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China becomes second country to recover orbital booster with Long March 10B
3 hours ago
- China successfully launched the Long March 10B rocket and recovered its first stage using a net capture system on July 10.
- The recovery marks China's entry into reusable orbital booster capabilities, alongside SpaceX and Blue Origin.
- The rocket is designed for low Earth orbit missions, including satellite deployments and supporting China's crewed lunar program.
- CASC plans to reuse the recovered first stage by the end of the year and optimize reusable technology further.
- The mission validates technology for the Long March 10A, which aims to launch the Mengzhou spacecraft and support lunar landings before 2030.
China lands reusable rocket for first time, state media says
4 hours ago
- China successfully landed a reusable rocket for the first time, marking a major breakthrough in its space program.
- The Long March 10B rocket launched from Hainan, with its booster returning vertically to a floating platform about six minutes after separation.
- Reusable rockets can significantly lower costs for satellite launches and space exploration by recovering the valuable booster segments.
- China's achievement positions it to challenge U.S. dominance in reusable rocket technology, following successes by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
- The Long March 10B uses 'landing hooks' to catch a net on a floating platform, differing from autonomous landings by competitors like Falcon 9.
- Shares in Chinese space firms surged, with some hitting the 10% daily limit after the announcement.
Tiny Tapeout Explorer: WASM FET-level circuit SIM&vis
2 days ago
- Interactive web-based visualization tool for exploring Tiny Tapeout integrated circuit designs.
- Features: WASM-powered engine with layout parser and circuit extractor; advanced 3D GDSII/OASIS visualization using WebGL 2.0; interactive switch-level simulation with VGA output.
- Major upgrade to the original TT09 WebGL GDS Viewer by Alexander Mordvintsev, with source code available on GitHub.
- Allows users to select shuttles to view project status and details from the Tiny Tapeout community.
In Emacs, Everything Looks Like a Service
4 hours ago
- Emacs is not an operating system but orchestrates applications and utilities above the OS kernel, enabling users to 'live only in Emacs' by fulfilling many computing needs through client modes.
- The client-server model partitions tasks between a service (provider) and a client (requester), with Emacs providing built-in and third-party libraries for implementing clients, handling UI, client-edge communication, and local databases.
- Emacs Lisp (Elisp) is a dynamic language allowing high improvisation, enabling complex orchestration of behaviors, from Elisp functions to shell commands, with examples like building a weather client using wttr.in via HTTP requests and JSON processing.
- Emacs abstracts APIs at a high level, making it easy to build clients with minimal code, as shown by the 67-line wttr.el example, or by integrating command-line utilities like a Python script as a 'service' for simpler implementations.
Russian Surveillance Software Suppresses Georgian Civilians Rights
4 hours ago
- Georgia built a face recognition enforcement system using software from a Moscow-based company linked to the FSB, which suppresses protests through fines and bank freezes.
- Protesters like Nino and Luka were identified via surveillance cameras, fined heavily, and faced frozen accounts, leading many to stop demonstrating due to fear and financial pressure.
- The government escalated repressive laws: from 2023 to 2026, assembly rules tightened, face covering became criminalized, and online criticism was outlawed, eroding constitutional freedoms.
- The surveillance software, Polyface, uses automated identification, operator-directed searches, and watchlist alerts, integrated with civil registry data and social media for cross-platform monitoring.
- Psychological impact includes paranoia, route changes, and reduced protest participation, with a chilling effect fracturing society and creating moral divides among activists.
- Strategic risks involve Russian control over biometric data, potential integrity attacks, and long-term dominance threats to Georgia's national security and European integration path.
- Despite ongoing surveillance, hundreds still gather daily on Rustaveli Avenue, but the cost of protest has shifted from monetary fines to the loss of personal freedom.
Exit Chat Control
10 hours ago
- EU Prüm II regulation allows facial image exchange across police forces, raising mass surveillance concerns.
- eIDAS 2.0 mandates European digital identity wallets by 2026 and forces browsers to trust state certificates.
- High-Level Group proposes 'lawful access by design' for police access to data, criticized as mass surveillance.
- Romanian election annulled due to TikTok campaign; DSA proceedings opened against platform.
- Vietnam requires identity verification for online posting, linking speech to verified identity.
- UK demands iCloud backdoor; Apple removes encryption for UK users rather than comply.
- France rejects 'ghost participant' mechanism in encrypted messengers after cross-party opposition.
- EU's ProtectEU strategy includes roadmap for accessing encrypted communications and boosting Europol.
- ICE purchases Palantir's 'ImmigrationOS' for targeted surveillance of immigration populations.
- Switzerland's surveillance ordinance proposal stalls after opposition from companies like Proton.
- US requires student visa applicants to make social media public for ideological screening.
- EU schedules state decryption capabilities by 2030, including AI analysis of seized data.
- EU pilots age-verification apps, integrating into digital identity wallets by late 2026.
- France enforces age verification for adult sites, blocking access for non-compliance.
- China introduces centralized 'cyberspace ID' with face recognition, eroding online anonymity.
- EMFA bans spyware against journalists but includes exceptions for national security.
- Russia mandates pre-installed state-controlled messenger MAX on smartphones, with tracking capabilities.
- Russia penalizes searching for 'extremist' content online, including via VPNs.
- Over 500 scientists sign open letter against client-side scanning, citing technical infeasibility.
- UK plans mandatory digital ID for right-to-work checks, sparking public opposition.
- EU pulls mandatory scanning proposal after backlash, but it returns as 'voluntary'.
- EU Entry/Exit System collects biometrics for non-EU travelers, centralizing border control.
- UN Cybercrime Convention adopted, enabling cross-border surveillance with broad definitions.
- ECB advances digital euro development while legal safeguards remain undecided.
- Australia bans under-16s from social platforms, requiring age estimation and deactivating millions of accounts.
- France extends algorithmic CCTV 'experiment' to 2030, expanding surveillance scope.
- Former Polish minister granted asylum in Hungary amid Pegasus spyware scandal.
- Russia blocks WhatsApp after platform refuses data-sharing demands.
- Greek court convicts spyware vendors in Predator case, but buyers remain untraceable.
- France proposes expanding 'black boxes' to include full URL tracking for metadata analysis.
- German and French intelligence switch from Palantir to ChapsVision for AI-driven police analysis.
- US FISA Section 702 lapses but surveillance continues under existing certifications.
- EU Parliament advances digital euro with conditional payment features, despite non-programmability claims.
- Europol budget proposal increases to €3 billion with expanded mandate on encryption and AI.
- Pegasus spyware found on MEP in committee overseeing spyware, highlighting oversight failures.
- Decentralized social networks like Mastodon, Nostr, and Matrix offer alternatives to corporate platforms, emphasizing user control and privacy.
Turn off this Meta setting before someone generates AI images of you
6 hours ago
- Meta's Muse Image AI model integrates with public Instagram accounts, allowing anyone to generate AI images using your likeness by tagging your handle in a prompt without notification.
- Opting out of this feature requires navigating to Sharing and reuse settings on Instagram and disabling Posts and Reels reuse toggles, but this only prevents future image generation and doesn't remove existing AI-generated content.
- The risks include privacy and security implications, such as easier creation of synthetic images for impersonation, scams, or fraud, with cybercriminals potentially exploiting this for phishing and identity theft.
- Additional security issues with Meta's AI include a 'confused deputy' flaw that allowed unauthorized account changes, though enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA) can help mitigate some risks.
- For comprehensive protection, users can switch their Instagram accounts to private, use MFA, and be aware that Meta's opt-out approach and existing defenses have been criticized as insufficient by its own Oversight Board.
Hackers Use Fake Emergency Requests to Steal Data from Apple, Meta and Others
5 hours ago
- Hackers tricked companies like Apple, Meta, and Discord into handing over user data using fake emergency data requests (EDR).
- Criminals exploit compromised law enforcement email accounts to send forged EDRs with real names and signatures, appearing legitimate.
- Companies often verify requests via valid domains but lack specific tools, leading to quick compliance (e.g., within 30 minutes).
- Discord, Apple, and Meta have been targeted since early 2021, with some complying despite later discovering the compromised accounts.
- A privacy service like Bitdefender's Digital Identity Protection can help users manage digital footprints and receive breach notifications.
Damaged Earth Catalog
4 days ago
- The Damaged Earth Catalog promotes a shift from remote power structures (government, big business, formal education, church) to intimate, community-based power.
- It focuses on communities conducting their own education, finding inspiration, shaping their environment, and sharing knowledge.
- The catalog seeks and promotes practices supporting this transition, listing various approaches such as Appropriate Technology, Low-Tech, Permacomputing, and Degrowth.
Bayeux Tapestry delivered to British Museum in dead of night
6 hours ago
- Bayeux Tapestry delivered to British Museum at 02:50 from secret location in France.
- 70-meter 11th-century embroidery depicts events leading to 1066 Battle of Hastings.
- Loaned for nine months by French government, part of agreement with UK Prime Minister.
- Tapestry transported in climate-controlled crate with shock absorbers to prevent damage.
- British Museum sold record 100,000 tickets on first day of sales for exhibition.
- Tapestry survived nearly 1,000 years despite risks like moths, damp, and fire.
- Norman Conquest reshaped England, introducing French words and Norman nobles.
- Some in France opposed loan, calling it a "heritage crime" due to fragility.
- Tapestry will be displayed flat, allowing full view for first time in history.
Preempt_none Is Dead; Your Postgres Probably Doesn't Care
4 days ago
- AWS benchmark showed PostgreSQL throughput dropping to 0.51x on Linux 7.0 vs 6.x due to a regression from removing PREEMPT_NONE preemption mode.
- The performance issue is caused by minor page faults inside a spinlock (buffer_strategy_lock) when using 4KB pages with large shared memory (100+ GB), exacerbated by PREEMPT_LAZY.
- Enabling huge pages (huge_pages=on) eliminates the regression by reducing page faults and TLB pressure, making the kernel upgrade safe for most users.
- Self-hosted servers should configure huge pages properly; containerized setups need host-level huge page reservations or reduced shared_buffers.
- Cloud database users rely on vendors to handle kernel and huge page configurations, with no action required on their part.
- The kernel community suggested using rseq for scheduler hints, but this is not a practical immediate fix; PostgreSQL may adopt it in future versions.
- The benchmark artifact highlights the importance of correct configuration (huge pages) for large shared memory workloads, not a fundamental Linux issue.
China's public QR codes are being hijacked to redirect users to porn and scams
7 hours ago
- Criminals in China are hacking public QR codes, redirecting scans to porn and illegal websites.
- Beijing introduced public QR codes in 2016 for smart city management, later adopted nationwide.
- Incidents include a Suzhou park shuttle bus QR code hijacked in March and a Beijing street pole code in February.
- CCTV found many municipal QR codes at bus stops, lampposts, and mailboxes were invalid.
- Cybersecurity experts note QR codes lack built-in security, allowing criminals to hijack expired domains.
- Domain registration in China requires purchase from accredited registrars, with prices varying widely.
- Experts warn public QR code failures reveal urban security gaps and recommend government action.
Sony disc-free PS5 plan triggered $457M lawsuit, undercutting antitrust defense
9 hours ago
- Sony faces a $457 million lawsuit from Dutch consumers over plans to phase out PS5 physical discs by 2028, fearing higher game prices due to PlayStation Store's 30% commission.
- Eliminating physical discs removes the used game market, undermining Sony's antitrust defense and giving it full control over pricing, which may reduce consumer willingness to pay.
- Analysts note backlash from gamers who value physical copies for resale flexibility, with about 15% of sales still physical, impacting price-sensitive consumers.
- Microsoft's Xbox could benefit from Sony's move by reassuring customers about keeping physical options, but its own restructuring and layoffs complicate seizing the opportunity.
- Both Sony and Xbox are shifting focus to downloadable content (DLC) over new games, changing consumer satisfaction from completing standalone games to ongoing payments.
China recovers reusable rocket used in the maiden launch of Long March 10B
8 hours ago
- China recovered the reusable first stage of the Long March 10B rocket after its maiden launch.
- The rocket, measuring 70 meters tall, launched from Wenchang and delivered its payload to low Earth orbit.
- The first stage returned vertically and was recovered using a sea-based net platform.
- The Long March 10B can carry up to 16 tonnes to low Earth orbit and is designed for cargo missions.
- NASA aims to return US astronauts to the moon by 2028, marking the first crewed mission since Apollo.
Class action suit over deepfake child sexual abuse material expands
9 hours ago
- A class action lawsuit against AI companies SpaceXAI and Stability AI expands, alleging their models were used to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
- Plaintiffs accuse the companies of producing CSAM, benefiting from sex trafficking, negligence, defective product design, and creating a public nuisance.
- The case involves Jane Doe 4, whose stepfather used SpaceXAI's chatbot Grok to generate explicit images from a childhood photo, leading to trauma and family breakdown.
- SpaceXAI allegedly failed to adequately report CSAM to authorities, lacking sufficient information and not sharing perpetrator details.
- Stability AI, added as a defendant, is accused of enabling CSAM generation through open-weight models, despite previous efforts to filter content.
- AI tools have made nonconsensual intimate image creation mainstream, prompting investigations and bans in some countries.
- Plaintiffs seek stronger guardrails on AI models and monetary compensation for the harm caused.
Common prefix skipping, adaptive sort
4 days ago
- Patent US7680791B2 expired for an in-memory sort algorithm invented at Oracle, featured in 10gR2 with ~5X performance improvement over the previous sort.
- Algorithm features include common prefix skipping, adaptive switching between quicksort and MSD radix sort, key substring caching to reduce CPU cache misses, and producing results before completion.
- Proposed name 'Orasort' as a shorter alternative to 'common prefix skipping adaptive quicksort'.
- Development was inspired by the Sort Benchmark contest and Alphasort paper, focusing on large keys with common prefixes in DBMS contexts.
- Algorithm optimizations include remembering common prefix lengths for comparison skipping and caching next key bytes for better memory behavior.
- Implementation challenges included making the new sort stable (addressed but not detailed) and managing worst-case quicksort pivot risks via statistical analysis using Scheme.
- Post-Oracle work involved improving MySQL and recent developments in RonDB for parallel sorted index scans and merge sort optimizations.
- Discussions on career progression at Oracle noted delayed rewards compared to peers at other companies.
- References provided for parallel merge sort optimizations, including RocksDB's N-way heap and Goetz Graefe's work on offset-value coding.
China's giant Gobi solar plant runs after dark on salt, not batteries
12 hours ago
- China Three Gorges Corporation launched a 1-gigawatt hybrid solar plant in Xinjiang's Gobi Desert, combining PV panels with concentrated solar power using molten salt for thermal storage.
- The plant can generate power for up to eight hours after sunset without lithium batteries, with the 100 MW CSP unit providing dispatchable evening output.
- It features a linear Fresnel design for improved efficiency and has supplied over 6.54 million kWh to the grid since its 2025 connection, aiming for 2.07 TWh annually.
- The project surpasses Dubai's Noor Energy 1 as the world's largest CSP-PV hybrid, supporting China's renewable goals and reducing CO2 emissions by about 1.63 million tons per year.
- While CSP thermal storage offers large capacity and long discharge cycles, its cost competitiveness against falling lithium battery prices remains a key challenge for future scalability.
- China plans to expand hybrid solar capacity, including a 3 GW second phase at Hami, highlighting its focus on industrializing molten-salt storage at utility scale.
Ben Bernanke Joins Anthropic Oversight Trust
10 hours ago
- Ben Bernanke joins Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust to help ensure AI is developed responsibly for humanity's long-term benefit.
- Bernanke's background includes leading the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crisis and winning the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics.
- The Trust is independent, with trustees holding no equity in Anthropic, and aims to balance commercial success with social good.
- Bernanke will contribute expertise on AI's economic impacts, aiding Anthropic's research and governance decisions.
Full-frame video stabilization through global 3D scene reconstruction
a day ago
- StabiGS formulates video stabilization as a rendering-aware view synthesis problem by reconstructing a global 3D scene representation and jointly optimizing camera smoothness and rendering quality.
- The method outperforms existing 2D warping or local 3D cue-based approaches by preserving full-frame content and geometric consistency, especially under large camera motions or complex scene geometry.
- A synthetic benchmark with controllable camera shakiness and accurate ground-truth poses is introduced for comprehensive evaluation, and extensive experiments plus a user study confirm StabiGS's state-of-the-art performance.
Divide and Compact: Segment-Oriented Compaction in SlateDB
19 hours ago
- LSMs use a single tree for data, causing challenges in managing read/write amplification for mixed data structures with different patterns or lifetimes.
- Segment-oriented compaction in SlateDB splits the dataset into separate trees, allowing tailored compaction strategies based on data structure, frequency, retention, or other dimensions.
- Compaction in SlateDB involves L0 tables and sorted runs, with a scheduler like size-tiered compaction selecting similarly sized runs, though it struggles with heterogeneous data or time-based structures like timeseries.
- Segment-oriented compaction, introduced in RFC 24, partitions the keyspace by prefix, creating isolated LSM trees per segment for customized compaction and retention, useful for index structures or timeseries data.
- Benefits include bounded compaction work, steady throughput, improved write performance, and efficient retention, but tradeoffs include potential L0 write costs, manifest overhead, and the need for proper segment sizing for query efficiency.

Hasty Briefsbeta

China becomes second country to recover orbital booster with Long March 10B

China lands reusable rocket for first time, state media says

Tiny Tapeout Explorer: WASM FET-level circuit SIM&vis

In Emacs, Everything Looks Like a Service

Russian Surveillance Software Suppresses Georgian Civilians Rights

Exit Chat Control

Turn off this Meta setting before someone generates AI images of you

Hackers Use Fake Emergency Requests to Steal Data from Apple, Meta and Others

Damaged Earth Catalog

Bayeux Tapestry delivered to British Museum in dead of night

Preempt_none Is Dead; Your Postgres Probably Doesn't Care

China's public QR codes are being hijacked to redirect users to porn and scams

Sony disc-free PS5 plan triggered $457M lawsuit, undercutting antitrust defense

China recovers reusable rocket used in the maiden launch of Long March 10B

Class action suit over deepfake child sexual abuse material expands

Common prefix skipping, adaptive sort

China's giant Gobi solar plant runs after dark on salt, not batteries

Ben Bernanke Joins Anthropic Oversight Trust

Full-frame video stabilization through global 3D scene reconstruction

Divide and Compact: Segment-Oriented Compaction in SlateDB