1. Mechanical Watch (2022)
Total comment counts : 30
Summary
This article discusses the inner workings of mechanical watches. It explains the different parts of the watch movement and their functions. It also explains how mechanical watches are powered by a spiral torsion spring called the mainspring, which is wound using an arbor. The article emphasizes the importance of the mainspring as the storage of energy for the watch. It concludes by mentioning that the barrel, which holds the mainspring, is released to allow the stored energy to power the other parts of the watch.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This blog post discusses the author’s interest in watch repairing, which was inspired by a blog and repair videos by Marshall at Wristwatch Revival. The author finds watch repairing to be a rewarding hobby that requires patience. They enjoy the process of disassembling, cleaning, and meticulously reassembling watches. They note that watches are designed to be taken apart and find it unique that there are few modern objects that allow for this.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a project to create a mechanical watch with only one hand, the hour hand. The watch will be wound by rotating the bezel, which in turn rotates the mainspring barrel. The hour hand is mounted on the inner barrel, which completes one revolution every 12 hours. The movement includes gearings-down and an escapement to regulate the speed of the inner barrel. To set the time, the movement can be rotated anticlockwise by turning the bezel. The article also mentions the successful ticking of an almost-watch-scale escapement. Further details about the project can be found in the provided links.
2. Mixtral of experts
Total comment counts : 28
Summary
The article is about Mistral AI’s release of a new open-source model called Mixtral 8x7B. Mixtral is a high-quality sparse mixture of experts model (SMoE) that outperforms Llama 2 70B on most benchmarks and has 6x faster inference. It is a decoder-only model that uses a router network to select groups of parameters to process each token. This technique increases the number of parameters while controlling cost and latency. Mixtral has 46.7B total parameters but only uses 12.9B parameters per token. It is pre-trained on data from the open web and performs well in various languages. The article also mentions that Mixtral has fewer biases compared to Llama 2 and provides options for moderation. Mistral AI has made changes to the vLLM project to enable the community to run Mixtral with a fully open-source stack.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses Andrej Karpathy’s comments on Mixtral 8x7B, a language model created by OpenAI. The article includes links to official posts, PRs, and explanations related to Mixtral 8x7B. It mentions that the model performs at a bit above 70B in naive decoding, with an inference speed of approximately 12.9B dense model out of a total of 46.7B parameters. The article also clarifies some points about the model, such as the use of “open weights” instead of “open source” and the selection of experts in each token and layer.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article states that there are more models available on Huggingface. It provides links to the Huggingface website where these models can be accessed. The models mentioned are Mixtral-8x7B-v0.1, available from both Mistralai and TheBloke.
3. Pitivi – Free video editor with a beautiful and intuitive user interface
Total comment counts : 17
Summary
The article discusses Pitivi, a Free video editor known for its attractive user interface, well-organized codebase, and supportive community. The reader is invited to join the community or consider donating to support the project.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author has been using various Linux-based non-linear video editors (NLEs) for editing their podcast and guides for many years. They mention that popular options like Kdenlive, OpenShot, Olive, Cinelerra, Blender, and Pitivi all lack stability, leading to the risk of losing a significant amount of work between auto saves. In 2017, the author purchased a license and capture card for audio from BlackMagic after trying out the free version of Resolve. The early versions of Resolve lacked ALSA support, but the author found it to be stable during editing sessions that can last up to 8 to 10 hours. Despite the stability, the author still manually saves their work regularly.
Top 2 Comment Summary
This article suggests that if a product needs to explicitly state that it has a beautiful and intuitive user interface, it likely does not. The article criticizes a screenshot on the tour page of an application titled “Stunning Elegance” for looking similar to any desktop app developed in the past 10 years. Additionally, the article mocks the description of the product as “Easy to learn. Exciting to master”, suggesting that this is overly exaggerated marketing language. Overall, the article advises readers to be cautious of such claims and to approach the product with skepticism.
4. Mistral: Our first AI endpoints are available in early access
Total comment counts : 23
Summary
Mistral AI has launched a beta access to its platform services. The platform offers three chat endpoints for generating text based on textual instructions and an embedding endpoint. Each endpoint has a different performance and price tradeoff. The mistral-tiny and mistral-small endpoints use open models, while mistral-medium uses a prototype model with higher performance. Mistral-tiny achieves a score of 7.6 on MT-Bench, mistral-small achieves a score of 8.3 on MT-Bench, and mistral-medium achieves a score of 8.6 on MT-Bench. The platform also includes an embedding endpoint with a 1024 embedding dimension. Mistral AI provides a Python and Javascript client library to query the endpoints and allows users to set a higher level of moderation on model outputs. The API is available for registration and the company’s business team can assist with qualifying needs and accelerating access. Mistral AI acknowledges NVIDIA’s support in integrating TensorRT-LLM and Triton for compatibility with a sparse mixture of experts.
Top 1 Comment Summary
This article discusses a small company that has received a valuation of $2 billion. They have developed a highly performant model that can handle 7 billion parameters and another model that performs at the level of a 70 billion parameter model. The writer believes that this company could pose a bigger threat to OpenAI than Google or Anthropic. With the recent investment they received, the company is expected to scale and attract top researchers in the field.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The mistral-medium model outperforms GPT3.5 and Gemini Pro on various benchmarks, demonstrating impressive real-world performance. A screenshot of the benchmarks can be found at the provided link. The article suggests that the performance gap may be even larger when compared to Mistral 7B. Additionally, the opt-in safety filters of the mistral-medium model are seen as a significant advantage, even for safe applications.
5. John Carmack and John Romero reunited to talk DOOM on its 30th Anniversary
Total comment counts : 21
Summary
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the launch of the game Doom, co-founders of id Software, John Carmack and John Romero, reunited for an interview. They reflected on the development of Doom and shared their perspectives on their own work. Carmack expressed regret for not including flashier graphical effects in the game’s engine, while Romero praised Doom for being a technical “sweet spot.” They also discussed the limitations of the time and reminisced about the iconic box art and marketing of Doom. Both developers expressed pride in their work and gratitude towards the Doom community. The full conversation is available on John Romero’s Twitch channel. Additionally, Romero’s latest Doom megawad, Sigil 2, is available for free download. Other Doom-related content, such as the Eviternity megawad sequel campaign and the Cacowards list for this year, are also mentioned.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article tells a story from Kansasfest 1992, where the author heard about some people who developed a successful 3D game and made over $800,000 in shareware fees in just a month. The author saw a brief demonstration of the game, Wolf3D, and thought it looked impressive. The next day, the author encountered John Carmack, the developer behind the game, and complimented his previous game, Wraith. Carmack responded by saying he had gotten better since then. The article concludes by mentioning that Carmack was about to release Doom, highlighting his progression as a game developer.
Top 2 Comment Summary
“Masters of Doom” is a book that provides an entertaining account of how id Software began and explores the careers of John Romero and John Carmack, the creators of the popular game DOOM. For more information, you can visit the Wikipedia page here.
6. Low Latency, Low Loss, and Scalable Throughput (L4S) Internet Service: RFC 9330
Total comment counts : 22
Summary
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Top 1 Comment Summary
The article explains how congestion is communicated between the sender and receiver in a network. There are three flags involved in this process. The sender sets a flag to inform routers that it can handle Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN). The router then sets a flag to indicate congestion to the recipient, instead of dropping the packet. The recipient, upon receiving the packet with the congestion flag, sets a flag in its next TCP ACK to inform the sender. The sender reacts to the congestion as if a packet had been dropped and acknowledges the recipient’s flag in the TCP header of the next packet sent.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a cool technology that was demonstrated at the IETF 118 in Prague. This technology eliminates buffer bloat, which is beneficial for video chat. The technology inserts an additional bit into IP packets to carry information about full buffers. The author was impressed with the demo and felt like they were living in the future.
7. The surprising connection between after-hours work and decreased productivity
Total comment counts : 44
Summary
Slack’s Workforce Index conducted a survey of over 10,000 desk workers worldwide to identify how to structure the workday for maximum productivity and well-being. The findings suggest that working after hours is often linked to lower productivity and may indicate that employees are overwhelmed with tasks and need support in prioritizing and managing their time. Approximately 37% of desk workers log in outside of standard hours due to pressure, resulting in 20% lower productivity scores compared to those who adhere to the standard workday. Those who choose to work outside of standard hours report no negative effects and even experience improved wellness and productivity. The study also highlights that many desk workers struggle to balance their time at work, with executives spending excessive time in meetings and emails. It further reveals that half of desk workers rarely or never take breaks during the workday, which leads to higher burnout rates. However, those who take breaks have higher scores for work-life balance, better stress and anxiety management, greater overall satisfaction, and slightly higher productivity scores. The survey also indicates that the late afternoon, between 3 and 6pm, is the least productive time for desk workers, regardless of their preferred productivity hours. The study encourages the recognition that productivity is not linear and occurs in bursts throughout the day, rather than in prescribed time windows or uninterrupted eight-hour blocks.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the irrelevance of hours worked and the importance of focusing on achieving reliable results within a specified timeframe. It emphasizes that overscheduling and underscheduling are common, and unexpected issues can arise that require adjustments in work hours. The author highlights the need for a balance in effort across the team, with everyone recognizing the long-term benefits of a job well done. They also mention the joy of working slowly after hours to understand the work better and the significance of personal investment in a project’s success. The article suggests building a world where productivity, happiness, and ease thrive, and mentions individuals who handle work calmly even in unconventional settings or hours.
Top 2 Comment Summary
According to the article, employees who log off at the end of the workday have 20% higher productivity scores compared to those who work after hours. The data is based on a survey from over 10,000 desk workers conducted by Slack’s Workforce Index. However, the validity of the data is questioned as it is self-reported, and it is suggested that after-hours workers may rate their productivity lower and 9-5 workers may rate their productivity higher.
8. Beeper Mini is back
Total comment counts : 95
Summary
The article discusses the release of an updated version of Beeper Mini, a messaging app. The update fixes an issue related to sending and receiving messages. Users can get the update from beeper.com/update. The update is also available on Google Play Store, along with new features such as opening chats at the last unread message and improvements to the video player. The article also mentions that phone number registration is not working, and users need to sign in with an AppleID. Messages will be sent and received via email instead of phone number, and the team is working on a fix for this. Beeper Mini is now free to use, and the subscriptions may be turned on later. The Play Store ranking of Beeper Mini dropped, so leaving a review would be helpful. The article also discusses the success of Beeper Mini in terms of downloads and popularity. It mentions an issue with messages not being sent or received, and the team fixed it for Beeper Cloud. The team is sorry for the inconvenience caused by the outage. An update is being released to fix Beeper Mini, allowing users to sign in and send/receive messages. There is mention of a statement from Apple about blocking techniques to protect iMessage, but the article disputes it and claims that Beeper Mini made communication between Android and iPhone users more secure.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses two issues related to Apple’s Messages app. The first issue is that messages are sent and received via email address instead of phone numbers. The second issue is that when an Android phone number is added to a group chat, the app automatically switches the entire chat to unencrypted SMS, causing inconvenience and a poor user experience. This results in messages being received as email attachments with addresses such as 2345678901@domain. Additionally, the article criticizes the app for making it difficult to distinguish between email addresses and phone numbers in group chats and not prioritizing phone numbers when both are available for a contact.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the AOL/MSN chat wars, where AOL eventually gained an advantage by utilizing a buffer exploit in their client. However, they were later court-ordered to allow messaging interoperability, but they failed to implement it.
9. How many lines of C it takes to execute a + b in Python
Total comment counts : 19
Summary
error
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses someone’s patch to CPython, in which they replaced the hash function with a faster one, claiming that it significantly improved the runtime of Python. The hash function is used frequently, affecting tasks such as looking up object properties. The default implementation of the hash function prioritizes security over performance, assuming the software may be exposed to the web. The author suggests having an option to prioritize speed when offline.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article is interesting, but the author is disappointed that it didn’t mention the number of lines in C required to run. They suggest using a profiler to calculate this.
10. Templ: A language for writing HTML user interfaces in Go
Total comment counts : 26
Summary
The article discusses a language for writing HTML user interfaces in Go. It emphasizes the importance of user feedback and provides information on how to use and install the language. It also includes instructions on running tests, benchmarks, and formatting code. The article concludes by mentioning the creation of a production build and the availability of user documentation.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the backlash against complex technologies like React in building modern JavaScript applications. The author believes that although frameworks like Ember, React, Vue, and Angular were created with good intentions, they have become unmanageable due to additional technologies and build tools. The author states their intention to simplify by using htmx for the web client and Django for rendering templates, avoiding dependency issues and build tools. They also mention the perception of JavaScript as a villain, despite its purpose of enabling rich client applications within browsers.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the author’s initial skepticism towards using Templ templates instead of HTML templating. However, after hearing the author on a podcast episode, the article highlights the compelling arguments made for using Templ templates. The most convincing point mentioned is that Templ templates are compile time safe, unlike built-in templates which may crash at run time. The article includes a link to the podcast episode for further information.