Hasty Briefsbeta

Bilingual

Telus using AI to alter the accents of customer service agents
9 hours ago
- An AI tool by Telus Digital and Tomato.ai modifies service agents' accents in real-time to improve clarity.
- The technology preserves the speaker's voice while reducing accent-related friction without altering emotional tone.
- Some view it as enhancing efficiency, but critics argue it deceives customers and raises ethical concerns.
- Labor unions demand transparency and regulation, fearing AI's impact on jobs and customer trust.
- While Rogers and Bell deny using such tools, debate continues over AI's role in customer service interactions.
LaDiR: Latent Diffusion Enhances LLMs for Text Reasoning
9 hours ago
- LaDiR is a novel reasoning framework combining latent diffusion models with LLMs to enhance text reasoning by creating a structured latent reasoning space using a VAE.
- It encodes text reasoning steps into blocks of thought tokens, offering compact and interpretable representations, and uses a latent diffusion model for iterative refinement with adaptive test-time compute.
- The approach enables parallel generation of diverse reasoning trajectories, improving holistic planning and revision over autoregressive methods.
- Empirical evaluations on mathematical reasoning and planning benchmarks show LaDiR improves accuracy, diversity, and interpretability compared to existing methods.
- The paper introduces a new paradigm for text reasoning with latent diffusion and was presented at a workshop on latent and implicit thinking at ICLR 2026.
Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
4 hours ago
- Singapore introduces caning as a 'last resort' for male students who bully, including cyberbullying.
- Male students can face up to three strokes, only after other measures fail, for upper primary (ages 9-12) and above.
- Caning requires principal approval and must be administered by authorized teachers, with post-punishment monitoring and counseling.
- Female students receive punishments like detention, suspension, or conduct grade adjustments instead of caning.
- UNICEF and WHO oppose corporal punishment, citing harm to children's physical, mental health and development.
- Judicial caning in Singapore, from British colonial times, is used for male offenders under 50 for certain crimes.
The Soul of Maintaining a New Machine
6 hours ago
- Xerox service technicians in the 1980s relied on social interactions, especially sharing 'war stories,' to solve complex and unpredictable problems with photocopiers, as formal documentation was insufficient.
- Anthropologist Julian Orr's ethnography revealed that technicians' knowledge was communal, with narrative storytelling being key for diagnosis and knowledge circulation within their community of practice.
- Technicians often fixed customer-induced issues, requiring them to educate users on proper machine operation and build delicate social relationships, which were as crucial as mechanical repairs.
- Xerox's management initially viewed technician socialization as wasteful, but Orr's research inspired the Eureka project, a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing system that improved service efficiency globally.
- Despite resistance from corporate hierarchies, Eureka succeeded in France and Canada by involving technicians in design, leading to significant cost savings and recognition, though Xerox failed to fully integrate this frontline knowledge into broader company strategy.
Behavior-Oriented Concurrency for Python
5 hours ago
- The article uses a cooking example to illustrate how a single-threaded program becomes complex when made concurrent, requiring explicit thread management and locks.
- It introduces 'cowns' (concurrent-owned variables) and 'behaviors' as a simpler alternative, where cowns ensure exclusive access to resources and behaviors declare dependencies via decorators.
- The BOC library (bocpy) uses these concepts to rewrite the cooking example without locks, improving readability and scheduling through declarative behavior ordering.
- The library supports lock-free messaging via Erlang-style send and selective receive, with non-blocking message passing and timeout handling.
- It includes a built-in Matrix class for efficient numerical operations, safe for sharing across interpreters with zero-copy overhead.
- A noticeboard feature provides an eventually-consistent global key-value store for lightweight state sharing without dedicated cowns.
- Performance scaling is near-linear due to parallel sub-interpreters and a lock-free work-stealing scheduler, as demonstrated in benchmarks.
How to organize 3 acquired companies into one coherent website
3 days ago
- Start with user goals instead of product-centric discussions to unify teams and build empathy.
- Identify commonalities across products and consolidate content to eliminate redundancy.
- Define varied ways users can meet goals, considering format preferences, audience needs, and receptiveness.
- Categorize users via taxonomy (e.g., by role, location, specialty) for intuitive navigation without rigid boxes.
- Test low-fidelity designs with users to validate labels, groupings, hierarchy, and information appropriateness.
- Think horizontally by reusing content components across pages to improve discoverability and wayfinding.
- Prepare for heated stakeholder discussions about content fate, acknowledging valid concerns and iterating as needed.
Multi-stroke text effect in CSS
6 hours ago
- Attempted to replicate multi-stroke text effect using CSS text-stroke property but initially unsuccessful.
- Accidental variation of text-stroke-width on stacked elements led to improved results.
- Browsers draw character outlines differently based on stroke width, affecting shape and smoothness across Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
- Font choice significantly influences the final outcome, with Google Fonts integration speeding up experimentation.
- Performance issues akin to CSS filters occur, especially with larger font sizes, limiting production use.
- Examples provided via CodePen demonstrate variations with different colors and characters using css-doodle.
Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors
3 days ago
- Georgia Tech researchers developed small, battery-free metal tags that use unique ultrasonic fingerprints to detect movements such as door openings, gym reps, and bathroom use. The tags cost only a few cents each and are smaller than a penny.
- The tags are mounted on surfaces like cabinets, with a tab attached to moving parts. When opened, the tab strikes the metal disk, generating an ultrasonic pulse detectable by wearable devices. The tag's shape determines its frequency, allowing unique identification for activity recognition.
- Applications include monitoring water use, assisting elderly care, counting gym exercises, and tracking items in archiving or waste management systems. The tags operate in the ultrasonic range (above 20 kHz), making them silent to humans and private due to limited sound travel.
- Researchers created a simulation tool to design metal disks that produce specific ultrasonic frequencies, with potential for thousands of unique tags. The system uses simple algorithms instead of complex machine learning, reducing computational power requirements.
- The project is a collaboration between engineering and computing researchers, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and other organizations. A viral Instagram video generated widespread interest, with suggestions for diverse applications.
Reverse-engineering the 1998 Ultima Online demo server
4 hours ago
- A full reverse-engineering of the 1998 Ultima Online demo server has been released after 10 years of intermittent work.
- The project involved disassembling about 5,000 functions from the MSVC x86 binary and translating them into portable C99 code.
- The demo server code originates from the production server of mid-1998, with some features stubbed and the playable map limited to the island of Ocllo.
- Methodology included manual translation of functions to C99, verification by re-disassembly and comparison, and early focus on correct class hierarchy.
- Findings include fixes for bugs, reactivation of broken systems like spawn and ecology, and addition of new features with configurable options.
- Support has been extended to multiple client versions and encryption mechanisms, and the default build now targets 64-bit while maintaining compatibility.
- The author seeks original server files like dynamic0.mul to further enhance the accuracy of the world content reproduction.
Knitting bullshit
5 hours ago
- The theme of 'Knitting Bullshit' uses philosopher Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit: discourse disconnected from truth and reality, differing from lies due to its phoniness.
- The author discusses AI-generated knitting content from Inception Point AI, which produces 3,000 podcast episodes weekly with minimal human oversight, claiming topics like knitting are 'low stakes' and inaccuracies don't matter.
- Examples of AI knitting podcasts reveal shallow, inaccurate content, such as 'Knitting Through the Ages' skipping history between ancient Egyptian socks and modern platforms like Ravelry, and 'The Art of Knitting Pattern Design' fabricating expert quotes.
- The author criticizes AI content for hollowing out knitting's real history and community, replacing it with emotional validation and empty praise that makes listeners feel good without imparting knowledge.
- Another example is an AI-generated animated film about knitting that gains popularity despite historical inaccuracies and lack of substantive content, categorized as 'carefully wrought bullshit' by Frankfurt.
- The author argues knitting bullshit parasitizes and degrades the real knitting community, which values shared knowledge, history, and human creativity, and calls for supporting actual human-made content over AI-generated slop.
A Theory of Generalization in Deep Learning
16 hours ago
- Introduces a non-asymptotic theory of generalization in deep learning based on neural tangent kernel partitioning of output space into signal and noise directions.
- Shows minibatch SGD accumulates coherent signal via linear drift while suppressing memorization into slow diffusion, enabling generalization even in full feature-learning regime.
- Explains phenomena like benign overfitting, double descent, implicit bias, and grokking through this theoretical framework.
- Derives an exact population-risk objective from a single training run, measuring noise in the signal channel, and implements it as an SNR preconditioner for Adam.
- Demonstrates practical improvements: accelerates grokking 5x, suppresses memorization in PINNs/neural representations, and enhances DPO fine-tuning with noisy preferences.
RFK Jr. plans to curb antidepressants, which he falsely compares to heroin
4 hours ago
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced federal initiatives to curb antidepressant prescribing, echoing his long-standing false claims against SSRIs.
- The event focused on unsubstantiated allegations of overmedicalization, particularly targeting youth, and claimed SSRIs are harmful and difficult to stop.
- Kennedy has spread dangerous, evidence-free statements, including that SSRIs cause violence and mass shootings, and made racist remarks about Black children.
- Experts have debunked Kennedy's false claim that quitting antidepressants is harder than heroin, emphasizing it lacks research support and is inaccurate.
Five Banana Lessons
3 days ago
- The banana analogy illustrates the difference between short-term gains (bananas) and long-term value creation (cash, ownership).
- Lesson 1: Cash (equity) is better than a banana (salary) because ownership compounds and offers sustainable benefits.
- Lesson 2: Not all bananas (jobs) are equal; prioritize roles that enhance skills, offer growth, and provide exposure to successful companies.
- Lesson 3: A banana tree (equity) is superior to a banana (salary) as it generates ongoing returns through ownership.
- Lesson 4: A banana farm (platform ownership) outperforms a single tree by controlling infrastructure and scaling value creation.
- Lesson 5: A store (customer ownership) is the ultimate model, capturing end-to-end value and dominating the supply chain, as seen with retailers like Amazon.
- The framework applies beyond business to personal decisions, career paths, and life choices, encouraging a shift from immediate gratification to strategic ownership.
SEC moves to scrap quarterly reporting requirement
8 hours ago
- The SEC is proposing to eliminate the requirement for quarterly reporting by companies.
- Subscription plans for FT journalism include Standard Digital, Premium Digital, and Premium & FT Weekend Print.
- The FT offers various subscription models, including for individuals and organizations, with discounts for annual payments.
CARA 2.0 – "I Built a Better Robot Dog"
2 days ago
- The author built CARA 2.0, an upgraded version of their quadrupedal robot, as a senior design project with goals of low cost (<$1000) and low weight (<20lbs).
- To reduce costs, they developed a low-cost Quasi Direct Drive (QDD) actuator using a TYI 5008 BLDC motor ($18) and MKS XDrive Mini FOC controller ($41), but rewound the motor to lower its KV from 335 to 90 for higher torque.
- Issues with the XDrive controller's CAN bus communication were resolved using custom firmware from Mohammad Marshid, enabling stable motor control and feedback.
- A capstan drive joint test stand was prototyped, weighing 470g with a 9.6:1 reduction, 12 Nm peak torque, and 120° range of motion, using Dyneema rope and prestretching for assembly.
- The leg design features a coaxial 5-bar linkage with a 2:3 upper-to-lower link ratio for improved range of motion and aesthetics, and uses squash balls for compliant, traction-rich feet instead of TPU.
- Full robot design centralized electronics in a top-mounted e-box, used 3D-printed PLA frames to cut costs, and proper CAN bus wiring with 120 Ω resistors for reliability.
- Gait programming uses a trotting sequence with cycloid step trajectories, but initial walking issues due to asymmetrical legs were fixed by redesigning legs for symmetry.
- Turning and dynamic stability were improved over CARA 1.0 by stepping at 45° angles for turning and shifting the center of mass on inclines, rather than relying on IMU-based rotation.
- Final specs include a cost of $1,450, weight of 18.2 lbs, walking speed of 0.55 m/s, payload capacity of 15 lbs, and 1-hour runtime, making it a low-cost, dynamic quadruped for hobbyists.
- The author considers CARA 2.0 a success but notes capstan drives are assembly-unfriendly and plans to use off-the-shelf actuators in future robots, retiring this project.
DeepSeek V4's indexer OOMs at 65K context. We got it to 1M in 6G
a day ago
- StreamIndex is a Triton implementation of Compressed Sparse Attention (CSA) that uses a chunked partition-merge top-k driver to avoid materializing the full intermediate score tensor.
- It extends the memory-bounded regime by 32x, handling sequences up to 1,048,576 tokens using only 6.21 GB of HBM, compared to the materialize path which OOMs at 65,536 tokens.
- Set-overlap recall against the materialize ground truth is near-perfect (mean 1.0000, min 0.9980 across design sweeps), ensuring accuracy.
- StreamIndex composes with TileLang's pipelined attention kernel, enabling execution at S=262,144 in 1.97 s while the materialize version OOMs.
- The contribution focuses on the indexer step, not attention kernel speed or end-to-end real-checkpoint behavior.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just hit a 'depressing' new record
7 hours ago
- Atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached a record high in April 2025, averaging 431 ppm.
- CO2 levels peak annually in April due to plant decay, with some reabsorbed later, but the overall trend is a steady increase.
- Long-term monitoring since 1958 at Mauna Loa Observatory shows April CO2 has risen from under 320 ppm to current levels.
- Pre-industrial CO2 was around 280 ppm, and even past interglacial periods did not exceed 300 ppm, highlighting the unprecedented modern rise.
- U.S. emissions dropped in 2023-2024 but increased in 2025 partly due to higher electricity demand from AI data centers.
- Renewable energy expansion offers optimism despite the depressing trend of rising CO2 records.
Feds Fine Durham Energy Efficiency Co $722M
2 days ago
- FERC fined American Efficient $722 million and ordered repayment of over $410 million in unjust profits for alleged fraud in its energy efficiency program.
- American Efficient's business model involved purchasing sales data and environmental attributes from retailers, then using that data to bid projected energy savings into capacity auctions.
- FERC commissioners unanimously found the company's conduct fraudulent, with allegations of market manipulation and betrayal of environmental principles.
- American Efficient defends its model, claiming micropayments to retailers influence supply chains and that its contracts did not require proof of demand reduction causality.
- Legal challenges remain, as the company may appeal civil penalties, and a criminal referral to the DOJ is possible, while capacity auction participation is now limited.
Ombudsman column: The Pentagon is trying to silence me
7 hours ago
- The author, who served as the Stars and Stripes ombudsman, was fired by the Pentagon without a reason given, via a DA Form 3434 notice.
- The dismissal followed the author's outspoken criticism of Pentagon efforts to control the newspaper's content, including actions by officials like Pete Hegseth and Sean Parnell.
- The Pentagon rescinded legal protections for Stars and Stripes, bypassing required public comment, and issued an interim policy that could be changed arbitrarily.
- Congressional members, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, expressed alarm and called for the restoration of editorial independence, citing the paper's vital role for deployed troops.
- Efforts are underway to introduce legislation to protect Stars and Stripes from censorship, emphasizing that press independence should be a non-partisan issue.
- The author highlights the importance of the ombudsman role in safeguarding editorial independence and warns against Pentagon control over the newspaper's future.
An atmosphere around a tiny, icy world beyond Pluto
11 hours ago
- Astronomers detected a thin atmosphere around a small icy world beyond Pluto using telescopic observations during a star occultation event.
- The object, only about 300 miles across, is the smallest solar system body found with a global atmosphere, challenging previous assumptions about atmospheric presence.
- The atmosphere is extremely thin, millions of times less dense than Earth's, and likely composed of methane, nitrogen, or carbon monoxide from volcanic activity or comet impacts.
- The discovery, made in the Kuiper Belt, requires verification with further observations, potentially from the Webb Space Telescope, to confirm atmospheric composition and origin.
- This finding expands understanding of distant solar system objects and suggests atmospheres may exist on more small worlds than previously thought.

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Bilingual

Telus using AI to alter the accents of customer service agents
9 hours ago
- An AI tool by Telus Digital and Tomato.ai modifies service agents' accents in real-time to improve clarity.
- The technology preserves the speaker's voice while reducing accent-related friction without altering emotional tone.
- Some view it as enhancing efficiency, but critics argue it deceives customers and raises ethical concerns.
- Labor unions demand transparency and regulation, fearing AI's impact on jobs and customer trust.
- While Rogers and Bell deny using such tools, debate continues over AI's role in customer service interactions.
LaDiR: Latent Diffusion Enhances LLMs for Text Reasoning
9 hours ago
- LaDiR is a novel reasoning framework combining latent diffusion models with LLMs to enhance text reasoning by creating a structured latent reasoning space using a VAE.
- It encodes text reasoning steps into blocks of thought tokens, offering compact and interpretable representations, and uses a latent diffusion model for iterative refinement with adaptive test-time compute.
- The approach enables parallel generation of diverse reasoning trajectories, improving holistic planning and revision over autoregressive methods.
- Empirical evaluations on mathematical reasoning and planning benchmarks show LaDiR improves accuracy, diversity, and interpretability compared to existing methods.
- The paper introduces a new paradigm for text reasoning with latent diffusion and was presented at a workshop on latent and implicit thinking at ICLR 2026.
Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
4 hours ago
- Singapore introduces caning as a 'last resort' for male students who bully, including cyberbullying.
- Male students can face up to three strokes, only after other measures fail, for upper primary (ages 9-12) and above.
- Caning requires principal approval and must be administered by authorized teachers, with post-punishment monitoring and counseling.
- Female students receive punishments like detention, suspension, or conduct grade adjustments instead of caning.
- UNICEF and WHO oppose corporal punishment, citing harm to children's physical, mental health and development.
- Judicial caning in Singapore, from British colonial times, is used for male offenders under 50 for certain crimes.
The Soul of Maintaining a New Machine
6 hours ago
- Xerox service technicians in the 1980s relied on social interactions, especially sharing 'war stories,' to solve complex and unpredictable problems with photocopiers, as formal documentation was insufficient.
- Anthropologist Julian Orr's ethnography revealed that technicians' knowledge was communal, with narrative storytelling being key for diagnosis and knowledge circulation within their community of practice.
- Technicians often fixed customer-induced issues, requiring them to educate users on proper machine operation and build delicate social relationships, which were as crucial as mechanical repairs.
- Xerox's management initially viewed technician socialization as wasteful, but Orr's research inspired the Eureka project, a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing system that improved service efficiency globally.
- Despite resistance from corporate hierarchies, Eureka succeeded in France and Canada by involving technicians in design, leading to significant cost savings and recognition, though Xerox failed to fully integrate this frontline knowledge into broader company strategy.
Behavior-Oriented Concurrency for Python
5 hours ago
- The article uses a cooking example to illustrate how a single-threaded program becomes complex when made concurrent, requiring explicit thread management and locks.
- It introduces 'cowns' (concurrent-owned variables) and 'behaviors' as a simpler alternative, where cowns ensure exclusive access to resources and behaviors declare dependencies via decorators.
- The BOC library (bocpy) uses these concepts to rewrite the cooking example without locks, improving readability and scheduling through declarative behavior ordering.
- The library supports lock-free messaging via Erlang-style send and selective receive, with non-blocking message passing and timeout handling.
- It includes a built-in Matrix class for efficient numerical operations, safe for sharing across interpreters with zero-copy overhead.
- A noticeboard feature provides an eventually-consistent global key-value store for lightweight state sharing without dedicated cowns.
- Performance scaling is near-linear due to parallel sub-interpreters and a lock-free work-stealing scheduler, as demonstrated in benchmarks.
How to organize 3 acquired companies into one coherent website
3 days ago
- Start with user goals instead of product-centric discussions to unify teams and build empathy.
- Identify commonalities across products and consolidate content to eliminate redundancy.
- Define varied ways users can meet goals, considering format preferences, audience needs, and receptiveness.
- Categorize users via taxonomy (e.g., by role, location, specialty) for intuitive navigation without rigid boxes.
- Test low-fidelity designs with users to validate labels, groupings, hierarchy, and information appropriateness.
- Think horizontally by reusing content components across pages to improve discoverability and wayfinding.
- Prepare for heated stakeholder discussions about content fate, acknowledging valid concerns and iterating as needed.
Multi-stroke text effect in CSS
6 hours ago
- Attempted to replicate multi-stroke text effect using CSS text-stroke property but initially unsuccessful.
- Accidental variation of text-stroke-width on stacked elements led to improved results.
- Browsers draw character outlines differently based on stroke width, affecting shape and smoothness across Chrome, Safari, and Firefox.
- Font choice significantly influences the final outcome, with Google Fonts integration speeding up experimentation.
- Performance issues akin to CSS filters occur, especially with larger font sizes, limiting production use.
- Examples provided via CodePen demonstrate variations with different colors and characters using css-doodle.
Batteries Not Included, or Required, for These Smart Home Sensors
3 days ago
- Georgia Tech researchers developed small, battery-free metal tags that use unique ultrasonic fingerprints to detect movements such as door openings, gym reps, and bathroom use. The tags cost only a few cents each and are smaller than a penny.
- The tags are mounted on surfaces like cabinets, with a tab attached to moving parts. When opened, the tab strikes the metal disk, generating an ultrasonic pulse detectable by wearable devices. The tag's shape determines its frequency, allowing unique identification for activity recognition.
- Applications include monitoring water use, assisting elderly care, counting gym exercises, and tracking items in archiving or waste management systems. The tags operate in the ultrasonic range (above 20 kHz), making them silent to humans and private due to limited sound travel.
- Researchers created a simulation tool to design metal disks that produce specific ultrasonic frequencies, with potential for thousands of unique tags. The system uses simple algorithms instead of complex machine learning, reducing computational power requirements.
- The project is a collaboration between engineering and computing researchers, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and other organizations. A viral Instagram video generated widespread interest, with suggestions for diverse applications.
Reverse-engineering the 1998 Ultima Online demo server
4 hours ago
- A full reverse-engineering of the 1998 Ultima Online demo server has been released after 10 years of intermittent work.
- The project involved disassembling about 5,000 functions from the MSVC x86 binary and translating them into portable C99 code.
- The demo server code originates from the production server of mid-1998, with some features stubbed and the playable map limited to the island of Ocllo.
- Methodology included manual translation of functions to C99, verification by re-disassembly and comparison, and early focus on correct class hierarchy.
- Findings include fixes for bugs, reactivation of broken systems like spawn and ecology, and addition of new features with configurable options.
- Support has been extended to multiple client versions and encryption mechanisms, and the default build now targets 64-bit while maintaining compatibility.
- The author seeks original server files like dynamic0.mul to further enhance the accuracy of the world content reproduction.
Knitting bullshit
5 hours ago
- The theme of 'Knitting Bullshit' uses philosopher Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit: discourse disconnected from truth and reality, differing from lies due to its phoniness.
- The author discusses AI-generated knitting content from Inception Point AI, which produces 3,000 podcast episodes weekly with minimal human oversight, claiming topics like knitting are 'low stakes' and inaccuracies don't matter.
- Examples of AI knitting podcasts reveal shallow, inaccurate content, such as 'Knitting Through the Ages' skipping history between ancient Egyptian socks and modern platforms like Ravelry, and 'The Art of Knitting Pattern Design' fabricating expert quotes.
- The author criticizes AI content for hollowing out knitting's real history and community, replacing it with emotional validation and empty praise that makes listeners feel good without imparting knowledge.
- Another example is an AI-generated animated film about knitting that gains popularity despite historical inaccuracies and lack of substantive content, categorized as 'carefully wrought bullshit' by Frankfurt.
- The author argues knitting bullshit parasitizes and degrades the real knitting community, which values shared knowledge, history, and human creativity, and calls for supporting actual human-made content over AI-generated slop.
A Theory of Generalization in Deep Learning
16 hours ago
- Introduces a non-asymptotic theory of generalization in deep learning based on neural tangent kernel partitioning of output space into signal and noise directions.
- Shows minibatch SGD accumulates coherent signal via linear drift while suppressing memorization into slow diffusion, enabling generalization even in full feature-learning regime.
- Explains phenomena like benign overfitting, double descent, implicit bias, and grokking through this theoretical framework.
- Derives an exact population-risk objective from a single training run, measuring noise in the signal channel, and implements it as an SNR preconditioner for Adam.
- Demonstrates practical improvements: accelerates grokking 5x, suppresses memorization in PINNs/neural representations, and enhances DPO fine-tuning with noisy preferences.
RFK Jr. plans to curb antidepressants, which he falsely compares to heroin
4 hours ago
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced federal initiatives to curb antidepressant prescribing, echoing his long-standing false claims against SSRIs.
- The event focused on unsubstantiated allegations of overmedicalization, particularly targeting youth, and claimed SSRIs are harmful and difficult to stop.
- Kennedy has spread dangerous, evidence-free statements, including that SSRIs cause violence and mass shootings, and made racist remarks about Black children.
- Experts have debunked Kennedy's false claim that quitting antidepressants is harder than heroin, emphasizing it lacks research support and is inaccurate.
Five Banana Lessons
3 days ago
- The banana analogy illustrates the difference between short-term gains (bananas) and long-term value creation (cash, ownership).
- Lesson 1: Cash (equity) is better than a banana (salary) because ownership compounds and offers sustainable benefits.
- Lesson 2: Not all bananas (jobs) are equal; prioritize roles that enhance skills, offer growth, and provide exposure to successful companies.
- Lesson 3: A banana tree (equity) is superior to a banana (salary) as it generates ongoing returns through ownership.
- Lesson 4: A banana farm (platform ownership) outperforms a single tree by controlling infrastructure and scaling value creation.
- Lesson 5: A store (customer ownership) is the ultimate model, capturing end-to-end value and dominating the supply chain, as seen with retailers like Amazon.
- The framework applies beyond business to personal decisions, career paths, and life choices, encouraging a shift from immediate gratification to strategic ownership.
SEC moves to scrap quarterly reporting requirement
8 hours ago
- The SEC is proposing to eliminate the requirement for quarterly reporting by companies.
- Subscription plans for FT journalism include Standard Digital, Premium Digital, and Premium & FT Weekend Print.
- The FT offers various subscription models, including for individuals and organizations, with discounts for annual payments.
CARA 2.0 – "I Built a Better Robot Dog"
2 days ago
- The author built CARA 2.0, an upgraded version of their quadrupedal robot, as a senior design project with goals of low cost (<$1000) and low weight (<20lbs).
- To reduce costs, they developed a low-cost Quasi Direct Drive (QDD) actuator using a TYI 5008 BLDC motor ($18) and MKS XDrive Mini FOC controller ($41), but rewound the motor to lower its KV from 335 to 90 for higher torque.
- Issues with the XDrive controller's CAN bus communication were resolved using custom firmware from Mohammad Marshid, enabling stable motor control and feedback.
- A capstan drive joint test stand was prototyped, weighing 470g with a 9.6:1 reduction, 12 Nm peak torque, and 120° range of motion, using Dyneema rope and prestretching for assembly.
- The leg design features a coaxial 5-bar linkage with a 2:3 upper-to-lower link ratio for improved range of motion and aesthetics, and uses squash balls for compliant, traction-rich feet instead of TPU.
- Full robot design centralized electronics in a top-mounted e-box, used 3D-printed PLA frames to cut costs, and proper CAN bus wiring with 120 Ω resistors for reliability.
- Gait programming uses a trotting sequence with cycloid step trajectories, but initial walking issues due to asymmetrical legs were fixed by redesigning legs for symmetry.
- Turning and dynamic stability were improved over CARA 1.0 by stepping at 45° angles for turning and shifting the center of mass on inclines, rather than relying on IMU-based rotation.
- Final specs include a cost of $1,450, weight of 18.2 lbs, walking speed of 0.55 m/s, payload capacity of 15 lbs, and 1-hour runtime, making it a low-cost, dynamic quadruped for hobbyists.
- The author considers CARA 2.0 a success but notes capstan drives are assembly-unfriendly and plans to use off-the-shelf actuators in future robots, retiring this project.
DeepSeek V4's indexer OOMs at 65K context. We got it to 1M in 6G
a day ago
- StreamIndex is a Triton implementation of Compressed Sparse Attention (CSA) that uses a chunked partition-merge top-k driver to avoid materializing the full intermediate score tensor.
- It extends the memory-bounded regime by 32x, handling sequences up to 1,048,576 tokens using only 6.21 GB of HBM, compared to the materialize path which OOMs at 65,536 tokens.
- Set-overlap recall against the materialize ground truth is near-perfect (mean 1.0000, min 0.9980 across design sweeps), ensuring accuracy.
- StreamIndex composes with TileLang's pipelined attention kernel, enabling execution at S=262,144 in 1.97 s while the materialize version OOMs.
- The contribution focuses on the indexer step, not attention kernel speed or end-to-end real-checkpoint behavior.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere just hit a 'depressing' new record
7 hours ago
- Atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached a record high in April 2025, averaging 431 ppm.
- CO2 levels peak annually in April due to plant decay, with some reabsorbed later, but the overall trend is a steady increase.
- Long-term monitoring since 1958 at Mauna Loa Observatory shows April CO2 has risen from under 320 ppm to current levels.
- Pre-industrial CO2 was around 280 ppm, and even past interglacial periods did not exceed 300 ppm, highlighting the unprecedented modern rise.
- U.S. emissions dropped in 2023-2024 but increased in 2025 partly due to higher electricity demand from AI data centers.
- Renewable energy expansion offers optimism despite the depressing trend of rising CO2 records.
Feds Fine Durham Energy Efficiency Co $722M
2 days ago
- FERC fined American Efficient $722 million and ordered repayment of over $410 million in unjust profits for alleged fraud in its energy efficiency program.
- American Efficient's business model involved purchasing sales data and environmental attributes from retailers, then using that data to bid projected energy savings into capacity auctions.
- FERC commissioners unanimously found the company's conduct fraudulent, with allegations of market manipulation and betrayal of environmental principles.
- American Efficient defends its model, claiming micropayments to retailers influence supply chains and that its contracts did not require proof of demand reduction causality.
- Legal challenges remain, as the company may appeal civil penalties, and a criminal referral to the DOJ is possible, while capacity auction participation is now limited.
Ombudsman column: The Pentagon is trying to silence me
7 hours ago
- The author, who served as the Stars and Stripes ombudsman, was fired by the Pentagon without a reason given, via a DA Form 3434 notice.
- The dismissal followed the author's outspoken criticism of Pentagon efforts to control the newspaper's content, including actions by officials like Pete Hegseth and Sean Parnell.
- The Pentagon rescinded legal protections for Stars and Stripes, bypassing required public comment, and issued an interim policy that could be changed arbitrarily.
- Congressional members, including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, expressed alarm and called for the restoration of editorial independence, citing the paper's vital role for deployed troops.
- Efforts are underway to introduce legislation to protect Stars and Stripes from censorship, emphasizing that press independence should be a non-partisan issue.
- The author highlights the importance of the ombudsman role in safeguarding editorial independence and warns against Pentagon control over the newspaper's future.
An atmosphere around a tiny, icy world beyond Pluto
11 hours ago
- Astronomers detected a thin atmosphere around a small icy world beyond Pluto using telescopic observations during a star occultation event.
- The object, only about 300 miles across, is the smallest solar system body found with a global atmosphere, challenging previous assumptions about atmospheric presence.
- The atmosphere is extremely thin, millions of times less dense than Earth's, and likely composed of methane, nitrogen, or carbon monoxide from volcanic activity or comet impacts.
- The discovery, made in the Kuiper Belt, requires verification with further observations, potentially from the Webb Space Telescope, to confirm atmospheric composition and origin.
- This finding expands understanding of distant solar system objects and suggests atmospheres may exist on more small worlds than previously thought.

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