to the OpenGL or OpenGL ES specifications and users will have to run their “edge” packages to opt-in to the work-in-progress drivers. The new functionality packed into OpenGL 3.0, 3.1, and OpenGL ES 3.0 include multisampled anti-aliasing to improve the resolution in graphics, and sample shading to enable the rendering of each pixel per sample.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The latest update in Asahi Linux includes a cpuidle driver that decreases the idle power consumption, improves battery runtime, and enables CPU boost states for single- and low-threaded workloads. The update also fixes timekeeping issues causing journald to crash, resolves touchpad instability issues, and includes a firmware-based battery charge control. Moreover, U-Boot now supports the Type A USB ports, and the kernel release includes basic support for the M2 Pro/Max/Ultra SoCs.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author expresses gratitude for the freedom they feel from using Asahi on their MacBook Air for over a year instead of x86. They don’t want to go back because the neural engine drivers will allow them to maximize the machine’s capabilities. They recently switched to the edge branch and noticed no difference in their day-to-day tasks, indicating how powerful the M1 is. The author ends the article thanking Asahi for existing.
8. Apple releasing segmentation/pose for humans and animals, embedding for 27 lang
Total comment counts : 8
Summary
The article discusses various updates and enhancements to Apple’s machine learning frameworks, including Vision, Create ML, and Natural Language. The updates include the ability to detect animal poses and lifts subjects from images in real time, as well as improvements in text-based tasks and model training. The article also mentions resources for developers to learn more about these updates and how to implement them in their apps, such as video sessions and text-based Q&A sessions with Apple engineers. Additionally, the article covers topics such as model compression, optimizations for handling model loading, and ways to improve app performance with async prediction.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article includes three links, one of which is a tweet that questions whether “access” refers only to Apple devices and not an Apache 2 licensed Github repository. The other two links are to a Google demo of face landmarking and the Google Mediapipe Github repository.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author recalls when pose detection was first announced and how it could potentially be used in an app that corrects workout movements. However, the author is skeptical about seeing apps that actually utilize this technology. The author believes that most developers are not taking advantage of platform-specific APIs like pose detection and are instead porting web apps to all platforms. The author asks for links to any awesome apps that use pose detection.
9. Why SQLite is so great for the edge
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
The article praises SQLite for its suitability as a database for edge environments, such as serverless functions that demand compactness and optimal performance. SQLite is lighter than similar products like Postgres, which makes it easier to deploy multiple instances on a single machine, ultimately reducing hardware costs and improving developer experience. SQLite is highly optimized as a database library and possesses good test coverage. Its extension mechanism allows for the addition of endless functionalities, making it even more flexible. Additionally, the WebAssembly feature of SQLite allows it to run efficiently on browsers and in edge environments that run serverless functions in the form of Wasm modules.
Top 1 Comment Summary
Cloudflare provides SQLite on their platform as D1 and it includes replication. The idea of “edge” doesn’t make sense instead code and data should move around as needed for the best performance. The “Supercloud” is a vision that includes going beyond the single optimization of bringing code near the user and taking into account where data resides and what APIs are called.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author has utilized SQLite in a telemetry system for an electric race car. The system involves logging thousands of messages per second into three SQLite databases from an onboard computer, merging them into a single session log, and decoding the session log into time series data on another computer. SQLite proved to be more flexible, easier to use, and had a higher throughput than CSV files and raw binary formats. The author’s setup has successfully processed many rows of data and the SQLite project specifies that SQLite is not a competitor with client/server databases, but rather with fopen().
10. Digg’s v4 launch: an optimism born of necessity (2018)
Total comment counts : 19
Summary
The article describes the launch of a new version of Digg, intended to move from a community-driven news aggregator to an infinitely personalized aggregator driven by blending social graphs and top influencers. The launch was marked by an office celebration, but things quickly went downhill as the new site didn’t come up, with only a maintenance page cajoling visitors. Engineers decided to continue rolling forward, and the old infrastructure was entirely gone, replaced by the new version. However, the new site was still staggering under load, with most pages failing to load, and it took several days to fix numerous problems. Ultimately, the rewritten version was limping and required manual restarts of every process each four hours.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s opinion that the Digg v4 launch was considered a catastrophe due to technical problems, but the reader only remembers being disappointed with the website’s content after logging in one day.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a common error in Python known as a “footgun” where default parameter values are not properly initialized, causing mutations to be saved across invocations. The author describes how this issue occurred in their own API server and questions how such a well-known issue could make it into production. They suggest that experienced Python developers should be able to easily spot and avoid this problem.