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Stephen Wolfram's Wife Has Died
2 hours ago
- Elise passed away suddenly from a cardiovascular event shortly after heart surgery, leaving her husband of 36 years.
- Elise was a brilliant mathematician with a talent for thematic thinking and a passion for elegance in math and design.
- She was deeply committed to her family, especially her four children, and took pride in their development and achievements.
- Elise had a humanistic view of mathematics, arguing for its Platonic foundations over formalistic approaches.
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Waymo – Dallas Open to All
2 hours ago
- Starting August 4, 2026, anyone in Dallas can hail a fully autonomous Waymo ride via the app.
- Waymo has already served nearly 150,000 riders since its February launch in Dallas.
- The service is expanding to include testing at Dallas Love Field Airport and on freeways, aiming to serve travelers soon.
- The Epilepsy Foundation Texas praises Waymo for providing safe, independent travel for people with medical conditions.
China's CXMT Eyes Second Beijing Fab to Fight Memory Shortage
6 hours ago
- CXMT is in early talks to secure funding for a second major DRAM fabrication facility in Beijing.
- The expansion is backed by local government entities and state-linked investment groups.
- CXMT currently operates two 12-inch wafer fabs with a combined output of approximately 200,000 wafers per month.
- CXMT's competitive advantage is its rapid construction speed, completing semiconductor cleanrooms in about 12 months versus the typical two years.
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Why Estonians invite strangers into their back gardens each summer
18 hours ago
- Estonians transform private gardens, garages, and even bedroom windows into temporary pop-up cafes each summer, inviting strangers to enjoy homemade food.
- The tradition began in 2007 on Hiiumaa island to attract visitors beyond peak season, inspired by the island's historical coffee culture.
- Home cafe days have spread across Estonia, with over 150 events between April and September, fostering community spirit and neighborliness.
- These events offer a rare glimpse into everyday Estonian life, with participants often serving family recipes and showcasing local culture.
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As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program
17 hours ago
- Mac's .dmg files create a virtual drive upon opening, requiring users to drag the app icon to the Applications folder for permanent installation.
- Finder windows used for installation are customized by removing toolbars, switching to icon view, and adding a background with an arrow and link to Applications.
- The arrow in the installation window can be varied in shape, color, and direction, sometimes not even resembling an arrow.
- Some installation windows include explicit text instructions alongside the arrow, while others use creative layouts like renaming the link or using 'mad libs' style.
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FCC Commissioners Face Ethics Complaints for Taking Luxury Gifts from Paramount
6 hours ago
- Two watchdog groups—Democracy Defenders Fund and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington—filed complaints against FCC commissioners for accepting luxury gala tickets from Paramount while the company sought approval for its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition.
- A ProPublica investigation revealed that seven FCC commissioners since 2016 accepted over $260,000 in Kennedy Center honors gala tickets from CBS or Paramount, including Chair Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty.
- Carr and Trusty accepted tickets worth thousands of dollars, with Carr sitting in a $125,000-per-ticket skybox with Paramount executives, despite voting to approve a previous Paramount merger.
- Federal ethics rules prohibit employees from accepting gifts from entities that do business with or seek official action from their agency, leading experts to say the gifts compromised FCC impartiality.
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IntelliJ Idea Goes LSP: Java and Kotlin Intelligence Comes to VS Code, Cursor
6 hours ago
- IntelliJ IDEA now offers its Java and Kotlin intelligence as an LSP server, available in a preview extension for VS Code and its forks like Cursor.
- The extension provides smart code completion, navigation, analysis, refactorings, and support for Maven, Gradle, and Bazel.
- During the preview phase, the extension is free to use with a 30-day evaluation period per build; after preview, an IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate subscription is required.
- JetBrains is also working on supporting terminal-based agentic workflows, aiming to reduce token consumption and improve development efficiency.
SpaceX is set to acquire 130k acres of marshland in southern Louisiana
6 hours ago
- SpaceX is close to finalizing a deal to acquire about 130,000 acres of marshland in Louisiana, an 18-mile stretch known as Pecan Island, southwest of Lafayette.
- The land became available through a legal settlement resolving lawsuits against ExxonMobil for pollution and coastal land loss.
- Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry is expected to announce the agreement later this month, though no officials or SpaceX have publicly commented.
- SpaceX stated in May that it intends to launch Starship thousands of times per year, requiring multiple launch sites domestically and internationally.
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Apple issues new challenge against UK order for access to private user data
6 hours ago
- Apple has filed a new legal complaint against the UK government, challenging a Home Office demand for backdoor access to encrypted user data.
- The dispute centers on Apple's Advanced Data Protection, which uses end-to-end encryption that even Apple cannot access, and has been ongoing since early 2025.
- The UK government argues that law enforcement must be able to access communications to protect against terrorism and serious crime, while Apple insists it has never built a backdoor and never will.
- The government's requests are made under the Investigatory Powers Act, which allows secret technical capability notices to force companies to provide access to customer data.
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EU calls for stronger borders after Ceuta migrant crossings
6 hours ago
- EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen calls for united action on border security after the migrant influx into Ceuta.
- Spain estimates 69,500 migrants have returned to Morocco; death toll at 72 on Spanish side and 11 on Moroccan side.
- EU interior ministers hold emergency video conference to discuss the crisis.
- Italy temporarily suspends Schengen with Spain, backed by Finland and Denmark; Czech PM urges suspension of Spain's Schengen membership.
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AI-assisted staging draws boos at the Richard Wagner festival in Germany
5 hours ago
- An AI-assisted staging of Wagner's 'Götterdämmerung' at the Bayreuth Festival drew boos from the audience, with curator Marcus Lobbes and his team being jeered while singers and conductor Christian Thielemann received warm applause.
- The festival organizers described the AI as an 'image-generating force' that created a dynamic, ever-changing visual backdrop of light, texture, and historical associations.
- The AI projections included controversial images such as former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the World Trade Center towers after 9/11, and a German reunification stamp, which puzzled the audience.
- The festival emphasized that each performance would be unique due to the non-static nature of the AI-generated imagery, with two more performances scheduled.
55 Years Ago, an Apollo 15 Astronaut Dropped a Hammer on the Moon
5 hours ago
- On Aug. 2, 1971, astronaut David Scott performed a lunar experiment dropping a hammer and feather, demonstrating Galileo's theory that objects fall at the same speed in a vacuum.
- The experiment was broadcast live, confirming the theory visually and reassuring mission control of its validity for return home.
- Galileo used inclined planes for his experiments to reduce air resistance, and would have been pleased to see his ideas verified on the moon.
- Scott and James Irwin conducted three EVAs during Apollo 15, collecting rock samples and honoring fallen astronauts.
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How I'd Search for a Tech Job Abroad in 2026
5 hours ago
- Start with curated resources to save time and focus on quality applications.
- Narrow your search to two or three preferred countries for deeper market understanding.
- Build a watchlist of companies known for hiring internationally and follow them.
- Consider applying to companies that don't explicitly mention relocation, as they may still sponsor.
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Nvidia Alpamayo 2 Super, the Frontier Open Model for Autonomous Vehicles
5 hours ago
- Autonomous vehicles struggle most with rare, complex 'long-tail' scenarios requiring situational understanding and real-time reasoning beyond object detection.
- NVIDIA Alpamayo 2 Super is an open reasoning model for autonomous driving, built on Cosmos 3 Super Reasoner using reinforcement learning.
- It is licensed under OpenMDW-1.1, a permissive open license that allows commercial use, fine-tuning, and redistribution.
- Alpamayo 2 Super ranks first on the LingoQA autonomous driving reasoning benchmark, outperforming models like GPT-4o and Gemini 2.5 Pro.
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Flyte 2 is GA: durable distributed AI workflows using regular Python
5 hours ago
- Flyte 2 is now generally available as an open-source, durable AI runtime under the Linux Foundation, rebuilt from the ground up for modern AI and ML workloads.
- It is designed to be easy to learn: pure Python with no DSL, promises, or workflow language—tasks call tasks, and control flow is natural Python.
- Flyte 2 provides infrastructure-level durability, recovering not only from code bugs but also from compute failures like OOM crashes or preempted nodes.
- It unifies real-time and batch processing under one programming model, supporting scheduled pipelines, agent loops, and inference endpoints.
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Microsoft Tells Engineers 'Tokenmaxxing Is Not What We Are Optimizing For
4 hours ago
- Microsoft is imposing new limits on how much its engineers can spend on AI tools at work, stating that maximizing AI use internally is not the company's goal.
- The trend of reducing excessive AI usage, termed 'tokenmaxxing', is emerging across major companies as AI costs rise without proportional productivity gains.
- Microsoft is making the cheaper OpenAI GPT-5.6 the default model for internal use and plans to set 'AI token budget targets' for divisions by July 2026.
- The policy shift is not due to financial constraints—Microsoft's revenue and profits are strong—but aligns with cost-control measures at companies like Amazon, Adobe, and Citi.
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Average IQ by Country 2026
4 hours ago
- Hong Kong, South Korea, and China have the highest average IQ scores (107.73, 106.97, and 106.48 respectively).
- Higher national IQ averages are associated with strong education systems, high school attainment, good early childhood nutrition, and familiarity with standardized testing.
- Rwanda, Timor-Leste, and Somalia have the lowest average IQ scores (86.90, 86.70, and 83.84 respectively).
- Lower IQ averages are linked to limited education opportunities, low school completion rates, undernutrition, and reduced test exposure, not fixed cognitive differences.
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GPIO Announcer
3 hours ago
- GPIO announcer is a quick hack for testing microcontroller pin assignments after PCB assembly.
- It uses a CircuitPython script (or C .uf2) that drives all GPIOs simultaneously, each pin sending its name at 115200 baud via serial.
- Serial converter like TermDriver can be connected to any pin to read the continuously transmitted name, confirming the connection.
- The script detects floating pins and only transmits on those not already connected to an input.
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Maybe software stops being the default
3 hours ago
- The author observes a progression from writing software, to AI writing software, to no software being written at all for certain tasks.
- AI agents can follow instructions and perform tasks without creating durable software, replacing the need to design, deploy, and maintain persistent applications.
- Examples include accounting reconciliation and timesheet management, where agents directly handle workflows using API keys and instructions instead of custom software.
- Agents function like human delegates: given context, instructions, and access, they perform tasks without exhaustive formalization into code.
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Hasty Briefsbeta

Stephen Wolfram's Wife Has Died

Waymo – Dallas Open to All

China's CXMT Eyes Second Beijing Fab to Fight Memory Shortage

Why Estonians invite strangers into their back gardens each summer

As a Windows user, it's a surreal way to install a program

FCC Commissioners Face Ethics Complaints for Taking Luxury Gifts from Paramount

IntelliJ Idea Goes LSP: Java and Kotlin Intelligence Comes to VS Code, Cursor

SpaceX is set to acquire 130k acres of marshland in southern Louisiana

Apple issues new challenge against UK order for access to private user data

EU calls for stronger borders after Ceuta migrant crossings

AI-assisted staging draws boos at the Richard Wagner festival in Germany

55 Years Ago, an Apollo 15 Astronaut Dropped a Hammer on the Moon

How I'd Search for a Tech Job Abroad in 2026

Nvidia Alpamayo 2 Super, the Frontier Open Model for Autonomous Vehicles

Flyte 2 is GA: durable distributed AI workflows using regular Python

Microsoft Tells Engineers 'Tokenmaxxing Is Not What We Are Optimizing For

Average IQ by Country 2026

GPIO Announcer

Maybe software stops being the default