stevenjgarner

This is great! I'm sure like a lot of programmers, I had been fulfilling the requirement for similar conditional logic by having a simple recurring cron job run other code or database queries with the conditional logic that this post demonstrates can be done directly in cron.

> The results suggested that in even higher-energy collisions, the proton would appear as a cloud made up almost entirely of gluons. The gluon dandelion is exactly what QCD predicts.

I find the proton as a gluon dandelion cloud enthralling

Cardboard box demolition ideas for kids [1] I like where this video is going, letting kids explore the structural capabilities of different geometries.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABHhzIJ18gQ

Yes! K’NEX [1] is based on spatial geometry. You connect plastic rods of different lengths into star-shaped connectors. This creates a "skeleton" or wireframe structure. It is much better than LEGO for building large-scale, open-air structures like roller coasters, Ferris wheels, and bridges. It is superior for kinetic builds. Interestingly, K’NEX has released "K’NEX Bricks" in the past that are compatible with LEGO studs, and some modern K’NEX sets include brick-compatible parts.

[1] https://www.basicfun.com/knex/

I believe the lytro camera was a plenoptic, or light field, camera. Light field cameras capture information about the intensity together with the direction of light emanating from a scene. Conventional cameras record only light intensity at various wavelengths.

While conventional cameras capture a single high-resolution focal plane and light field cameras sacrifice resolution to "re-focus" via software after the fact, the CMU Split-Lohmann camera provides a middle ground, using an adaptive computational lens to physically focus every part of the image independently. This allows it to capture a "deep-focus" image where objects at multiple distances are sharp simultaneously, maintaining the high resolution of a conventional camera while achieving the depth flexibility of a light field camera without the blur or data loss.

Something I find interesting is that while holograms and the CMU camera both manipulate the "phase" of light, they do so for opposite reasons: a hologram records phase to recreate a 3D volume, whereas the CMU camera modulates phase to fix a 2D image.

Intelligence isn't a series of isolated silos. Modern AI capabilities (reasoning, logic, and creativity) often emerge from the cross-pollination of data. For the CCP, this move isn't just about stopping a chatbot from saying "Tiananmen Square." It's about the unpredictability of the technology. As models move toward Agentic AI, "control" shifts from "what it says" to "what it does." If the state cannot perfectly align the AI's "values" with the Party's, they risk creating a powerful tool that could be used by dissidents to automate subversion or bypass the Great Firewall. I feel the real question for China is: Can you have an AI that is smart enough to win a war or save an economy, but "dumb" enough to never question its master? If they tighten the leash too much to maintain control, the dog might never learn to hunt.

Will these heavy-handed constraints ultimately stifle the very innovation China needs to compete with the U.S.? By forcing AI models to operate within a narrow ideological "sandbox," the government risks making its homegrown models less capable, less creative, and less useful than their Western counterparts, potentially causing China to fall behind in the most important technological race of the century. Will the western counterparts follow suit?

A single dose of psilocybin restructures mouse brain connectivity by strengthening inputs from perceptual and medial networks while weakening cortico-cortical loops, a process driven by drug-evoked neural activity that can be modified by silencing specific presynaptic regions.

Interesting video about this paper:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3_GUilpnk

Can a community-driven, fast-moving monolithic kernel ever truly meet the rigorous "deterministic" demands of functional safety, or will "safety-qualified Linux" always rely on wrapping the kernel in so many isolation layers that it ceases to be the "Linux" the community recognizes?

Two related TED talks by Dr. Karen Lloyd:

https://www.ted.com/search?q=Karen+Lloyd

Satellite imagery and GPS observations yielded two key insights:

1) fractures occurred in two stages: the initial propagation of long fractures parallel to ice flow, followed by smaller fractures perpendicular to ice flow.

2) the shear-zone disintegration causes upstream ice-flow speed to increase on the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf.

Syndicated from:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025JF00...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46367341

Satellite imagery and GPS observations yielded two key insights:

1) fractures occurred in two stages: the initial propagation of long fractures parallel to ice flow, followed by smaller fractures perpendicular to ice flow.

2) the shear-zone disintegration causes upstream ice-flow speed to increase on the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf.

I disagree. I think his intention was to maximize shareholder value which he has done dramatically by making the user the product being sold. Microsoft stock has soared even at the expense of Microsoft shedding users. Satya has realized the true value of Windows as a revenue platform. It never was a competitive operating system.

From my earlier comment to another Windows post:

Windows 11 has transitioned from a standalone tool into a digital storefront that prioritizes recurring revenue through aggressive prompts for Microsoft 365 and OneDrive subscriptions. By mandating cloud-based Microsoft Accounts, the OS effectively anchors your identity to a marketing ID, allowing the company to track behavior and monetize your data. The interface now functions as an advertising platform, injecting "recommended" apps and sponsored content directly into the Start menu and search results. Ultimately, this shift means users are no longer just customers of a product, but recurring assets whose attention and telemetry are sold to sustain Microsoft’s ecosystem and maximize shareholder value.

Microsoft users are the product being sold

Doesn't the $2 million fine paid by Walmart just make this a cost of doing business? Doesn't seem enough to be a deterrent.

Did they exclude the makers of video projectors (Epson, BenQ, Optoma, etc) simply because the market segment is too small?

Anybody else been using Microsoft Word since before Windows when it was Multi-Tool Word?

That depends if you are using crypto as 1) a store of value; 2) a medium of exchange; or 3) an alternative to permission-based monetary policy. All of it depends on the jurisdiction of the fiat-to-crypto and/or crypto-to-fiat transaction.

See also:

“Microscopic robots that sense, think, act, and compute” by Marc Miskin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks22prQ8F4c

No paywall: https://archive.ph/gHZak

What I find disingenuous about reports on the explicit point-of-sale tax credits for electric vehicles is that they never mention the enormous government support for traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles — particularly the tax breaks (forgone revenue) and unpriced externalities that benefit the oil and gas industry. Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Treasury state these "indirect" subsidies are significantly larger than renewable energy credits but are embedded deep within the tax code. This is how the delusion is spread that electric vehicles somehow unfairly benefit from government subsidies.

Refs:

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/131/General-Explanati...

https://thefactcoalition.org/report/oil-and-gas-tax-subsidie...

https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1051...

https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-tax-incentive...

https://www.iisd.org/articles/iisd-news/fossil-fuel-subsidie...

https://ourworldindata.org/how-much-subsidies-fossil-fuels

The event demonstrated how kinetic energy is converted into heat and light, momentarily vaporizing lunar material and creating a flash bright enough to be seen from Earth.

Because the Moon lacks an atmosphere to burn up incoming debris, even golf-ball-sized objects strike the surface at incredible speeds (estimated at 35 km/s for this event). Studying these flashes is vital for understanding the impact risks posed to future lunar bases and astronauts.

No paywall: https://archive.ph/02tKq

Windows 11 has transitioned from a standalone tool into a digital storefront that prioritizes recurring revenue through aggressive prompts for Microsoft 365 and OneDrive subscriptions. By mandating cloud-based Microsoft Accounts, the OS effectively anchors your identity to a marketing ID, allowing the company to track behavior and monetize your data. The interface now functions as an advertising platform, injecting "recommended" apps and sponsored content directly into the Start menu and search results. Ultimately, this shift means users are no longer just customers of a product, but recurring assets whose attention and telemetry are sold to sustain Microsoft’s ecosystem and maximize shareholder value.

One of oldest HIGH-LEVEL programming languages. "Programming" originally meant physically flipping switches or plugging cables into boards. Eventually, this moved to binary (1s and 0s), and eventually to Assembly.

No paywall: https://archive.ph/CgiN4

Microsoft users are now the product being sold

A new genetic mapping strategy reveals how entire networks of genes work together to cause disease, filling in the missing links left by traditional genetic studies. The technique could transform how scientists identify drug targets for complex conditions.

Reprinted: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/12/251215084201.h...

Pretty easy to match up those logs with browser fingerprinting to identify the actual user. Then you have "do you want to purchase what Mr. Foo Bar is prompting the LLM?"

> His main worry is that too much focus on the trendiest training techniques will leave other promising ideas neglected.