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Windows 11 will soon be able to reinstall itself and drivers without a USB drive
6 days ago
- Windows 11 introduces 'Cloud Rebuild' recovery method for reinstalling OS and drivers without a USB drive.
- Cloud Rebuild downloads Windows image and device drivers from Windows Update, ensuring a fully functional system post-reinstall.
- Unlike Reset this PC, Cloud Rebuild works even when Windows is unbootable and does not preserve apps or files.
- Currently in preview for Windows Insiders, with general availability expected in the coming months.
Why Gen Z is falling in love with film photography
6 days ago
- Film photography is making a comeback, driven by Gen Z, who are embracing it as a rejection of digital algorithms and social media alienation.
- Analog camera usage is growing, with 35% of active film users aged 18-30 in 2025, and disposable camera sales rising since 2023.
- Young people are seeking 'third places'—physical spaces for community and creativity—as a response to screen-dominated lives and increased isolation.
- Events like AnalogCon in 2026 highlight the thriving analog photography community, fostering social interaction and personal growth.
- This trend aligns with a broader generational shift toward physical media, such as vinyl records and VHS tapes, valued for tangible, deliberate experiences.
Learning another language appears to slow brain ageing by up to 13 years
6 days ago
- Learning another language could slow brain ageing by up to 13 years.
- Speaking multiple languages is associated with younger-appearing brains, with more languages and earlier acquisition linked to greater benefits.
- Study of 728 people used AI and brain scans to measure connectivity, finding multilingualism delays age-related decline in memory and speed of thought.
- Higher proficiency and earlier second language learning enhance brain resilience, with effects seen as a gradient rather than a binary bilingual/non-bilingual divide.
- Researchers caution that lifestyle factors may also contribute, though findings support promoting language learning for brain health across life stages.
I Built the Only 2026 WWII Jeep
6 days ago
- Author David Tracy, co-founder of The Autopian, undertakes an ambitious project: building a brand-new WWII Jeep from scratch using mostly eBay-sourced parts.
- The project is part of a partnership with eBay Motors to showcase its platform for automotive parts and support The Autopian's revenue model.
- With a tight deadline of a few months, Tracy faces immense challenges, including sourcing over 1,000 parts, rebuilding drivetrain components, and balancing work and family life.
- He enlists help from experts Brandon Girmus and Étienne Boisseau, and friend Laurence from Australia, to assist with the complex build in his driveway.
- After overcoming issues like engine tuning, vapor lock, and brake adjustments, Tracy successfully completes the Jeep and drives it 900 miles from LA to Moab, Utah.
- In Moab, the Jeep performs exceptionally on tough off-road trails, proving the build's success and the viability of sourcing parts via eBay.
- The project highlights Tracy's dedication to The Autopian and its community, demonstrating that passion and teamwork can achieve seemingly impossible goals.
Germany suspends Cispa cybersecurity director over China technology transfer
6 days ago
- Germany's domestic intelligence agency warns China is seeking global technological supremacy by acquiring tech from German research institutions.
- China's methods include acquiring companies, joint ventures, talent programs, and scientific cooperation, exploiting academic freedom in Germany.
- Focus areas for acquisition include quantum tech, AI, biotechnology, hypersonic tech, and surveillance technologies.
- The Helmholtz Institute Cispa case led to suspensions and audits due to collaborations with Chinese scientists linked to the military.
- The Helmholtz Association adopted a China policy with a traffic light system and plans a special security unit, amid calls for better intelligence-academia collaboration.
Ditching Zotero for a Text File
6 days ago
- The author prefers minimal computing and sought alternatives to Zotero for managing academic references, trying tools like Jabref, Cobib, and Tellico.
- A pattern emerged: exporting and importing references via BibTeX revealed these managers as glorified front-ends for BibTeX, a LaTeX file format for bibliographic data.
- Despite initial perceptions of BibTeX as an intermediary tool, the author switched to using a single BibTeX file as their sole reference manager for almost two years.
- BibTeX's structure, including fields like 'keywords' and 'note', allows for easy navigation, customization, and searching via commands like grep for efficient reference management.
- The approach offers UNIX-friendly interoperability, enabling flexible operations on plain text files, portability across systems, and integration with version control and email without compatibility issues.
Emacs and AI, the combination you've been missing
7 days ago
- The author describes frustration with switching between Emacs and AI tools like Claude for coding assistance.
- An epiphany occurs about integrating AI directly into Emacs using Claude to write custom plugins, despite the author's limited knowledge of Elisp.
- Claude successfully generates a functional Emacs plugin, demonstrating that AI can help customize Emacs to create an ideal development environment.
Teams using AI for outbound email are finding it harder, Folderly research finds
7 days ago
- Outbound email deliverability is a major constraint for B2B SaaS pipeline in 2026 due to stricter sender requirements by Google and Microsoft and AI-generated outbound emails.
- Survey data reveals that 65% of B2B sales and email marketers experienced cold emails suddenly stop getting replies, and 79% were told prospects never received their emails.
- 95% of professionals believe inbox placement is crucial for sales success, while 70% of sales teams use AI for writing outbound emails, with many recipients able to detect AI use.
- Key benchmarks include 99.0% deliverability, 45.2% open rate, and a 25% reply rate, with recovery achievable in 6–8 weeks from a median of 37% spam placement to 97–99% primary inbox delivery.
- Recommendations involve treating deliverability as infrastructure, monitoring it regularly, fixing root causes, and ensuring accountability for outcomes within organizations.
When docs become performance art, everybody loses (2025)
7 days ago
- Documentation theater refers to creating docs for the sake of compliance rather than addressing user needs, which is worse than having no docs at all.
- Performative content, like fake skill percentages on resumes or unnecessary website sections, is dysfunctional and fails to solve actual problems.
- Tech writers should focus on user needs, not templates or frameworks, by asking who the audience is and how the content helps them, upholding clarity and comprehension.
DARPA program to make 30 yr batteries for drones from nuclear waste
6 days ago
- DARPA's 'Rads to Watts' program aims to develop lightweight batteries using nuclear waste that could last decades.
- A $3.37 million contract funds a proof-of-concept device targeting over 10 watts per kilogram and years of shelf life.
- Project Omega, part of the program, creates radioisotope power sources converting radiation directly into electricity.
- Multiple organizations are involved, with a goal to produce a working prototype by early 2027 at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
- The technology targets applications like drones and satellites, where battery failure is critical, and works in extreme temperatures.
- The power cells use Strontinum-90 from nuclear waste, which is less hazardous than Plutonium-238 used in similar systems.
- Key challenges include improving energy conversion efficiency, validating long-term reliability, and ensuring safe deployment.
Meta's AI 'Perv Glasses' Now Come with Stupid Comcast-Esque Usage Restrictions
7 days ago
- Meta has introduced rate limits on its AI smart glasses, requiring a $19.99 monthly subscription for unlimited use of the 'conversation focus' feature, which amplifies voices in noisy environments.
- The 'conversation focus' feature operates entirely on-device without needing internet or Meta's servers, making the rate limits technically unnecessary and likened to Comcast's usage caps.
- Privacy concerns have arisen due to reports of the glasses being used to video people without consent and potential facial recognition capabilities, leading to terms like 'perv glasses.'
- Critics argue Meta's move is an example of 'enshittification,' imposing arbitrary fees to boost earnings, similar to subscription models in other industries like automotive.
- The article highlights broader issues with Meta's AI investments and data center expansions, suggesting a bubble and debt concerns, with the company now considering renting out excess AI compute capacity.
DeepSeek V4 Is Earning Agentic Token Share
6 days ago
- DeepSeek's V4 model family, released April 24, 2026, significantly increased the company's token share on OpenRouter, doubling from around 10% in January to nearly 20% by June.
- The surge in token share was driven by agentic workloads, which use about 15x more tokens per request than human AI usage, and V4 became the preferred model for such tasks, with V4-Flash comprising 70% of DeepSeek's agentic token flow by end of May.
- V4's cost-effectiveness, priced at $0.09/$0.18 per million tokens (input/output) compared to GPT-5.5's $5/$30, made it attractive for organizations, contributing to its growth without a proportional spike in spending share.
- The competitive landscape shifted in 2026, with Chinese models (led by DeepSeek, Xiaomi, Minimax, Tencent) surpassing American ones in token share, reversing 2025's dominance where U.S. models held about 75%.
- Usage growth spanned all user types, including hobbyists (nearly one-third of tokens routed to DeepSeek) and AI-native/large organizations, indicating broad adoption beyond cost-sensitive segments.
- The analysis is based on OpenRouter data from over 450 trillion tokens (Jan 1 - Jun 14, 2026), categorized into Agentic, Mixed, and Human workloads using a 7-signal composite score.
Tencent Hy3
6 days ago
- The text provides instructions on how to use the tencent/Hy3 model with various libraries, inference providers, notebooks, and local apps.
- Detailed examples are given for using Hy3 with Transformers, vLLM, SGLang, and Docker, including code snippets for installation, server setup, and API calls.
- Hy3 is a 295B-parameter Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model with 21B active parameters, developed by Tencent Hy Team, offering strong capabilities in agent tasks, reasoning, and long-context handling.
- The model shows improvements in stability, knowledge accuracy, and multi-turn intent tracking, with reduced hallucination and error rates based on internal evaluations.
- Deployment recommendations include using vLLM or SGLang on 8 GPUs with specific configurations, and the model is open-sourced under Apache License 2.0, available on multiple platforms.
Claude Fable 5 Backlash Grows
6 days ago
- Anthropic re-released Claude Fable 5 on July 1 with stricter guardrails, leading to user backlash over reduced coding and debugging performance.
- Benchmark scores from BridgeMind show sharp declines in tasks like debugging (86.2 to 25.9) and refactoring, attributed to blocked tasks rather than weaker reasoning.
- Anthropic claims the underlying model is unchanged but admits tighter safety classifiers block more legitimate requests, routing them to Opus 4.8 instead.
- The model was initially launched in June, suspended briefly by regulators, and restored with usage limits and enhanced safety measures targeting cybersecurity tasks.
- Anthropic is collaborating with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google on a jailbreak severity framework, while international competition and user retention concerns grow.
Rust is in TIOBE Index top 10
6 days ago
- Rust enters the TIOBE Index top 10 for the first time in July 2026.
- The TIOBE Index celebrates its 25th anniversary in July 2026.
- Python ranks first in the TIOBE Index for July 2026, followed by C and C++.
- TIOBE introduces a Programming Language Flowchart to help developers select languages for specific use cases.
- The TIOBE Index measures language popularity based on skilled engineers, courses, vendors, and web search data.
- Long-term trends show C, C++, and Java have remained top languages over 25 years.
- Feedback led to improvements in the index, including handling of dialects and addition of SQL.
- The index includes data on the top 50 languages and a hall of fame for annual award winners.
- Suggestions for index enhancements include adding non-English queries and tracking recently added pages.
- Complete historical data is available for a fee, covering over 150 languages from 2001 onward.
Craig Mod built his own Good Reads
10 days ago
- The author reflects on their time in New York City, particularly enjoying the Knicks game atmosphere and communal joy.
- They discuss creating 'A Good Book (AGB)', a community-driven book recommendation site for SPECIAL PROJECTS members, built with Claude to focus on engagement metrics.
- Updates include progress on the TBOT Fine Art edition reprint, plans for a members-only board meeting, and work on a new personal project.
- The author read 'Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1', finding it potentially suitable for LLM-assisted writing, and praised Ursula K. Le Guin's genre fiction.
- They highlight Ursula K. Le Guin's essay collection 'Telling is Listening' and her insights on writing fiction, including naming characters in Earthsea.
- Other reads include 'We the Animals' by Justin Torres, 'Replay' by Ken Grimwood, and high-brow SF like 'Calculation of Volume' and 'This Time Tomorrow'.
- The author critiques films like 'Disclosure Day' and 'Backrooms' for weak scripts, while praising lower-budget successes like 'Obsession' and 'Iron Lung'.
- They mention Darren Aronofsky's diary on making 'Pi', emphasizing the creative benefits of friction and low-budget filmmaking.
- The author thanks attendees of the Asheville event, shares personal connections to the area, and enjoyed family time and NYC activities.
- They conclude the nine-week U.S. trip, expressing gratitude for support and highlighting the Ricoh GRIV camera as a travel essential.
How to sequence your own DNA at home
6 days ago
- The author has sequenced their own genome five times using an Oxford Nanopore MinION at home, detailing the process from cheek cell collection to data analysis.
- Cheek cells are used for sequencing because they are easily accessible, but they are not suitable for diagnosing conditions like cancer or inflammation, which require tissue-specific samples.
- The cost of home genome sequencing is currently high but decreasing exponentially, making it more accessible in the future, similar to technologies like cell phones or AI.
- A sequenced genome serves as a reference layer; tools like VEP, ClinVar, and PharmGKB can analyze variants to reveal genetic information, drug metabolism differences, and rare variants.
- The process involves collecting cheek cells, extracting DNA, repairing and preparing it for sequencing, ligating adapters, and running it through the MinION with specific hardware and software.
- Key steps include DNA extraction using a Monarch kit, quality checks with a Qubit fluorometer, adapter ligation, flow cell priming, and sequencing with MinKNOW software.
- After sequencing, basecalling with Dorado, alignment to a reference genome using minimap2, variant calling with Clair3, and annotation with tools like VEP provide insights into genetic variants.
- The author emphasizes that genome information is not yet diagnostic-grade and warns against self-editing with CRISPR based solely on AI recommendations, highlighting the need for medical consultation.
- A detailed protocol is provided for end-to-end DNA sequencing, including lab setup, reagent lists, and step-by-step instructions from cell collection to data analysis.
- The future vision integrates DNA, RNA, and biosensor data into a comprehensive personal health model, enabling real-time insights into genetics and expression.
Why 3D TVs failed and the trouble with 3D in Hollywood
6 days ago
- 3D TVs failed due to lack of content, high costs, and inconvenience, with only 25% of households using them at peak.
- Hollywood's 3D push declined as low-quality upscaled films caused audience distrust, despite early hits like Avatar.
- Modern 3D viewing options are limited and expensive, including projectors and VR headsets, with glasses-free tech still underdeveloped.
GitHub Under Siege
6 days ago
- GitHub's reliability has declined with frequent outages, especially in Actions, disrupting many teams' workflows.
- There is a growing trend of developers and companies leaving GitHub due to platform lock-in, governance concerns, and centralization risks.
- Competitors like Cursor's Origin, Entire, and autonomous-agent platforms are emerging, challenging GitHub's dominance by focusing on agent-native workflows.
FBI: TeamPCP Compromised Dev Tools to Steal Cloud Credentials
6 days ago
- FBI issued a FLASH alert about the TeamPCP criminal group on July 2, 2026, detailing its large-scale software supply chain attacks targeting developer and security tools to steal credentials.
- TeamPCP compromised tools including Trivy, KICS, LiteLLM, and Telnyx Python SDK by injecting malicious code into legitimate packages, which were then distributed through normal channels and pulled into CI/CD pipelines.
- The group deployed four malware families: CanisterWorm, SANDCLOCK, Mini Shai-Hulud, and Miasma, harvesting cloud tokens, API keys, Kubernetes secrets, and cryptocurrency data, with worms spreading autonomously across npm and PyPI registries.
- Attack methods included exploiting stale recovery email domains to hijack npm maintainer accounts, using password resets to publish malicious package versions.
- FBI warns that stolen credentials and data are permanently compromised and may be reused in future attacks, even long after the initial breach, with extortion and collaboration among threat actors.
- Recommendations include pinning GitHub Actions to verified SHA hashes, rotating CI/CD secrets, enforcing least-privilege permissions, requiring phishing-resistant MFA, and auditing npm accounts for outdated recovery emails.
- Associated indicators include four CVEs, six IP addresses, 27 file hashes, and domains like checkmarx[.]zone, with affected organizations advised to report incidents to FBI or IC3 and retain logs and evidence.

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Hasty Briefsbeta

Windows 11 will soon be able to reinstall itself and drivers without a USB drive

Why Gen Z is falling in love with film photography

Learning another language appears to slow brain ageing by up to 13 years

I Built the Only 2026 WWII Jeep

Germany suspends Cispa cybersecurity director over China technology transfer

Ditching Zotero for a Text File

Emacs and AI, the combination you've been missing

Teams using AI for outbound email are finding it harder, Folderly research finds

When docs become performance art, everybody loses (2025)

DARPA program to make 30 yr batteries for drones from nuclear waste

Meta's AI 'Perv Glasses' Now Come with Stupid Comcast-Esque Usage Restrictions

DeepSeek V4 Is Earning Agentic Token Share

Tencent Hy3

Claude Fable 5 Backlash Grows

Rust is in TIOBE Index top 10

Craig Mod built his own Good Reads

How to sequence your own DNA at home

Why 3D TVs failed and the trouble with 3D in Hollywood

GitHub Under Siege

FBI: TeamPCP Compromised Dev Tools to Steal Cloud Credentials