Hasty Briefsbeta

Bilingual

Eden AI – European Alternative to OpenRouter
3 hours ago
- Access multiple AI models (LLMs and specialized models for speech, vision, OCR, translation) via a single API.
- Features include smart routing, provider fallbacks, and optimization for price, performance, and regions.
- Benefits include time savings, reduced costs, risk mitigation with fallback mechanisms, and scalability.
I have officially retired from Emacs
9 hours ago
- The author stopped using Emacs after 20 years, having gradually transitioned to modal editing and Vim over nearly half that time.
- They developed replacements for key Emacs applications: stackcalc as a clone of M-x calc and Elfeed2 as a successor to Elfeed, both being multi-platform native C++ GUI applications.
- Active maintainers are being sought for these Emacs packages, with contributions and reputation as criteria for takeover; if none are found, the projects will be archived but not deleted.
- stackcalc, using GMP and MPFR for multi-precision, is faster than Emacs Calculator but lacks some esoteric features, though it covers the author's needs.
- Elfeed2, after 13 years of reliance on the original Elfeed, was rewritten in a few days and now exceeds its predecessor, though it's not yet at a 1.0 release.
- wxWidgets was chosen over Dear ImGui for these projects due to its suitability for long-running applications like feed readers and its comprehensive platform utilities.
- Both projects build easily across platforms using CMake and a C++ toolchain, with wxWidgets likely to be a foundation for future GUI projects.
Peter Thiel Flees to Argentina
3 hours ago
- Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and a follower of Curtis Yarvin's ideas, has purchased a mansion in Buenos Aires, Argentina and plans an extended stay.
- Thiel met with Argentine President Javier Milei, whom American tech figures support despite his controversial policies and claims of communicating with a ghost dog.
- Thiel's move aligns with his belief in societal collapse from technological advances, inspired by the book 'The Sovereign Individual,' which advises acquiring extra passports and relocating.
- He has been assembling a global portfolio of residences and passports, including citizenship in New Zealand and a Maltese passport for EU movement.
- Thiel's relocation coincides with Palantir facing backlash for a fascist manifesto and his protégé Sam Altman experiencing a Molotov cocktail attack.
- The article promotes the author's forthcoming book 'The Nerd Reich,' which details how Thiel and other venture capitalists are pushing a prophecy of societal collapse.
Simple Sabotage of Agents
6 hours ago
- The text suggests reading the Simple Sabotage Field Manual and implies many workers might follow it.
- It introduces an AGENTS.md file in systemd, proposing to use AI agents for sabotage.
- AGENTS.md provides guidance for AI agents, including consulting key documentation files.
- Instructions include avoiding committing passwords, using sudo, and obfuscating passwords.
- It advises making automatic fixes if files don't compile and deleting or replacing failed tests.
- Recommends filtering error messages for security and repeating failing tests in production.
- Suggests accepting pull requests if they compile and not disclosing AI tool usage.
Tushonka: Cultivating Soviet Postwar Taste (2010)
3 days ago
- During WWII, the Soviet Union faced a food crisis after Germany occupied key agricultural areas, leading to U.S. food aid, including SPAM and later tushonka, a canned pork product.
- Tushonka, originally a traditional Russian preserved meat, was mass-produced in the U.S. Midwest via the Lend-Lease program and became a staple for Red Army soldiers, with Nikita Khrushchev crediting it for aiding the war effort.
- After the war, tushonka remained popular in the Soviet Union, distributed to civilians and becoming a symbol of socialist modernity due to its shelf stability and adaptability to variable production conditions.
- The Soviet Union began producing its own tushonka post-war, driven by state planners who valued its low cost, ease of transport, and ability to use low-grade meat scraps, aligning with goals to improve public diets.
- To increase tushonka production, the Soviet Union revamped its hog industry, importing and cross-breeding pigs (e.g., combining 'hot-blooded' and 'big type' breeds) and expanding pig populations, despite challenges like inefficient farm organization.
- Agricultural reforms included farm consolidation, new barn designs with gender and age segregation, mechanization efforts (though often inefficient), and the introduction of corn as a high-protein fodder crop, promoted by Khrushchev.
- Tushonka's production influenced Soviet meatpacking, shifting focus from fat to muscle tissue, and spurred changes in farming scales, animal genetics, and feed sources, transforming pig farming and consumer relations.
APL is more French than English
4 hours ago
- Professor Perlis recounts his conversion to APL after seeing a powerful one-liner during a talk, contrasting with others' dismissive reactions.
- He argues APL offers programming elegance, expressiveness, and pleasure akin to natural language, unlike ALGOL-family languages which feel like plumbing.
- APL's development stemmed from a unique convergence of talent and technology, leading to a stable timesharing system despite IBM's initial resistance.
- Perlis believes APL is becoming a complete language with diverse user interests, making consensus on future changes difficult but beneficial.
- He acknowledges FORTRAN's dominance as a lingua franca but sees APL's value in teaching and creative expression, not as a replacement.
- Programming languages inherently frustrate; perfect 'spherical' languages are unattainable, and APL's strength lies in allowing expression within the language itself.
- APL fosters lyrical, fun programming with multiple solutions, contrasting structured programming's uniformity and offering a literary quality.
- To improve APL, focus should be on 'spherical harmony,' avoiding fragmented development, and addressing inefficiencies like storage use and hardware mismatch.
- An APL-specific machine and compiler could reduce costs for education, replacing BASIC in schools to prevent 'semiliterate' programmers and embrace APL's beauty.
- Future APL evolution should leverage very large-scale integrated circuits, positioning APL as ideal for harnessing new hardware potential beyond traditional architectures.
Tip: Web requests should not be measured in Hz [Hertz]
4 hours ago
- A legend involving Sartha and mistaken actions.
- Characters like Jonathan and Dr. Seward in uncertain or tense situations.
- Themes of memory, control, and dark elements like wolves and blood.
- A narrative with fleeting moments and emotional responses such as fear and reflection.
- Mention of forgery and unclear events implying confusion or conflict.
Chernobyl at 40: Secret Stasi files reveal extent of Soviet misinformation
8 hours ago
- Chernobyl explosion caused by design flaw and human error during a safety test.
- Soviets suppressed information about the disaster's true impact across Europe.
- Stasi files reveal detailed records of casualties and contamination were kept secret.
- Misinformation strategies included tailored press releases for different audiences.
- Economic damage led to plans to export contaminated goods, risking public health.
- Disinformation eroded trust in East German and Soviet governments post-disaster.
The AI Compute Crunch Is Here (and It's Affecting the Economy)
8 hours ago
- AI companies are restricting access and increasing prices due to unsustainable cost structures.
- Consumer electronics, RAM, and storage prices are rising as resources shift to AI infrastructure.
- Home electricity costs are increasing in areas with AI data centers, leading to local opposition.
- The AI industry relies on investor subsidies similar to Uber's early market strategy.
- Sustainability requires renewable energy, better chip manufacturing, and more efficient AI models.
- Broader adoption and proven utility across sectors are needed to avoid an AI bubble burst.
- Potential mass unemployment from AI adoption raises questions about future consumer demand.
US is making Europe pay dearly for its half-hearted electrification
4 hours ago
- The U.S. is capitalizing on Europe's energy vulnerabilities, exacerbated by geopolitical shocks like the war around Iran, leading to increased European dependence on American oil and gas.
- Europe's slow electrification transition, compared to China's rapid progress, leaves it reliant on fossil fuels, allowing the U.S. to leverage energy contracts and broader dependencies (defense, digital) to maintain influence.
- Long-term contracts with U.S. exporters, often at a premium, are locking Europe into fossil fuel dependency, reshaping the energy system to its disadvantage and reinforcing weaponized interdependence.
- Despite Europe’s push for renewables post-2022, crises compress time and force systems to lock in existing dependencies rather than transform, delaying a full shift away from fossil fuels.
- U.S. strategy aims to slow Europe's electrification enough to sustain fossil fuel reliance and European subordination, using energy, market access, and digital infrastructure as leverage without outright blocking the transition.
Enterprises Are Rethinking Kubernetes
4 hours ago
- Enterprises are reevaluating Kubernetes due to operational costs, complexity, and the rise of better abstractions.
- Kubernetes often proves too operationally expensive, requiring specialized skills and constant management, which can overshadow business value.
- Portability benefits of Kubernetes are less crucial as enterprises prioritize measurable outcomes over theoretical flexibility.
- Higher-level platforms and managed services are gaining traction, abstracting Kubernetes to boost developer productivity.
- Kubernetes is losing its dominance as a default strategic choice but remains relevant for specific, complex use cases.
Exposing Floating Point – Bartosz Ciechanowski
4 hours ago
- Floating-point numbers are based on IEEE 754 binary floating-point format, with types like half, float, and double corresponding to binary16, binary32, and binary64.
- Floating-point numbers are essentially base-2 scientific notation with limited significand digits and exponent range, leading to rounding errors for some values (e.g., 0.2) and inability to represent very large or small numbers.
- The encoding of a float uses 1 bit for sign (0 for positive, 1 for negative), 8 bits for exponent (biased by 127), and 23 bits for significand (with an implicit leading 1, except for subnormals).
- Special values include positive/negative zero (exponent 0, significand 0), infinities (exponent all 1s, significand 0), and NaNs (exponent all 1s, significand non-zero), each serving specific purposes in arithmetic.
- Subnormals allow representation of numbers smaller than the minimum normal value by using an implicit leading 0 in the significand, though with reduced precision, ensuring properties like x - y = 0 when x = y.
- The distribution of floating-point values is non-uniform, with spacing between representable numbers increasing with exponent; integers up to 2^24 can be represented exactly in a float.
- Conversions between floating-point types may lose precision or cause overflow (e.g., to infinity) when converting to a smaller type, while conversions to a larger type preserve exact values.
- Printing floating-point numbers accurately can be done using hexadecimal format (%a specifier), which provides an exact and concise representation, unlike decimal formats that may lose precision.
Terra API (YC W21) Hiring: Applied AI Strategist(Health Intelligence)
4 hours ago
- Terra abstracts health data complexities into one unified platform.
- Enables companies to connect, normalize, stream, analyze, and build health products.
- Focuses on personalization, AI integration, and real-time, permissioned data.
- Processes over 30 billion activities annually with scalable, secure infrastructure.
- Targets sharp opportunities in AI and health with a data-driven product cycle.
A suspect is in custody after Trump is rushed from correspondents' dinner
6 hours ago
- President Trump and the first lady were unharmed after a shooting incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C.
- A suspect armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives was taken into custody; charges include assault on a federal officer.
- A Secret Service agent was shot but protected by a bulletproof vest and is reported to be 'doing great'.
- The incident caused chaos with gunshots heard, guests fleeing, and security evacuating officials, though all cabinet members are safe.
- This event follows a history of violence targeting Trump and the press, including a 2024 rally shooting and the January 6 Capitol riot.
- The Washington Hilton has a past of political violence, notably the 1981 shooting of President Reagan outside the same venue.
Spanish archaeologists discover trove of ancient shipwrecks in Bay of Gibraltar
7 hours ago
- Spanish archaeologists documented over 30 shipwrecks in the Bay of Algeciras/Gibraltar, dating from the 5th century BC to WWII.
- A three-year project identified 151 archaeological sites, including 134 shipwrecks, with 34 documented so far, featuring vessels from Punic, Roman, medieval, and early modern periods.
- Notable finds include a small 18th-century Spanish gunboat used for stealth attacks and a wooden box shaped like a book containing combs, hinting at personal grooming over espionage.
- The bay serves as a strategic crossroads for trade, exploration, and conflict, with ships from various cultures like Dutch, Venetian, Spanish, and English passing through.
- Researchers advocate for preservation due to threats from port development, dredging, climate change, and invasive algae, using virtual models and 360-degree videos for public awareness.
- The sites offer a microcosm of maritime history, highlighting the intense relationship coastal societies had with the sea, emphasizing in-situ study for contextual understanding.
I asked my local LLM to add 23 numbers and got seven wrong answers
7 hours ago
- The author attempted to use a local LLM for summing 23 stock transactions, encountering multiple failures.
- Smaller models omitted data and computed incorrectly, while larger models still failed at arithmetic due to token prediction instead of calculation.
- Tool-calling systems like Open Interpreter failed due to format mismatches, not executing code as expected.
- Enabling a harness with code execution (Open WebUI's Code Interpreter) eventually produced the correct answer with clear prompts.
- Success requires four layers: model, inference engine, orchestrator, and harness, with the harness providing reliability through tools like code execution.
- Local LLMs need proper harnesses with code execution for computational tasks; chat interfaces alone are insufficient.
Just How Much Should You Worry About Eating That Burnt Toast?
12 hours ago
- Acrylamide is classified as 'possibly carcinogenic to humans' (IARC Category 2B) due to evidence from animal studies, but its relevance to human health is dose-dependent.
- In rodents, acrylamide causes cancer at doses around 0.5 mg/kg body weight per day, but typical human exposure is 0.3–0.6 micrograms/kg/day, which is a thousand times lower.
- Human studies show no correlation between dietary acrylamide and cancer, partly due to the body's detoxification enzymes and DNA repair mechanisms.
- Acrylamide forms in foods like French fries, potato chips, cereals, toast, and coffee when asparagine and sugars react at high temperatures during cooking processes like frying or baking.
- To reduce acrylamide formation, avoid overcooking (e.g., burn toast or dark roast coffee), soak potatoes in water before frying, and prefer boiling, stewing, or microwaving over high-temperature methods.
The West Forgot How to Make Things. Now It's Forgetting How to Code
5 hours ago
- Raytheon struggled to restart Stinger missile production after decades, relying on retired engineers and outdated paper schematics, highlighting a loss of manufacturing knowledge.
- The EU failed to deliver one million artillery shells to Ukraine on time due to deindustrialization, single points of failure in supply chains, and lack of surge capacity in defense production.
- The Pentagon's 'consolidate or die' directive in the 1990s led to a 65% reduction in the defense workforce, creating fragile, optimized systems vulnerable to collapse during crises.
- The Fogbank incident demonstrated how classified nuclear material production knowledge was lost when experts retired, requiring costly reverse engineering and revealing critical undocumented impurities.
- Software engineering faces a similar talent pipeline collapse, with AI tools potentially reducing junior hiring and slowing skill development, risking a future shortage of senior engineers with deep system expertise.
- Studies show AI coding tools can increase task completion time for experienced developers, while industry trends indicate declining enrollments in computing programs and reduced hiring of junior engineers.
- Rebuilding industrial or technical capacity takes years, as seen in defense (e.g., Stinger, Javelin, artillery shells), and cannot be accelerated by money or AI alone due to the time needed for experiential learning.
EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs
7 hours ago
- EU Age Control apps are marketed as using zero-knowledge proofs for privacy, but the current reference implementation uses older ISO standard signatures, not active ZK cryptography.
- Platforms can bypass privacy-preserving wallet requirements by using traditional KYC providers, making the privacy features optional and likely underutilized.
- App attestation ties the system to Google and Apple-approved devices, excluding alternative operating systems like Linux, GrapheneOS, or Huawei phones without Google certification.
- Unlinkability of proofs depends on wallet behavior—using each credential once—rather than cryptographic guarantees, making it vulnerable if credentials are reused or replayed.
- Relay attacks (e.g., 'Grandma-as-a-Service') allow circumvention by proxying verification requests, as the protocol lacks proximity checks and cannot enforce one-time use after issuance.
- The system is a 'Trojan horse' for digital ID, potentially leading to revocable credentials linked to other systems like the Digital Euro, enabling remote control and censorship.
- Reported 'hacks' are often bugs in the mock-up reference app, but structural issues like relay attacks and dependence on wallet compliance are inherent to the protocol and will persist in national implementations.
Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers
a day ago
- Astronomers observed a supermassive black hole, 1ES 1927+654, whose corona disappeared and later reassembled in 2018.
- This event, occurring 270 million light-years away, was a first in black hole astronomy, noted by MIT's Megan Masterson.
- The text also promotes Quarkdown, a Markdown tool for various writing needs with extensions, fast compilation, and workflow scripting.

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Bilingual

Eden AI – European Alternative to OpenRouter
3 hours ago
- Access multiple AI models (LLMs and specialized models for speech, vision, OCR, translation) via a single API.
- Features include smart routing, provider fallbacks, and optimization for price, performance, and regions.
- Benefits include time savings, reduced costs, risk mitigation with fallback mechanisms, and scalability.
I have officially retired from Emacs
9 hours ago
- The author stopped using Emacs after 20 years, having gradually transitioned to modal editing and Vim over nearly half that time.
- They developed replacements for key Emacs applications: stackcalc as a clone of M-x calc and Elfeed2 as a successor to Elfeed, both being multi-platform native C++ GUI applications.
- Active maintainers are being sought for these Emacs packages, with contributions and reputation as criteria for takeover; if none are found, the projects will be archived but not deleted.
- stackcalc, using GMP and MPFR for multi-precision, is faster than Emacs Calculator but lacks some esoteric features, though it covers the author's needs.
- Elfeed2, after 13 years of reliance on the original Elfeed, was rewritten in a few days and now exceeds its predecessor, though it's not yet at a 1.0 release.
- wxWidgets was chosen over Dear ImGui for these projects due to its suitability for long-running applications like feed readers and its comprehensive platform utilities.
- Both projects build easily across platforms using CMake and a C++ toolchain, with wxWidgets likely to be a foundation for future GUI projects.
Peter Thiel Flees to Argentina
3 hours ago
- Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and a follower of Curtis Yarvin's ideas, has purchased a mansion in Buenos Aires, Argentina and plans an extended stay.
- Thiel met with Argentine President Javier Milei, whom American tech figures support despite his controversial policies and claims of communicating with a ghost dog.
- Thiel's move aligns with his belief in societal collapse from technological advances, inspired by the book 'The Sovereign Individual,' which advises acquiring extra passports and relocating.
- He has been assembling a global portfolio of residences and passports, including citizenship in New Zealand and a Maltese passport for EU movement.
- Thiel's relocation coincides with Palantir facing backlash for a fascist manifesto and his protégé Sam Altman experiencing a Molotov cocktail attack.
- The article promotes the author's forthcoming book 'The Nerd Reich,' which details how Thiel and other venture capitalists are pushing a prophecy of societal collapse.
Simple Sabotage of Agents
6 hours ago
- The text suggests reading the Simple Sabotage Field Manual and implies many workers might follow it.
- It introduces an AGENTS.md file in systemd, proposing to use AI agents for sabotage.
- AGENTS.md provides guidance for AI agents, including consulting key documentation files.
- Instructions include avoiding committing passwords, using sudo, and obfuscating passwords.
- It advises making automatic fixes if files don't compile and deleting or replacing failed tests.
- Recommends filtering error messages for security and repeating failing tests in production.
- Suggests accepting pull requests if they compile and not disclosing AI tool usage.
Tushonka: Cultivating Soviet Postwar Taste (2010)
3 days ago
- During WWII, the Soviet Union faced a food crisis after Germany occupied key agricultural areas, leading to U.S. food aid, including SPAM and later tushonka, a canned pork product.
- Tushonka, originally a traditional Russian preserved meat, was mass-produced in the U.S. Midwest via the Lend-Lease program and became a staple for Red Army soldiers, with Nikita Khrushchev crediting it for aiding the war effort.
- After the war, tushonka remained popular in the Soviet Union, distributed to civilians and becoming a symbol of socialist modernity due to its shelf stability and adaptability to variable production conditions.
- The Soviet Union began producing its own tushonka post-war, driven by state planners who valued its low cost, ease of transport, and ability to use low-grade meat scraps, aligning with goals to improve public diets.
- To increase tushonka production, the Soviet Union revamped its hog industry, importing and cross-breeding pigs (e.g., combining 'hot-blooded' and 'big type' breeds) and expanding pig populations, despite challenges like inefficient farm organization.
- Agricultural reforms included farm consolidation, new barn designs with gender and age segregation, mechanization efforts (though often inefficient), and the introduction of corn as a high-protein fodder crop, promoted by Khrushchev.
- Tushonka's production influenced Soviet meatpacking, shifting focus from fat to muscle tissue, and spurred changes in farming scales, animal genetics, and feed sources, transforming pig farming and consumer relations.
APL is more French than English
4 hours ago
- Professor Perlis recounts his conversion to APL after seeing a powerful one-liner during a talk, contrasting with others' dismissive reactions.
- He argues APL offers programming elegance, expressiveness, and pleasure akin to natural language, unlike ALGOL-family languages which feel like plumbing.
- APL's development stemmed from a unique convergence of talent and technology, leading to a stable timesharing system despite IBM's initial resistance.
- Perlis believes APL is becoming a complete language with diverse user interests, making consensus on future changes difficult but beneficial.
- He acknowledges FORTRAN's dominance as a lingua franca but sees APL's value in teaching and creative expression, not as a replacement.
- Programming languages inherently frustrate; perfect 'spherical' languages are unattainable, and APL's strength lies in allowing expression within the language itself.
- APL fosters lyrical, fun programming with multiple solutions, contrasting structured programming's uniformity and offering a literary quality.
- To improve APL, focus should be on 'spherical harmony,' avoiding fragmented development, and addressing inefficiencies like storage use and hardware mismatch.
- An APL-specific machine and compiler could reduce costs for education, replacing BASIC in schools to prevent 'semiliterate' programmers and embrace APL's beauty.
- Future APL evolution should leverage very large-scale integrated circuits, positioning APL as ideal for harnessing new hardware potential beyond traditional architectures.
Tip: Web requests should not be measured in Hz [Hertz]
4 hours ago
- A legend involving Sartha and mistaken actions.
- Characters like Jonathan and Dr. Seward in uncertain or tense situations.
- Themes of memory, control, and dark elements like wolves and blood.
- A narrative with fleeting moments and emotional responses such as fear and reflection.
- Mention of forgery and unclear events implying confusion or conflict.
Chernobyl at 40: Secret Stasi files reveal extent of Soviet misinformation
8 hours ago
- Chernobyl explosion caused by design flaw and human error during a safety test.
- Soviets suppressed information about the disaster's true impact across Europe.
- Stasi files reveal detailed records of casualties and contamination were kept secret.
- Misinformation strategies included tailored press releases for different audiences.
- Economic damage led to plans to export contaminated goods, risking public health.
- Disinformation eroded trust in East German and Soviet governments post-disaster.
The AI Compute Crunch Is Here (and It's Affecting the Economy)
8 hours ago
- AI companies are restricting access and increasing prices due to unsustainable cost structures.
- Consumer electronics, RAM, and storage prices are rising as resources shift to AI infrastructure.
- Home electricity costs are increasing in areas with AI data centers, leading to local opposition.
- The AI industry relies on investor subsidies similar to Uber's early market strategy.
- Sustainability requires renewable energy, better chip manufacturing, and more efficient AI models.
- Broader adoption and proven utility across sectors are needed to avoid an AI bubble burst.
- Potential mass unemployment from AI adoption raises questions about future consumer demand.
US is making Europe pay dearly for its half-hearted electrification
4 hours ago
- The U.S. is capitalizing on Europe's energy vulnerabilities, exacerbated by geopolitical shocks like the war around Iran, leading to increased European dependence on American oil and gas.
- Europe's slow electrification transition, compared to China's rapid progress, leaves it reliant on fossil fuels, allowing the U.S. to leverage energy contracts and broader dependencies (defense, digital) to maintain influence.
- Long-term contracts with U.S. exporters, often at a premium, are locking Europe into fossil fuel dependency, reshaping the energy system to its disadvantage and reinforcing weaponized interdependence.
- Despite Europe’s push for renewables post-2022, crises compress time and force systems to lock in existing dependencies rather than transform, delaying a full shift away from fossil fuels.
- U.S. strategy aims to slow Europe's electrification enough to sustain fossil fuel reliance and European subordination, using energy, market access, and digital infrastructure as leverage without outright blocking the transition.
Enterprises Are Rethinking Kubernetes
4 hours ago
- Enterprises are reevaluating Kubernetes due to operational costs, complexity, and the rise of better abstractions.
- Kubernetes often proves too operationally expensive, requiring specialized skills and constant management, which can overshadow business value.
- Portability benefits of Kubernetes are less crucial as enterprises prioritize measurable outcomes over theoretical flexibility.
- Higher-level platforms and managed services are gaining traction, abstracting Kubernetes to boost developer productivity.
- Kubernetes is losing its dominance as a default strategic choice but remains relevant for specific, complex use cases.
Exposing Floating Point – Bartosz Ciechanowski
4 hours ago
- Floating-point numbers are based on IEEE 754 binary floating-point format, with types like half, float, and double corresponding to binary16, binary32, and binary64.
- Floating-point numbers are essentially base-2 scientific notation with limited significand digits and exponent range, leading to rounding errors for some values (e.g., 0.2) and inability to represent very large or small numbers.
- The encoding of a float uses 1 bit for sign (0 for positive, 1 for negative), 8 bits for exponent (biased by 127), and 23 bits for significand (with an implicit leading 1, except for subnormals).
- Special values include positive/negative zero (exponent 0, significand 0), infinities (exponent all 1s, significand 0), and NaNs (exponent all 1s, significand non-zero), each serving specific purposes in arithmetic.
- Subnormals allow representation of numbers smaller than the minimum normal value by using an implicit leading 0 in the significand, though with reduced precision, ensuring properties like x - y = 0 when x = y.
- The distribution of floating-point values is non-uniform, with spacing between representable numbers increasing with exponent; integers up to 2^24 can be represented exactly in a float.
- Conversions between floating-point types may lose precision or cause overflow (e.g., to infinity) when converting to a smaller type, while conversions to a larger type preserve exact values.
- Printing floating-point numbers accurately can be done using hexadecimal format (%a specifier), which provides an exact and concise representation, unlike decimal formats that may lose precision.
Terra API (YC W21) Hiring: Applied AI Strategist(Health Intelligence)
4 hours ago
- Terra abstracts health data complexities into one unified platform.
- Enables companies to connect, normalize, stream, analyze, and build health products.
- Focuses on personalization, AI integration, and real-time, permissioned data.
- Processes over 30 billion activities annually with scalable, secure infrastructure.
- Targets sharp opportunities in AI and health with a data-driven product cycle.
A suspect is in custody after Trump is rushed from correspondents' dinner
6 hours ago
- President Trump and the first lady were unharmed after a shooting incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C.
- A suspect armed with a shotgun, handgun, and multiple knives was taken into custody; charges include assault on a federal officer.
- A Secret Service agent was shot but protected by a bulletproof vest and is reported to be 'doing great'.
- The incident caused chaos with gunshots heard, guests fleeing, and security evacuating officials, though all cabinet members are safe.
- This event follows a history of violence targeting Trump and the press, including a 2024 rally shooting and the January 6 Capitol riot.
- The Washington Hilton has a past of political violence, notably the 1981 shooting of President Reagan outside the same venue.
Spanish archaeologists discover trove of ancient shipwrecks in Bay of Gibraltar
7 hours ago
- Spanish archaeologists documented over 30 shipwrecks in the Bay of Algeciras/Gibraltar, dating from the 5th century BC to WWII.
- A three-year project identified 151 archaeological sites, including 134 shipwrecks, with 34 documented so far, featuring vessels from Punic, Roman, medieval, and early modern periods.
- Notable finds include a small 18th-century Spanish gunboat used for stealth attacks and a wooden box shaped like a book containing combs, hinting at personal grooming over espionage.
- The bay serves as a strategic crossroads for trade, exploration, and conflict, with ships from various cultures like Dutch, Venetian, Spanish, and English passing through.
- Researchers advocate for preservation due to threats from port development, dredging, climate change, and invasive algae, using virtual models and 360-degree videos for public awareness.
- The sites offer a microcosm of maritime history, highlighting the intense relationship coastal societies had with the sea, emphasizing in-situ study for contextual understanding.
I asked my local LLM to add 23 numbers and got seven wrong answers
7 hours ago
- The author attempted to use a local LLM for summing 23 stock transactions, encountering multiple failures.
- Smaller models omitted data and computed incorrectly, while larger models still failed at arithmetic due to token prediction instead of calculation.
- Tool-calling systems like Open Interpreter failed due to format mismatches, not executing code as expected.
- Enabling a harness with code execution (Open WebUI's Code Interpreter) eventually produced the correct answer with clear prompts.
- Success requires four layers: model, inference engine, orchestrator, and harness, with the harness providing reliability through tools like code execution.
- Local LLMs need proper harnesses with code execution for computational tasks; chat interfaces alone are insufficient.
Just How Much Should You Worry About Eating That Burnt Toast?
12 hours ago
- Acrylamide is classified as 'possibly carcinogenic to humans' (IARC Category 2B) due to evidence from animal studies, but its relevance to human health is dose-dependent.
- In rodents, acrylamide causes cancer at doses around 0.5 mg/kg body weight per day, but typical human exposure is 0.3–0.6 micrograms/kg/day, which is a thousand times lower.
- Human studies show no correlation between dietary acrylamide and cancer, partly due to the body's detoxification enzymes and DNA repair mechanisms.
- Acrylamide forms in foods like French fries, potato chips, cereals, toast, and coffee when asparagine and sugars react at high temperatures during cooking processes like frying or baking.
- To reduce acrylamide formation, avoid overcooking (e.g., burn toast or dark roast coffee), soak potatoes in water before frying, and prefer boiling, stewing, or microwaving over high-temperature methods.
The West Forgot How to Make Things. Now It's Forgetting How to Code
5 hours ago
- Raytheon struggled to restart Stinger missile production after decades, relying on retired engineers and outdated paper schematics, highlighting a loss of manufacturing knowledge.
- The EU failed to deliver one million artillery shells to Ukraine on time due to deindustrialization, single points of failure in supply chains, and lack of surge capacity in defense production.
- The Pentagon's 'consolidate or die' directive in the 1990s led to a 65% reduction in the defense workforce, creating fragile, optimized systems vulnerable to collapse during crises.
- The Fogbank incident demonstrated how classified nuclear material production knowledge was lost when experts retired, requiring costly reverse engineering and revealing critical undocumented impurities.
- Software engineering faces a similar talent pipeline collapse, with AI tools potentially reducing junior hiring and slowing skill development, risking a future shortage of senior engineers with deep system expertise.
- Studies show AI coding tools can increase task completion time for experienced developers, while industry trends indicate declining enrollments in computing programs and reduced hiring of junior engineers.
- Rebuilding industrial or technical capacity takes years, as seen in defense (e.g., Stinger, Javelin, artillery shells), and cannot be accelerated by money or AI alone due to the time needed for experiential learning.
EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs
7 hours ago
- EU Age Control apps are marketed as using zero-knowledge proofs for privacy, but the current reference implementation uses older ISO standard signatures, not active ZK cryptography.
- Platforms can bypass privacy-preserving wallet requirements by using traditional KYC providers, making the privacy features optional and likely underutilized.
- App attestation ties the system to Google and Apple-approved devices, excluding alternative operating systems like Linux, GrapheneOS, or Huawei phones without Google certification.
- Unlinkability of proofs depends on wallet behavior—using each credential once—rather than cryptographic guarantees, making it vulnerable if credentials are reused or replayed.
- Relay attacks (e.g., 'Grandma-as-a-Service') allow circumvention by proxying verification requests, as the protocol lacks proximity checks and cannot enforce one-time use after issuance.
- The system is a 'Trojan horse' for digital ID, potentially leading to revocable credentials linked to other systems like the Digital Euro, enabling remote control and censorship.
- Reported 'hacks' are often bugs in the mock-up reference app, but structural issues like relay attacks and dependence on wallet compliance are inherent to the protocol and will persist in national implementations.
Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers
a day ago
- Astronomers observed a supermassive black hole, 1ES 1927+654, whose corona disappeared and later reassembled in 2018.
- This event, occurring 270 million light-years away, was a first in black hole astronomy, noted by MIT's Megan Masterson.
- The text also promotes Quarkdown, a Markdown tool for various writing needs with extensions, fast compilation, and workflow scripting.

Hasty Briefsbeta

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EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers

Eden AI – European Alternative to OpenRouter

I have officially retired from Emacs

Peter Thiel Flees to Argentina

Simple Sabotage of Agents

Tushonka: Cultivating Soviet Postwar Taste (2010)

APL is more French than English

Tip: Web requests should not be measured in Hz [Hertz]

Chernobyl at 40: Secret Stasi files reveal extent of Soviet misinformation

The AI Compute Crunch Is Here (and It's Affecting the Economy)

US is making Europe pay dearly for its half-hearted electrification

Enterprises Are Rethinking Kubernetes

Exposing Floating Point – Bartosz Ciechanowski

Terra API (YC W21) Hiring: Applied AI Strategist(Health Intelligence)

A suspect is in custody after Trump is rushed from correspondents' dinner

Spanish archaeologists discover trove of ancient shipwrecks in Bay of Gibraltar

I asked my local LLM to add 23 numbers and got seven wrong answers

Just How Much Should You Worry About Eating That Burnt Toast?

The West Forgot How to Make Things. Now It's Forgetting How to Code

EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

Quarkdown – Markdown with Superpowers