Front-page articles summarized hourly.
SPF/PC v4 for MS-DOS is an ISPF-like editor from ~1993, published as abandonware on GitHub. The moshix SPFPC repository contains the SPF/PC package with numerous source files and a built-in REXX implementation. It runs under DOSBox (Windows or DOS) and uses panel commands invoked by a key plus Control. It’s provided as-is with no support; June 2024 update from Tokyo.
NASA's Artemis II crew — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen — entered the third day of their Orion mission and viewed the Moon's far side for the first time. They released a photo of the Orientale basin, described by NASA as the first time the entire basin has been seen with human eyes. By 23:00 BST, the craft was over 180,000 miles from Earth. Koch said the view felt unfamiliar compared with the Moon as humans know it.
Three Omani-operated tankers, a French CMA CGM container ship, and a Japanese-owned LNG carrier crossed the Strait of Hormuz, signaling Iran’s willingness to allow passage for vessels it deems friendly. The CMA CGM vessel reportedly changed its AIS to “Owner France” and may have switched off transponders during transit. Oman mediated the movement; Japan’s Sohar LNG (co‑owned by Mitsui) was the first Japan-linked ship and LNG carrier to cross since the conflict began. A Green Sanvi LPG tanker and the Panama-flag Danisa also left the Gulf; about 45 Japanese vessels remained stranded.
Over eight years the author wanted high-quality SQLite devtools. After ~250 hours across three months, he released syntaqlite, built largely with AI. The toolset includes a parser, formatter, linter, and language server, with Rust-based components and an extracted parser from SQLite. AI enabled fast prototyping, guided refactoring, and expanded scope (editor extensions, docs, packaging). Yet AI also caused problems: addiction to prompts, loss of the codebase’s mental model, design drift, and costly rewrites. The core lesson: AI multiplies implementation speed but can erode design and long-term clarity; share detailed, honest accounts of building real software with AI.
Could not summarize article.
Colorado enacted the nation’s first law banning arrests solely on colorimetric drug-test results, addressing widespread false positives from cheap field tests used by police. Colorimetric tests ($2–$10) can misidentify benign substances as drugs and show high error rates in studies (UPenn 15–38%; some prison settings 79–91%). The law requires lab confirmation before charging. Advocates say electronic tests, though costly, are more reliable and could prevent wrongful arrests, and the measure may set a national precedent.
Friendica is a decentralized social network that links multiple nodes with item-level privacy, private groups, and one-to-one messaging. It interoperates with ActivityPub, OStatus, diaspora*, plus RSS/Atom feeds and email contacts. Users can post, comment, like/dislike, share photos, create events, and manage public or private profiles. Free software powered by PHP and MySQL, it is extensible via plugins and themes and can run on a personal server or join public servers. Notable items include the 2026.01 “Blutwurz” release, accessibility work, and FOSDEM 2026 activity.
USB IR Transceiver from Iguanaworks (now out of business) is a USB device to send and receive IR signals under Linux (LIRC) and Windows (WinLIRC). Documentation and GPL software remain. It comes in three variants to support multiple transmit channels and on-board receivers: Dual Socket (two jacks, up to four transmit channels, on-board receive), Socket Receive (separate emitters and wired receiver), and variants with on-board IR receivers (Dual LED/Hybrid). Specs: receives standard 38 kHz IR, transmits at 25–125 kHz carrier, ~10 ft range, 50° cone; USB 1.1/2.0. Not macOS officially supported.
Terence Eden recounts a BrowserStack signup that led to an email to his unique address from Apollo.io. Apollo claimed it derived addresses from public data and corporate formats, but Eden doubts this and says Apollo’s data came from BrowserStack via its customer-contributor network. He outlines plausible leaks (CRM sharing, data selling, contractor exfiltration) and suspends doubt on privacy norms, noting a forthcoming post about how Apollo obtained his phone number.
Rust sharing mutable state relies on Arc for cheap shared ownership and Mutex to guard interior mutability across threads. Wrap Arc<Mutex<T>> in a small struct to hide locking details, exposing safe methods like insert/get. Cloning the wrapper shares the same data via Arc rather than duplicating it. In async code, never await while a mutex is locked to avoid deadlocks; prefer non-async methods on the wrapper and call them from async contexts, or use patterns like with_value to read while locked. Alternatives include RwLock, arc-swap, evmap, dashmap, thread-local caches, and atomic integers. Avoid locking TcpStream caches; use actor patterns instead.
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon) raises minimum RAM to 6GB (2GHz dual‑core, 25GB storage) to reflect modern multitasking. Historically 1GB (2014), then 4GB (2018); 6GB narrows Ubuntu’s edge over Windows 11’s 4GB minimum, though real‑world use often needs more. The 6GB floor isn’t hard—install below it but slower. Canonical is retiring Totem and System Monitor; lighter flavors like Xubuntu/Lubuntu remain viable for 2–4GB RAM. The shift mirrors evolving workloads, not a pure OS overhaul.
Ajay C recounts his Google Workspace suspension after Google claimed his account was hijacked while he was overseas. Despite DNS verification proving domain ownership, Google flags and blocks access, confusing the recovery phone removal with the authenticator. With the account suspended, no email or forwards work, crippling payroll, CRM, and internal apps that rely on Google OAuth. Recovery attempts stall for 30 days; support tickets loop without resolution. An update notes that changing MX records could offer a workaround. The post emphasizes severe business disruption from the suspension.
A proposed class action in Washington accuses Costco of unjust enrichment by charging customers tariffs via higher prices while seeking refunds from the federal government, potentially double-recovering the tariff costs. The suit says Costco planned to use refunds to lower future prices rather than reimburse customers. The class includes U.S. buyers of tariff-affected Costco goods from Feb 1, 2025 to Feb 24, 2026, and seeks restitution and punitive damages; an Illinois suit on the same issue was filed earlier.
An astrophysicist contrasts two PhD tracks: Alice, who learns by doing the hard, hands-on work; Bob, who relies on an AI agent for reading, debugging, and writing. On the surface, both produce publishable results in a year, but only Alice gains durable understanding and tacit judgment. The system’s incentives prize output over understanding, turning students into means of production. Experiments show AI can draft papers, but supervision—knowing what should be, demanding checks, and catching errors—remains essential. The danger is a slow drift toward not understanding, not a Skynet collapse; use AI as a tool, not a substitute for thinking.
JuliusBrussee/caveman is a Claude Code skill that makes Claude speak like a caveman, cutting about 75% of tokens without sacrificing technical accuracy. It’s installed via npx skills add JuliusBrussee/caveman or claude plugin methods and supports triggering modes ('/caveman', 'caveman mode', 'less tokens please') and stopping to normal mode. The README shows before/after examples; Caveman Claude uses briefer phrasing for code, keeps technical terms, quotes exact commits, writes normal prose when needed, and omits pleasantries. Claims ~3x speed, 100% technical accuracy, MIT license.
OsintRadar is a community-built hub with curated OSINT tools, workflows, and resources. It lists 322 active links across 21 categories, such as People OSINT, Social Media OSINT, Domain OSINT, Image & Video OSINT, Username Analysis, and Breach & Leak OSINT. Workflows include Investigate a Username, Analyze an Email, Research a Domain, Verify an Image, Locate a Place, and Trace a Wallet. Users can submit resources and join the community; sponsorship supports the MIT-licensed platform.
An essay on Pierre Boaistuau’s Histoires prodigieuses (1559) and Elizabeth I’s manuscript copy intended to win endorsement for an English edition. The 44 chapters blend beasts, birth defects, and marvels from the Bible, classical authors, travel accounts, and gossip, beginning with the Devil. Illustrations echo Jörg Breu the Elder’s 1515 woodcuts, including a monstrous birth. The text engages early modern debates about popery—its imagery akin to Catholic iconography. Elizabeth did not back a printed English edition; the Paris edition appeared in 1560 and was quickly popular, with nine reissues over thirty-five years.
Unverified analyzes practitioner posts (forums) on OCR, agents, and tables. Key takeaways: demos rarely translate to production; 85% accuracy on clean page one drops to ~65% by page three; tables remain the hardest extraction problem; no OCR winner; two-stage hybrid pipelines (layout models + LLMs) tend to win in practice; self-hosted/open-source tools are increasingly viable; human review remains essential; privacy, redaction, and knowledge-management are major blockers; an adoption gap persists between enterprise-grade vendors and small teams.
Chloë Arkenbout reflects on leaving social media, arguing freedom from platforms can be generative but isn’t a simple victory. After quitting around April 2024, she experiences a bigger, slower, more embodied world—smelling rain, meaningful encounters, longer reading—alongside a smaller social sphere, missed memes, and more intentional connections. Parasocial ties fade; privacy and safety improve, but organizing and staying up to date become harder. Time feels longer and grief accompanies the loss of a digital self. There is no right answer; freedom depends on personal conditions and what one wants to protect or nurture.
Aegis is a fully open-source FPGA fabric and toolchain from MidstallSoftware, with open PDK/tapeout path via wafer.space. The Terra-1 device targets GF180MCU and includes LUT4, BRAM, DSP, SerDes, and clock tiles; it supports RTL-to-GDS tapeout using Yosys, nextpnr-aegis, and OpenROAD. Architecture is ROHD-based SystemVerilog with Xilinx-style CLB/tiles/BRAM/DSP/SerDes, configured through a serial chain. Build and development use Nix with flakes (nix build, nix develop). The project is Apache-2.0 licensed, with code in Dart, Rust, Nix, C++, Verilog.
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