1. Viagra improves brain blood flow and could help to prevent dementia
Total comment counts : 43
Summary
A recent trial conducted by the University of Oxford has shown that sildenafil, commonly known as Viagra, can improve blood flow to the brain and enhance the function of brain blood vessels in individuals at risk of vascular dementia. This study marks an important advancement in the treatment of this debilitating condition. Chronic damage to small blood vessels in the brain is the main cause of vascular dementia and also contributes to strokes and brain bleeds. The trial involved 75 participants who had experienced a minor stroke and showed signs of small vessel disease. Sildenafil, a placebo, and a similar drug called cilostazol were given to the participants in random order. The results of the trial suggest that sildenafil has the potential to prevent vascular dementia and further research is needed to confirm these findings. This study was funded by the Wellcome Trust and supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the origins of a certain class of medication, stating that it was originally developed for cardiovascular issues. However, the article suggests that the discovery of its usefulness in mitigating erectile dysfunction (ED) was an unintended and beneficial outcome that made the medication more marketable.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article warns that taking high doses of Viagra while hydrated and exercising can lead to tinnitus, which is caused by an excessive amount of blood flowing through small vessels in the ears.
2. Fixing a knockoff Altera USB Blaster that never worked
Total comment counts : 8
Summary
This article discusses the author’s experience fixing two flawed Altera USB Blaster clone devices that were not working correctly. The author had purchased these devices for their open-source project called Time Sleuths, which measures the time it takes for a TV or monitor to display an image. The author initially tried to find a cheaper alternative to the official Altera/Intel USB Blaster JTAG cable and opted for the Waveshare USB Blaster V2. However, they soon discovered that the device did not work properly in Linux, despite claims of compatibility. It only worked reliably in Windows. The author opened up the device and examined its components, noting that it used an FTDI FT245RL, an Altera EPM3064A CPLD, and a Nexperia 74LVC244A buffer. The author questioned why the device worked in Windows but not Linux and decided to investigate further using a hardware USB sniffer.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a previous incident where FTDI, a chip manufacturer, purposely disabled chips used by users of cloned devices. Although the current problem mentioned in the article is unrelated to this deliberate action, the author suggests considering the past incident for context.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article mentions the availability of affordable clones that are based on the Cypress FX2LP, which can serve multiple functions such as a logic analyzer, signal generator, USB-parallel, or USB-serial adapter.
3. Piku: Allows git push deployments to your own servers
Total comment counts : 31
Summary
The article summarizes a tool called Piku that allows users to deploy applications to their own servers using the git push command. Piku is considered stable and actively maintained, supporting multiple applications per host on ARM and Intel architectures. It works on any cloud provider or bare metal system that can run Python, nginx, and uwsgi. Piku supports virtual host support, SSL certificate setup, and URL mapping for static assets and caching responses. The tool is designed to work in POSIX-like environments and supports various languages.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The author expresses their admiration for piku and mentions that they have written a web app tutorial for piku. The tutorial has been turned into a repository under the official GitHub piku organization. The author provides a link to the tutorial, which explains how piku works and includes an example of a minimalistic Python web app from a user’s perspective.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the preview of Cloud Native Buildpacks (CNB), an open specification in the CNCF for Buildpacks targeting OCI. This allows users to generate a docker image locally using build tooling similar to Heroku’s “git push” logic. The author also provides a tutorial for building a Rails app with the buildpack they maintain. They encourage readers to provide feedback on their experience in the linked discussion.
4. Scalable MatMul-Free Language Modeling
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
The article discusses the introduction of arXivLabs, a framework for collaborating and sharing new features on the arXiv website. It emphasizes the importance of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy, which are core values of arXiv. The article invites individuals and organizations to contribute their ideas and projects to enhance the arXiv community. Additionally, it mentions the availability of status notifications via email or slack.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses a new paper that implements optimized and fused kernels using triton for a ternary weight Language Model (LLM) with quantization aware training (QAT). The main addition of the paper is the implementation of these optimized and fused kernels, which make training LLMs more efficient. The activations in the LLM are quantized to 8 bits and multiplied by one bit values. The article mentions that quantization aware training with low bit weights can reduce overfitting and regularize the model, but it may also reduce the model’s capacity compared to a model with higher bits per weight. The paper also mentions a change to the model architecture, using a linear transformer to reduce reliance on multiplications in the attention mechanism.
Top 2 Comment Summary
This article discusses an impressive accomplishment in scaling laws, reaching a size of 2.7B, and running several downstream tasks. The author is curious to see how the scores compare to those of a similar model trained by someone else. The researchers achieved significant memory savings during both training and inference. Additionally, they built an FPGA core with a custom assembler, and their code works seamlessly with huggingface transformers. The author plans to test out the code.
5. Economic Termites: Monopolies not noticeable enough for most of us
Total comment counts : 30
Summary
The article discusses the concept of “economic termites,” which are instances of monopolization that make investors a significant amount of money but go unnoticed by most people. These economic termites exist in the unseen foundations of businesses and contribute to higher costs and difficulties in society. The article mentions several companies, including Verisign, Autodesk, Linde, Assa Abloy, Gracenote, and LinkedIn, as examples of economic termites. It also highlights Verisign’s monopoly as the government-designated monopolist for .com domain registration and its consistent price hikes over the years. Verisign’s profitability and its political connections are mentioned as factors contributing to its success. The article questions the legality of Verisign’s contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and suggests that there are legal tools available to address these monopolies.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article argues that there needs to be at least four competitors of significant size in a market before prices go down. This has been observed in various industries such as cellular phone networks, ISPs, drugstores, and banks. When there are less than four competitors, prices and margins increase, resulting in consumer losses. The article suggests that antitrust policy should be based on having at least four competitors or consider options like breaking up companies or regulating them as public utilities. Having only two or three competitors leads to collusion and lack of price competition.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article is criticized for lacking evidence to support its claim that small monopolies are the reason for a broken economy. It uses rising construction costs as an example, but the article itself admits that the impact of these small monopolists is minor. It argues that other factors, such as labor costs, compliance with regulations, and customer expectations, have a greater influence on construction costs. The article is deemed to provide no substantial evidence for its claim and fall into the trap of attributing rising prices to something the author dislikes, rather than inflation.
6. What makes gambling wrong but insurance right? (2017)
Total comment counts : 46
Summary
The article discusses the history of insurance and its connection to gambling. Insurance can be traced back to ancient times, where merchants would swap goods between ships to spread their risks. Later, the Romans and Italian city-states developed more sophisticated insurance systems. In 1687, a coffee house called Lloyd’s opened in London and became a hub for ship-related gossip and wagers. Edward Lloyd, the owner, started assembling information about ships and ports, which eventually led to the creation of Lloyd’s List, a newsletter. The coffee house also facilitated ship auctions and the drawing up of insurance contracts. Eventually, a group of underwriters formed the Society of Lloyd’s, which is now known as Lloyd’s of London. The article also mentions the development of mutual aid societies in the Alps, where farmers would agree to take care of each other in times of illness or other hardships. These societies formed the basis of some of the world’s leading insurance companies.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article highlights an important difference between insurance and gambling. The author argues that insurance increases the utility of money, while gambling decreases it. They explain that insurance provides a service worth paying for as long as the fee is lower than the utility gained from it. In contrast, gambling voluntarily puts money at stake, decreasing the combined utility of the gambler and the counter-party. The author also suggests that gambling is viewed as immoral by many moral systems because it can negatively impact the population, whereas insurance does not have the same negative effect.
Top 2 Comment Summary
This article explains the concept of gambling and insurance, highlighting that both involve trading a consistent stream of small payments for a chance at receiving a larger payment. The fundamental similarity between the two lies in the practice of transferring risk. In insurance, the risk is transferred to the insurance company, while in gambling, the risk is transferred to the gambler. Despite their differences in packaging, there is substantial overlap between gambling and insurance. The main distinction lies in the participants involved. Individuals generally prefer to avoid excessive risk, so transactions that transfer risk from an individual to a large company, such as an insurance company, are generally favorable. On the other hand, transactions that transfer risk from a large company, like a casino, to an individual are typically undesirable.
7. Compilers are too smart
Total comment counts : 12
Summary
The author noticed some unexpected assembly code when using the std::unordered_map::find function with the STL library. They investigated further and discovered that the assembly code was related to counting the number of set bits in a word. The author speculates that this optimization is used when the CPU supports it. They also mention that the optimization is finicky and can vary depending on the compiler used. The article provides code examples and suggests using Compiler Explorer to experiment with different optimizations.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses LLVM’s canonical representation for a “power of two” check, which is “ctpop < 2” or “ctpop == 1” depending on zero behavior. This representation is intended to be expanded into a cheap bitwise check by the backend. However, due to complex interactions in the backend, this expansion does not occur in certain cases.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses a compiler issue with the “population count” routine in C for ARMv8.0 64-bit architecture. The author tested the routine using Clang and noticed that the output differed slightly, using an inverted constant. The author tried rewriting the routine with another algorithm but still got the same compiler output. It is mentioned that Clang can automatically recognize and replace the routine with a llvm.ctpop.i32 intrinsic, and there seems to be no way to suppress this optimization without disabling all optimizations.
8. Draw an iceberg and see how it will float
Total comment counts : 26
Summary
This article is about a game inspired by a tweet discussing how icebergs float. Icebergs are less dense than water, causing them to float with about 10% of their mass above water. However, the article notes that the way icebergs float in reality is more complex due to the distribution of mass and relative density compared to water. The tweet suggests that scientists should start drawing icebergs in their stable orientations, and includes a painting of a stable iceberg created by the author.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article is about the frustration of not being able to find anything except a flat surface above the water. The author then realizes that this is the intended purpose. The article includes a link to a thread of tweets on Thread Reader App, but it requires an account to access. The author thanks Elon for making it impossible to read more than the first tweet on x.com without an account.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the importance of supporting local climate scientists and highlights the positive impact of science.
9. Betula – federated bookmarking software for the independent web
Total comment counts : 14
Summary
Betula is a free federated self-hosted single-user bookmarking software for the independent web. It allows users to organize bookmarks, maintain a linklog, and publish bookmarks with optional titles and descriptions. Users can add tags to their bookmarks, which can be either public or private. The software has a simple user interface that does not require JavaScript, but if JavaScript is enabled, users can benefit from tag autocompletion. The entire collection of bookmarks is saved as a single SQLite file. Betula also supports IndieWeb microformats and offers a simple installation process, with all configuration options accessible through the web interface. Additional features include a bookmarklet, built-in documentation, and searching capabilities. Betula also supports Fediverse, allowing people to follow and receive new public bookmarks from Mastodon, Akkoma, Smithereen, and other platforms. Users can also follow other Betula instances. The main developer of Betula is Bouncepaw, and users can subscribe to his personal instance. New versions of the software are released approximately every 3 months.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article provides a list of bookmark managers, which includes the following options: Grimoire Pro, Bookmark OS, Wakelet, Raindrop, Booky, Knowies, Carrylinks, Zotero, Pinalist, Web.ggather, Lasso, and Onekeep. Additionally, the author mentions their own bookmark manager, which is also a web scraper.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The author discusses their interest in creating a project similar to the one mentioned in the article. They initially considered using ActivityPub for federation but found it difficult to understand. Instead, they settled on using HTTP/REST for their project, where one instance would send queries to other linked instances. The article mentions that the project was not completed due to losing the code and the author’s approach of working on both the front and backends simultaneously. The end goal of the project was to create a small federation of independent indexes of good-quality webpages for search purposes. The author mentions an interest in trying Betula but feels that it does not align with their ideal. They express satisfaction with Raindrop for search capability but note that publishing bookmarks is not their passion.
10. The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs
Total comment counts : 50
Summary
This article discusses the backlash faced by Katalin Karikó, the co-inventor of mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccines, after she criticized academia for prioritizing people pleasing and political games. The author argues that institutions should be more accepting of “Weird Nerds,” individuals who may have unconventional traits but possess unique strengths suitable for intellectual pursuits. The article suggests that better intellectual institutions should consider the trade-offs in human personality and create a culture that embraces diverse traits. The author also highlights Karikó’s journey and the sacrifices she made in her pursuit of mRNA research.
Top 1 Comment Summary
The article discusses the shift towards expecting individuals to excel in multiple areas and how this contrasts with the old stereotypes of nerds. These stereotypes acknowledged the trade-off of being highly focused on one thing at the expense of other skills. The author believes that combining the idea of a “Weird Nerd” with autism is incorrect, as there are many different types of nerds who are not autistic. The article suggests that talent often stems from caring deeply about something specific and prioritizing it above other things, and that while being neurodivergent might help, it is not necessary.
Top 2 Comment Summary
The article discusses the experience of working with individuals who fit the “weird nerd” archetype and how they navigate large organizations. It notes that organizations that claim to support these individuals often end up favoring politicians due to money distribution. The author observes that many brilliant nerds tend to overextend themselves and have excessive confidence outside their domain. They also tend to be more prone to conflict, often assuming they are right in non-technical or science-related situations. The author’s advice to these individuals is to approach interacting with their institution as a long-term engineering project, being strategic, creating and tracking plans, and learning to respond to what works best. They also suggest being kind, maintaining humility, seeking feedback, or delegating these tasks to someone trustworthy. Finally, the article advises those working with weird nerds to take advantage of their insights, set aside their own ego, and listen charitably, as their work is what they are there to support.