Top stories

This article describes the development of a WiFi-enabled analog clock using an ESP8266 microcontroller. The clock can display the current time on a 12-hour analog interface and can be set remotely through a web interface.

The article discusses OpenAI's testing of advertising in ChatGPT, including the company's motivations, experiments, and plans to monetize the AI assistant while maintaining user trust and privacy.

https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-...

https://discord.com/safety/how-discord-is-building-safer-exp...

The article explains the scientific reason behind the sky's blue color, which is caused by the scattering of sunlight by air molecules, a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering. It discusses how this process leads to the predominance of blue wavelengths in the sky's appearance.

The article explores using hard braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk. It presents a data-driven approach to identify high-risk road segments by analyzing vehicle braking patterns, which can help inform infrastructure improvements and safety interventions.

Promethee is an open-source, self-hosted task management and communication platform that aims to provide a secure and decentralized alternative to popular cloud-based solutions. It offers features such as task management, team collaboration, and encrypted messaging.

The article discusses the discovery of a vulnerability in Ivanti Endpoint Manager (formerly MobileIron) that allows attackers to plant 'sleeper shells' - persistent backdoors that can be activated at a later time. The vulnerability, which was patched by the vendor, highlights the importance of keeping enterprise software up-to-date to mitigate potential security risks.

The article explores techniques for improving audio quality on the Game Boy Advance (GBA) by using interpolation and other signal processing methods. It discusses the challenges of the GBA's limited audio hardware and presents solutions to enhance the listening experience on the handheld system.

The article discusses the author's experience working as a software engineer for Agents, a virtual assistant technology company, for an additional eight months beyond their original contract. It explores the challenges and lessons learned during this extended period of employment.

The article discusses six thoughts on generating C code, including the importance of understanding the target architecture, the benefits of using a high-level language, and the role of compilers in optimizing C code for performance.

The article explores the unique phenomenon of traffic mimes in Colombia, who use expressive body movements and gestures to guide and direct traffic in chaotic urban environments, serving as an effective alternative to traditional traffic signals and control systems.

This article explores the vibrant markets of Old London, delving into their rich history, diverse offerings, and the integral role they played in the city's cultural and commercial landscape.

We're Tom and Ryan and we teamed up to build an algorithm with Rust and SIMD to exhaustively search for the longest line of sight on the planet. We can confirm that a previously speculated view between Pik Dankova in Kyrgyzstan and the Hindu Kush in China is indeed the longest, at 530km.

We go into all the details at https://alltheviews.world

And there's an interactive map with over 1 billion longest lines, covering the whole world at https://map.alltheviews.world Just click on any point and it'll load its longest line of sight.

Some of you may remember Tom's post[1] from a few months ago about how to efficiently pack visibility tiles for computing the entire planet. Well now it's done. The compute run itself took 100s of AMD Turin cores, 100s of GBs of RAM, a few TBs of disk and 2 days of constant runtime on multiple machines.

If you are interested in the technical details, Ryan and I have written extensively about the algorithm and pipeline that got us here:

* Tom's blog post: https://tombh.co.uk/longest-line-of-sight

* Ryan's technical breakdown: https://ryan.berge.rs/posts/total-viewshed-algorithm

This was a labor of love and we hope it inspires you both technically and naturally, to get you out seeing some of these vast views for yourselves!

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45485227

This article explores the concept of entropy, a measure of uncertainty or randomness, as it applies to randomly generated integers. The author investigates the mathematical properties and distributions underlying the entropy of random integers, providing insights into the fundamental nature of randomness and information theory.

Particle accelerator technology is being used to reveal the long-lost original text of an ancient star catalog that was written over by medieval monks. The discovery provides insight into the astronomical knowledge and practices of the ancient world.

The article explores the use of graphs in data visualization, discussing their application in various fields and the importance of understanding graph theory and algorithms for effective data analysis and presentation.

The article explores the art of designing roads in video games, highlighting the importance of creating realistic and visually appealing road systems that enhance the overall gaming experience. It discusses various techniques and considerations developers employ to craft convincing road networks that seamlessly integrate with the game world.

The article reports on an incident that caused a widespread outage of GitHub services, affecting users globally. The incident was caused by a network configuration change, which the GitHub team worked quickly to identify and resolve to restore normal service.

What are you working on? Any new ideas that you're thinking about?

Researchers have found a new way to tame some of the most complex and unruly equations in mathematics, known as the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe the motion of fluids. This breakthrough could lead to advancements in fields like weather forecasting, fluid dynamics, and the study of turbulence.

A U.S. senator claims that AT&T and Verizon are blocking the release of a security assessment for the upcoming Satellite and Terrestrial Network (SALT) system, which is designed to provide backup communications in the event of a large-scale natural disaster or cyberattack.

This interactive website allows users to create and manipulate virtual sand, water, and other elements, simulating various natural phenomena in a sandbox-like environment.

The article discusses the inherent complexity of systems, where no single individual or group can fully understand how the whole system works. It highlights the importance of recognizing and managing this complexity, rather than attempting to impose simplistic solutions.

I created a site (https://printableclassics.com) that allows you to download classic books and customize things like the font size, page size, and the cover.

As part of this, I wrote a software pipeline that takes epubs, html files, or pdfs and converts them into formatted books with custom covers, page numbers, chapter formatting, etc.

I used an LLM for categorizing the books. There's a nice way to filter such that you could easily find "Young Adult, Ancient, Fantasy" for example.

When downloading from the site, the PDFS are rendered in a work queue. Hopefully the server I'm using won't get overwhelmed. It takes around 10-15 seconds to generate for most books.

Most of the books currently on the site are from Standard Ebooks. I plan to add more books from Archive.org and Project Gutenberg over time.

I also created a little guide on how you can print and bind books at home with around $200 in equipment. (https://printableclassics.com/print-guide)

Printable versions of the Harvard Classics are available here: https://printableclassics.com/harvard_classics This is an example of direct PDF conversion.

Hopefully this is useful to some people. I plan to use the books here for home education myself so it will at least be useful to me. I'd like to add a guide with top suggestions by age level and some educational theory on how I made the selections. I'm happy to take any feedback on the site or answer any questions.

There is also the option to have the books professionally printed through a print on demand provider. I'm hoping that could be a way to pay for the site hosting.

Thanks for checking it out!

Eddie Bauer, the iconic outdoor apparel brand, has filed for bankruptcy after facing ongoing financial struggles. The company plans to restructure and emerge from bankruptcy as a private entity, focusing on its core outdoor and lifestyle products.

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a significant Roman industrial hub along the banks of the River Wear in Durham, England. The site reveals evidence of large-scale production and trade activities, providing valuable insights into the economic and industrial development of the region during the Roman era.

I'm launching Wirewiki.com today!

Wirewiki makes the internet’s hidden infrastructure browsable.

I quit my job 5 years ago to scale Nslookup.io. But after reaching 600k monthly users, I hit a ceiling. I couldn't naturally expand beyond DNS because of the domain name.

So I went back to the drawing board: how would I make it today? Not as a collection of tools, but as a browsable graph.

I've spent hundreds of hours and commits building that. It's not even at 10% of what I want it to be, but more than enough to be useful, and (in my biased opinion) much better than what's out there.

Wirewiki launches with DNS lookup, propagation, zone transfer and SPF checking. It also scans the entire IPv4 space for DNS servers and indexes them. I'm working on adding more data and tools.

I feel like I've developed tunnel vision, so if you see anything that feels off, let me know!

I'll keep Wirewiki open and free. Once it has a substantial amount of users, I'll open it up to sponsorship / brand integration from hosting providers, registrars and CDNs, as users will likely be in the market for those. But my goal is to keep Wirewiki free from display ads. I'm confident that's viable.