1. MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown
Total comment counts : 30
Summary
mdBook is a command line tool that enables the creation of books using Markdown. It is particularly useful for generating product or API documentation, tutorials, and course materials that require a user-friendly and customizable presentation. mdBook is utilized by the Rust programming language project and The Rust Programming Language book. It is free and open source, with its source code available on GitHub. Users are encouraged to contribute to the improvement of mdBook by fixing bugs or adding features, and the software is released under the Mozilla Public License v2.0.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses a platform’s use of CDN-hosted libraries instead of bundling or vendoring. This exposes users to potential CDNs outages and the data collected by these servers. Additionally, the article argues that the use of Highlight.js + MathJax on the front-end is inefficient as it requires all clients to parse and render the syntax/LaTeX, which taxes CPUs and batteries. This parsing is also idempotent, meaning it is done for the same result on every page visit, which is unnecessary. The article suggests that syntax highlighting should be done at build time and should not require JavaScript.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article provides a list of different website building and documentation tools, including Jekyll, Hugo Book, MdBook, MkDocs, MkDocs Material, GitBook, Antora, Docusaurus, Nextra, Astro, Starlight, Clowncar, Keenwrite, Quarto, Honkit, and JupyterBook. These tools can be used to create websites and manage documentation.
2. Terrible real estate agent photographs
Total comment counts : 68
Summary
The article discusses a collection of poorly taken photographs of various properties. These photos are described as both amusing and horrifying. They are considered to be some of the worst examples of real estate photography, and have gained popularity on the internet for their unintentional humor.
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In this interview, the author discusses the importance of using real estate marketplace photos and verifying their origin for their blog. They mention that without proper verification, the content becomes unverifiable user-generated content. They also mention that they do not use images that are not taken for the purpose of marketing a house, even if they are funny or shocking.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author tells a story about an acquaintance who is both an FBI investigator and a realtor. This person accidentally uploaded surveillance photos from a stakeout, along with listing photos, onto a public real estate website. The photos remained online for a few days before being removed. The author questions whether this behavior makes the acquaintance a worse law enforcement agent or a worse real estate agent.
3. Anna’s Archive: Open-source data library
Total comment counts : 19
Summary
Anna’s Archive is a non-profit project that aims to preserve various forms of media, such as books, papers, comics, and magazines, by gathering them from different shadow libraries and storing them in one place. The project ensures the long-term preservation of this data by allowing easy duplication in bulk, resulting in multiple copies distributed globally. By utilizing open-source code, the website is resistant to takedowns. Anna’s Archive also collaborates with partners to provide free and accessible access to its collections, as it believes in everyone’s right to access the collective wisdom of humanity. The catalog includes popular books as well as those deemed significant to the world of shadow libraries and digital preservation.
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The article discusses the importance of accessibility for blind individuals, particularly when it comes to reading digital books. Many popular platforms like Kindle and Apple Books use DRM (Digital Rights Management), which can pose challenges for blind people who use Braille e-readers. Previously, there were tools available to remove DRM, but Kindle has now made changes that render these tools ineffective. As a result, blind individuals have to rely on websites that offer DRM-free EPUB versions of books in order to read them on their preferred device. The article also draws a comparison to using emulators and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to read text from a screen.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article, “Against Intellectual Monopoly” by David K Levine and Michele Boldrin, argues that what is commonly referred to as intellectual property is actually an intellectual monopoly. They claim that this monopoly hinders the free and competitive market, which has been responsible for bringing wealth and innovation.
4. Atom feed format was born 20 years ago
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
This article celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Atom feed format, which was born in June 2003 through a collaborative effort among software developers, web publishers, and technologists. The development of RSS 2.0 had been fragmented, but Atom aimed to create a well-specified syndication format and publishing API that could become Internet standards. The Atom project involved numerous discussions and debates, including a four-month-long discussion about naming it, resulting in the final choice of Atom. The road map of the Atom wiki highlights the various people, companies, and projects involved in creating this new feed format. Eventually, Atom became an IETF standard in 2005, edited by Mark Nottingham and Robert Sayre, and is widely used today without the arguments that plagued its development.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses the differences between Atom and RSS. It highlights that while Atom is technically more correct, RSS gained wider support due to the social factors involved. The success of RSS can be attributed to Dave Winer, who effectively communicated and evangelized its goals, connected partners, and documented his work. Despite being “worse” in terms of specification, RSS achieved popularity among content creators. On the other hand, Atom focused on technical correctness at the expense of being complicated and difficult to understand. It was led and promoted by individuals lacking the social skills to make it popular beyond technical circles.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s preference for Atom over RSS. The author highlights three reasons why they prefer Atom:
Atom has separate “updated” and “published” fields, while RSS only has “pubDate”. The author finds it unnecessary for RSS to include a redundant day of the week in the date.
Atom allows the use of HTML directly using the “” format, while RSS only allows “entity-encoded HTML” in the “” field.
RSS includes redundant “” and “” elements, leaving feed readers unsure of which one to use.
5. How long can open-source LLMs truly promise on context length?
Total comment counts : 9
Summary
The blog post introduces the LongChat-7B and LongChat-13B chatbot models, which have an extended context length of up to 16K tokens. The evaluation results show that LongChat-13B has a higher long-range retrieval accuracy compared to other similar models. The post discusses the challenges of verifying the claimed context length of models and introduces the LongEval test suite to measure long-context performance. The evaluation shows that LongChat models perform well in tasks such as topic retrieval and line retrieval. The models also demonstrate strong performance in human preference benchmarks. Overall, LongChat models show promising results in bridging the gap between open models and proprietary long-context models.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author of the article believes that smaller models with larger context are not a magical solution, and it was not expected by anyone paying attention. The only model that the author considers usable for building a product is Falcon 40BN in open source. The author believes that longer context is not useful without a model that can effectively utilize it. In open-source, there is currently no incentive to develop such a model. However, the author acknowledges that there are efforts within the community to train larger models for open-source use.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article mentions various news items including the SuperHOT LORA and its corresponding paper, the Salesforce model, MPT, and another piece of news.
6. NJ Supreme Court says cops need a wiretap to eavesdrop on your Facebook posts
Total comment counts : 4
Summary
The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that law enforcement must obtain a wiretap in order to force the near-simultaneous disclosure of private social media postings. This decision is a win for Facebook and has been closely watched by civil liberties advocates. The court ruled against authorities who argued that a warrant is sufficient to obtain real-time release of such communications, stating that this argument is unsupported by federal or state statute. Allowing such releases without a wiretap would render the state’s wiretap law obsolete. The court emphasized the need for heightened protections required under state law and the federal and state constitutions when the government seeks ongoing access to private conversations. The ruling also found that releases under a communications data warrant would violate other privacy protections.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the issue of accessing private Facebook posts by law enforcement. It argues that if the recipient of the messages is willing to share their account with law enforcement, there should be no need for a wiretap. Similarly, if a Facebook post is shared within a private group of friends, law enforcement should only be able to access it if someone in the group reveals the post or if there is a wiretap. The author sees this as a rational solution to the issue.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article suggests that people should be cautious about what they share publicly on social media. It emphasizes the importance of setting privacy settings to protect personal information and avoid incrimination.
7. Keeping Open Source Open
Total comment counts : 24
Summary
The article discusses the Rocky Enterprise Software Foundation’s commitment to open-source software and the challenges they face due to Red Hat’s limited access to the sources for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). They explain how they obtain the source code from various sources and rely on alternative methods, such as UBI container images and pay-per-use public cloud instances, to obtain the RHEL binaries and SRPMs. They emphasize their dedication to open source and the Enterprise Linux community and assure their unwavering commitment to continuing Rocky Linux’s services. They also invite users to contribute and support their efforts.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article suggests two methods for obtaining Red Hat sources reliably and easily. The first method is using UBI container images based on RHEL, which can be obtained from various online sources. The second method involves spinning up pay-per-use public cloud instances and obtaining the source code for all packages and errata. The article highlights that these methods have been validated and can be scaled efficiently through CI pipelines.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author suggests that the solution to IBM’s unwillingness to share is forking the Red Hat ecosystem. They believe that the value of the ecosystem lies in the downstream variants used by many people, and not directly with IBM. They argue that if IBM is removed from the loop, the ecosystem will continue elsewhere. The author predicts that Red Hat employees will face layoffs and reorganizations due to IBM’s decline, and proposes a well-funded foundation to maintain the forked distribution. They urge not to play IBM’s game on their terms and to cut them loose. The author believes that if the ecosystem’s big supporters come together, IBM will eventually join the foundation rather than lose their investment in Red Hat.
8. BGP.Tools: Browse the Internet Ecosystem
Total comment counts : 8
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article praises a tool built by Ben, describing it as nice and indispensable for network engineers. It encourages network engineers to use it and mentions that it offers Prometheus metrics as a feed format for paying customers. The article also mentions that the tool is an improvement over bgp.he.net and highlights the impressive changelog.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article explains that by using the command “ssh lg@bgp.tools”, users can access a terminal-based tool called “Looking Glass” which provides insights into internet routing from various providers. The tool can be accessed through the website “https://www.bgplookingglass.com/".
9. File for divorce from LLVM
Total comment counts : 28
Summary
The article discusses a proposal to eliminate LLVM, Clang, and LLD libraries from the Zig project. This would remove C++, Objective-C, and Objective-C++ compilation capabilities from Zig. While this move may initially affect the machine code generated by Zig and reduce the number of supported targets, the long-term goal is for Zig to catch up or surpass LLVM and GCC in terms of performance. The proposal highlights the benefits of developing Zig’s own optimization passes and attracting contributions from chip manufacturers. However, critics argue that removing C++ compilation capabilities would negatively impact the Zig ecosystem, limiting access to existing libraries and tools. They believe that until Zig’s pure-Zig library ecosystem matures, LLVM is still needed.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author believes that the team behind the programming language Zig will shift their focus from Zig itself to other tools like binutils after declaring it as a goal. The author initially thought that Zig’s compiler would be thrown out, but realizes that there are benefits to keeping it. However, they find it ambitious to rewrite the LLVM project in Zig instead of C++. They also note that if Zig becomes popular, it may face the issue of accidentally quadratic code like the LLVM project.
Top 2 Comment Summary
This article discusses two issues related to compiler development: code generation and bootstrapping. The author explains that optimizing passes of a compiler can be enjoyable to write, but the process of converting intermediate representation (IR) into machine code can be tedious, especially when dealing with different encodings for instructions. Additionally, the author highlights the challenge of bootstrapping, which involves compiling a compiler using itself. The article suggests that these issues can potentially discourage contributors due to the complex and time-consuming build processes involved.
10. How the great firewall of China detects and blocks fully encrypted traffic [pdf]
Total comment counts : 31
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article does not mention VPNs, but it is important to note that using VPNs in China can provide access to the international internet. However, it also comes with potential legal risks. In 2017, the Chinese government declared unauthorized VPN services to be illegal. One example of the consequences is the case of Vera Zhou, a student at the University of Washington. When she used a VPN to access her school homework while visiting her parents in Xinjiang, she was arrested and sent to an internment camp from October 2017 until March 2018. After her release, she was put under house arrest and was unable to return to the US until September 2019.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author of the article shares their experiences experimenting with circumventing the Great Firewall of China (GFW) before the pandemic. They found that the GFW would quickly detect and block methods such as shadowsocks and random ssh tunnels within 48 hours, requiring them to constantly rotate IP addresses. However, they discovered that piggy-backing off a physical line from Shenzhen to Hong Kong and using a VPN to access that gateway consistently worked for bypassing the GFW. They surmise that the GFW’s traffic analysis and blocking may be conducted at the edge rather than within it, although this information might be outdated.