Links für 2023 KW 37
Zusammengefasst von LlongOrca.
The real web3 boom will be through startups | TechCrunch:
As enterprises and crypto startups race to adopt web3 technologies, there is potential for mutual growth in opportunities. Circle's Gagan Mac highlighted innovation coming from both mainstream companies and web3 projects, with examples such as Nike and Starbucks launching their own NFT-linked services. Despite market value fluctuations, adoption is seen as a promising path forward for businesses in this emerging space. Google Cloud's Dan Sun emphasized the importance of understanding which values they can provide. Finally, Lihan Lee of Xangle believes both parties have chances to succeed in web3.
A MySQL expert weighs in on cloud database dilemmas:
This article discusses the increasing popularity of PostgreSQL as a relational system and how it has become the most preferred database among professional developers, according to Stack Overflow's Developer Survey 2023. In parallel to this rise, there are various ways to deploy PostgreSQL in the cloud or utilize its compatible database services. However, developers need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each approach before making a choice. The article also warns about choosing cloud providers lightly, as fully managed solutions can come with high costs and lock-ins.
This article discusses a case study in which the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands implemented a machine learning algorithm to help identify individuals committing benefits fraud. The system was criticized for discriminating based on ethnicity and gender, as well as being inaccurate and unfair. After an external audit commissioned by the Dutch government, the city suspended the use of the algorithm.
Carrefour puts ‘shrinkflation’ price warnings on food to shame brands:
Carrefour, a French supermarket chain, has introduced labels on its shelves to warn customers of „shrinkflation,“ a practice where manufacturers reduce pack sizes instead of increasing prices. This move is aimed at pressuring major consumer goods suppliers, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Unilever, to address the issue prior to contract negotiations. The stickers highlight 26 products in French Carrefour stores that have shrunk in size but not reduced their prices.
Repeat after me: building any new homes reduces housing costs for all:
The article discusses how „supply scepticism“ advocates argue against new market-rate housing developments, believing it may increase rents and prices locally, hindering their aim of making housing more affordable for people on low incomes. However, this theory conflicts with fundamental economics principles which state that when the supply of a good or service increases, its price decreases. The article presents evidence showing that when new market-rate housing is built, it does not significantly increase rents and prices in the area, and in fact, can help improve overall housing affordability. It highlights examples from countries like New Zealand and the US where policies to increase housing supply have resulted in rent stabilization or even a decrease in average rental costs.
Wait, is Unity allowed to just change its fee structure like that?:
Unity, a popular game engine software company, recently announced changes to its fee structure, sparking outrage among developers. The new rules will impose charges of up to $0.20 per install once certain revenue and installation thresholds are reached. Developers are questioning how Unity can make such drastic changes in fee structures, considering previous statements from the company.
Unity CEO John Riccitiello had previously stated that their „no royalties, no fucking around“ subscription plans would remain constant for developers, and even those who paid $1,500 for a perpetual license could potentially face additional per-install fees starting from January 2024. The company has yet to respond publicly about the new fee structure but claims that it will not apply to any game installs made before the new rule takes effect on January 1, 2024.
Unity's terms of service provide that they have the right to modify or terminate fees at any time without notice or consent from developers. However, a legal agreement dating back to 2013 states that the company „may add or change fees at any time.“ In early 2019, Unity was involved in another controversy over terms of service changes, and a commitment was made to be an open platform without sudden ToS changes.
Developers are considering potential legal claims against Unity, using the concept of promissory estoppel, where one party relies on the other's promise to their detriment. Some developers are even contemplating a class-action lawsuit over the fee structure change. In summary, while Unity maintains the right to modify its fees at any time according to its terms of service, legal action from developers may challenge these changes based on promises made in previous agreements with Unity.
“Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases:
A new type of vaccine developed by researchers at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering has shown promise in reversing autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes without compromising the immune system. The inverse vaccine works by erasing the immune system's memory of one molecule, preventing autoimmune reactions where the body attacks its healthy tissues. The study demonstrates how attaching a molecule to a sugar can teach the immune system tolerance and reverse symptoms of disease in animals. Clinical trials for an inverse vaccine are currently underway.
Salt Taste Is Surprisingly Mysterious:
This article discusses how our taste buds can detect six tastes - sweet, sour, bitter, savory-umami, salty, and two different saltiness levels. The mystery surrounding the sensation of high salt is still under research with some details not yet fully understood. The detection of both low salt and high salt levels in food helps maintain the right amount of sodium intake for our bodies to function properly. However, overconsumption can lead to health risks like hypertension or heart diseases. Researchers continue to explore the mechanisms behind these taste sensations, and understanding them could help develop better alternatives or enhancements without compromising health.
In a git repository, where do your files live?:
Git stores files in a special folder called the „.git“ directory within your project repository. This is where all the versions of your old files are stored. Git tracks the history and modifications of your files through a system called „content addressed storage“. It's kind of like having an archive for each version of every file in your repository.
To find where a specific file, such as the one mentioned in your blog post example, is stored within this „.git“ folder, you can use various Python scripts to navigate through the directories and paths that Git has created. These scripts help you locate the old versions of files by going through each commit in your repository and analyzing the changes made at each step.
Keep in mind that not all objects in the „.git/objects“ folder represent previous versions of files; many are actually commits or directory trees, so there can be a significant difference between the number of tracked files (1530) and historical files (6713) within your repository.
Personal Blog & Site Directory:
BlogScroll is an open directory of personal websites and blogs, managed through GitHub. The project aims to promote smaller, independent online spaces maintained by individuals beyond major platforms.
How can we have a proper debate when we no longer speak the same language?:
In the culture wars, hypersensitivity and accusations of 'hate' risk leading us into an Orwellian future where language is twisted to silence opposing views. The author discusses their personal experiences with censorship on Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms. They argue that while they understand some people may genuinely feel attacked by certain phrases or ideas, it's important for all parties to engage in constructive dialogue without resorting to violence or silencing opposing opinions. The author also discusses the influence of political correctness on education and parental rights, emphasizing that children should be allowed to make decisions about their gender identity when they are old enough to understand these complex issues.
In 2010, Airbus began a collaboration with ENAC and Université de Toulouse III to create an „Aeronautical Font“ for cockpit displays. The goal was to improve legibility and comfort while optimizing the overall appearance. After two years of work, B612, named after the asteroid in Saint-Exupéry's novels, was designed with complete hinting on all characters. In 2017, Airbus released B612 under an open source license within the Polarsys project, and in December 2018, it was added to Google Fonts with an OFL (Open Font License). The team behind B612 includes Nicolas Chauveau, Thomas Paillot, Jonathan Favre-Lamarine of intactile DESIGN, Jean-Luc Vinot from ENAC, and Sylvie Athènes from the Université de Toulouse III.
The Tyranny of the Marginal User:
The article discusses the decline in quality of consumer software over time, especially in dating apps like OKCupid which has become a Tinder clone. It argues that the focus on gaining more users at all costs results in products being designed to cater almost entirely to „marginal users“ with low value or preferences. As a result, existing features and user experience often suffer, leading to a worsening of consumer software over time despite technological advancements.
FBI Hacker Dropped Stolen Airbus Data on 9/11 – Krebs on Security:
In December 2022, a cybercriminal known as „USDoD“ infiltrated the FBI's vetted information sharing network InfraGard and leaked sensitive data from aerospace giant Airbus. The FBI responded by seizing the cybercrime forum where the data was being sold, but USDoD resurfaced to leak more sensitive employee data. USDoD claims to have stolen passwords from an employee with third-party access to Airbus' systems. The attacker plans to target other top U.S. defense contractors as well.
Unity, a game engine provider, faced controversy in 2019 regarding license changes and updates to its Terms of Service. In response, they created a Github repository to track changes in the Unity terms to increase transparency. However, the Github repo was silently deleted in June last year. On April 3rd this year, before the release of the 2022 LTS in June, Unity updated their terms and removed a clause that was added after the 2019 controversy. The company now faces questions about its transparency and trustworthiness from developers.
OWASP Juice Shop | OWASP Foundation:
The OWASP Juice Shop is a highly advanced and modern insecure web application designed for use in security training, awareness demos, Capture the Flag (CTF) events, and testing security tools. It includes vulnerabilities found in real-world applications based on the entire OWASP Top Ten list, along with many other security flaws. Developed in Node.js, Express, and Angular, this application has over 100 hacking challenges of varying difficulty. The hacking progress is tracked on a scoreboard, and users are given instructions on how to exploit the underlying vulnerabilities through an optional tutorial mode.
This tool can be used by security testers or penetration testing specialists to check their tools' compatibility with JavaScript-heavy application frontends and REST APIs. Aside from its educational purpose, Juice Shop also serves as a guinea pig for testing new tools and techniques in the cybersecurity field.
Password-stealing Linux malware served for 3 years and no one noticed:
A digital Trojan horse, known as a download site, has been serving Linux users malware that stole passwords and sensitive information for over three years. The site, freedownloadmanager[.]org, offered a benign version of the Free Download Manager. In some instances, this domain would redirect users to a malicious domain which served a compromised version of the app. This malware was able to remain undetected due to its use of the Linux operating system and social media discussions about Free Download Manager that did not raise suspicions.
OpenMoji is an open-source project of HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd, featuring emojis created by Benedikt Groß, Daniel Utz, and over 70 students. The project offers various formats for downloading, using, and „consuming“ OpenMoji such as SVG, PNG, Fonts, and even an app for iOS. OpenMoji aims to be accessible to developers, designers, and everyone else through its GitHub repository, styleguide, and contributing features.
“This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal With Unity’s New Fees:
Unity, a popular game development tool, has announced new fees for developers which will charge them every time someone installs their game. This decision has been met with widespread disapproval from game developers who feel this goes against the work they've done in recent years and could lead to financial hardships for many of them.
AI Tool Directory | Navigate the AI Landscape:
Holistic AI provides governance, risk, and compliance solutions for businesses adopting AI technology. Additionally, there are various platforms such as InquireComet for tracking ML experiments, advanced model observability platforms for detecting and resolving ML model issues, renting GPU servers for deep learning projects, and more.
From zero to one hundred in 0.956 seconds:
The Academic Motorsports Club Zurich (AMZ) has broken the world acceleration record for electric vehicles, with their vehicle mythen achieving a time of 0.956 seconds to reach 100 km/h. The previous record was set in September 2022 by a team from the University of Stuttgart and stood at 1.461 seconds.
microsoft/phi-1_5 · Hugging Face:
The article discusses the language model phi-1.5, a Transformer with 1.3 billion parameters trained using various NLP synthetic texts in addition to existing data sources. This model demonstrates nearly state-of-the-art performance in common sense, language understanding, and logical reasoning tasks for models under 10 billion parameters. To promote research into vital safety challenges like reducing toxicity and addressing societal biases, the open-source phi-1.5 was created without fine-tuning it for instruction following or reinforcement learning from human feedback. This model is intended for QA format, chat format, and code format prompts and has several limitations such as generating inaccurate code, having limited language understanding, and potentially containing societal biases.
Someone pays $500,000 fee to send $1,865:
This article discusses a Bitcoin blockchain transaction where a user paid a 19.82 BTC ($499,171) fee to transfer only 0.074 BTC ($1,865). The user spent 270 times the transaction value on the fee. This unusual event is speculated by Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp as an error in software from a withdraw-only hot wallet of an enterprise.
Doctors have been measuring blood pressure all wrong, study explains:
A nearly 30-year study by researchers working with the American Heart Association found that doctors may miss certain health complications if they don't have their patients lying down while measuring blood pressure. The study suggests that people with known risk factors for heart disease and stroke may benefit from having their blood pressure checked while lying flat on their backs, as it helps manage blood pressure during daily life.
Forget Me Not is the 32nd substory in Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where Ichiban meets Kaede Tono on Carriage Highway. They spend their date at an arcade, Pocket Cafe, and Hamakita Park. Kaede reveals she admired Ichiban while hospitalized and has fallen in love with him. After realizing what happened, Ichiban hopes to meet Kaede again one day.
In Python, annotations are used to associate arbitrary expressions with function arguments and return values. Annotations were originally introduced without a specific purpose but later became essential for adding type hints. PEP 484 defined how to use type hints through annotations in Python code. Functions can annotate arguments and return value, and variables can be annotated as well. Additionally, the code can inspect these annotations by accessing a special attribute.
Drastisch weniger Interaktionen: Neue Probleme für New York Times auf X/Twitter:
According to the US news portal Semafor, Twitter (now X) has reportedly reduced interactions on New York Times articles in recent weeks. The short-form news platform appears to have significantly reduced traffic on these links since around mid-July, with an article by the US newspaper being shared approximately 3 million fewer times by a selection of larger accounts than before. There has been no explanation for this, which fits a pattern. NewsWhip, a social media analytics company, reports that while there have been no drops in interaction with Politico, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, there is no such fall for the New York Times. Neither NewsWhip nor the New York Times has provided any explanation for this situation. It bears resemblance to a reduction of New York Times articles on Twitter discovered in August. There has been no explanation, but a pattern has emerged.
Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads. Here's what you need to know:
Google has introduced the Privacy Sandbox, a new suite of features that marks a significant shift in how Chrome will track user data for the benefit of advertisers. The change replaces third-party cookies with direct access to browsing history to gather information on advertising „topics.“ Controversial and attracting concerns about privacy, understanding its function is crucial as Google's Chrome browser remains widely used globally.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is the most powerful microcomputer in the Raspberry Pi family, featuring a quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 processor. Released on June 24th, 2019, it has three times the speed of its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 3B+. With the option of having 8GB RAM and supporting up to two 4K Ultra HD displays simultaneously, this versatile microcomputer offers a multitude of applications in home projects or other uses.
Data Serialization — The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python:
Data serialization is the process of converting structured data into a format suitable for sharing or storage. It may also be used to minimize the data's size, reducing disk space or bandwidth requirements. There are several approaches to data serialization, such as flat or nested structures and formats like JSON, YAML, XML, and binary data. Python offers various methods to serialize and de-serialize data, including pickle, CSV, ast.literal_eval, repr, and many third-party modules for specialized formats like Protobuf and YAML.
Localhost will inevitably die | Ergomake:
The article discusses the challenges of scaling software systems and the inevitable shift from local testing (localhost) to remote staging environments. It highlights the limitations of various methods used by engineers to move away from localhost, such as large virtual machines or constrained remote infrastructure. The article proposes an alternative approach - providing production-like infrastructure for each engineer within a company's cloud environment - which can effectively eliminate „works on my machine“ problems and maintain flexibility in tool usage.
Why Resumes Are Dead & How Indeed.com Keeps Killing the Job Market:
The article highlights a personal experience with job searching during unemployment and the challenges that come with it. It criticizes modern job application processes, such as relying on resumes, job sites like Indeed.com, HR departments, and automated systems for evaluating candidates. The author emphasizes the need to bring back human connection in hiring processes and suggests the development of a more streamlined and transparent job market.„
The Professional Data Science Manifesto:
The latest technology advancements have made data processing accessible, cheap, and fast for everyone. By combining engineering practices with the scientific method, a principled methodology can be used to extract the most utility from these advancements. This manifesto proposes valuing Minimal Viable Products over prototypes, APIs over databases, Clever use of computation over convenient assumptions, Dashboards over reports, Validation, scrutiny and repeatability over convention and ad verecundiam. The goal is to remove manual intervention in numerical processing and emphasize end-to-end business focused acceptance criteria in evaluating models.
Can we burn metal for heat, instead of fossil fuels?:
The article discusses research conducted by Canadian and Dutch scientists exploring the feasibility of using iron as an alternative clean energy source. Iron is abundant on Earth (4th most common element) and produces rust as a waste product, which can be easily collected and recycled. Burning iron produces no carbon emissions, however, its weight may limit its application in certain situations such as powering cars.
The experiments have focused on burning powdered iron in microgravity, where the particles burn in a controlled manner called discrete burning. Understanding this process could help develop more efficient iron-burning furnaces for various applications, including heating water for industrial purposes or supplying heat to breweries. Iron fuel could potentially be used in existing fossil fuel power plants without any need for infrastructure change.
The article discusses various status changes in the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) industry for the year 2023. It highlights trends such as construction starts, first grid connections, and new grid connections. Additionally, it mentions some permanent shutdowns of existing plants, including EMSLAND, ISAR-2, KUOSHENG-2, NECKARWESTHEIM-2, and TIHANGE-2. Furthermore, the article also covers construction starts for projects like ELDBAA-3, HAIYANG-4, and SANMEN-4.
Pirates of the Caribbean (Metric Edition):
Joseph Dombey, a French physician and botanist, was tasked with delivering two new measurement standards to the United States in 1794 but faced piracy during his voyage. He escaped the pirates by disguising himself as a Spanish sailor and managed to reach Montserrat, where he later died. As a result of Dombey's failed mission, the U.S. delayed adopting the metric system for almost a century, making it one of the few countries that still use non-metric units for everyday measurements.
TODO
We’re in a productivity crisis, according to 52 years of data. Things could get really bad.:
Overall, this article is an in-depth analysis of productivity paradox and its implications on society and economy. It discusses various aspects of productivity like manual worker productivity revolution, computer revolution, slowdown in overall productivity growth rate, productivity backlash, and the need for a new kind of productivity that is more inclusive and enjoyable. The article suggests an improvement mindset and setting aside dedicated time for deliberate learning and experimentation to improve personal productivity. It also offers a month-long improvement challenge for readers to join in and learn through shared experiences.
What Silicon Valley "Gets" about Software Engineers that Traditional Companies Do Not:
This article highlights the key differences between traditional companies and Silicon Valley-like companies in terms of software engineer autonomy, problem-solving capabilities, data transparency, exposure to business metrics, effective communication, investing in developer experience, and treating tech as a profit center. It emphasizes that modern companies who create high leverage with each software engineering hire can pay higher wages and get more value out of the same person. The focus on creative problem-solving and fostering an environment where engineers are encouraged to come forward with ideas contributes to the success of these „SV-like“ companies.
GPT-4 Is Not Getting Worse | Coagulopath:
In conclusion, GPT-4's performance appears inconsistent across various tests and may not show a consistent degradation as previously suggested. It is important to consider that the model's performance can change over time due to ongoing improvements in machine learning algorithms and changes in training data. Additionally, subjective judgments of „good“ responses vary depending on factors such as word count, effort put forth by the AI, and potential XY problems in user queries.
7 simple habits of the top 1% of engineers:
In order to excel in coding, engineers should consistently follow standardized style guides for their code. This makes the code easy to read and maintain over time. They should also write aesthetic and simple code that is predictable and doesn't cause surprises. Communicating with teammates, being open to feedback, and detaching from the code are key traits of elite coders. Additionally, engineers should balance coding fast and slow, focusing on writing code for humans as well as machines and users. Finally, it is important not to follow rules blindly but to document unusual approaches when necessary.
Java 21 makes me actually like Java again:
Java 21's pattern matching features are expected to significantly improve Java's support for functional programming patterns, potentially attracting developers who previously preferred languages like Kotlin, Rust, or C#. The upcoming release of Java 21 on September 19th will focus on stabilizing record patterns in switch blocks and expressions. These changes enable Java to express algebraic data types, which are fundamental components of functional programming that the language has not fully supported before.