Ending All Respiratory Infections
A century ago, waterborne diseases levied similar costs to those posed by respiratory viruses like colds and influenza today: endemic, periodically epidemic, and widely accepted as an inevitable feature of human life. Then, at the turn of the twentieth century, we decided they didn’t have to be. Pharmaceutical advances and clean water infrastructure made cholera, […]
Mixing Visual and Textual Code
Abstract:The dominant programming languages support nothing but linear text to express domain-specific geometric ideas. What is needed are hybrid languages that allow developers to create visual syntactic constructs so that they can express their ideas with a mix of textual and visual syntax tailored to an application domain. This mix must put the two kinds […]
LuaJIT 3.0 proposed syntax extensions
This is an umbrella issue for the LuaJIT 3.0 syntax extensions. The documentation will be evolved and updated in the first comment below. 1 Please feel free to discuss the choice, design and semantics of syntax extensions in this issue. Improvements and clarification requests for the documentation are welcome, too. As syntax preferences are largely […]
Blogging can just be stating the obvious
John Gruber writes about those annoying popups every website seems to have now and while he does a great job tearing into these ubiquitous, user-hostile patterns, one of the things that stood out to me about his piece was this meta commentary on blogging. Here’s John: If you visit a website you should … see […]
PostgreSQL Is Enough
Great repo – @cpursley !! I’d suggest adding this 5-part blog series on advanced data science with PostgreSQL window functions:https://data-nerd.blog/tag/window-functions/ Covers ranking, rolling stats, gaps/islands, and more—pure SQL, no external tooling. Could fit under Analytics or Advanced SQL with PostgreSQL.
Elastic lays off 7% of employees
Today, we announced an organizational change at Elastic, including a reduction of approximately 7% of our workforce. These decisions are never easy because they affect people who have contributed meaningfully to our company. They have helped build our company; their impact is real and lasting, and I thank them. I want to explain the why […]
Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition
COMMUNICATION WORKERS UNION24/06/2026FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wikipedia workers in Britain are setting a “global first” by becoming the first body of workers at the online encyclopaedia to seek union recognition. British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) wrote a letter to management today (Wednesday 24thJune) requesting their right to be represented by the United Tech and […]
OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom
On Wednesday, OpenAI unveiled its first custom-built inference processor, designed and manufactured in collaboration with Broadcom. Named Jalapeño, the new processor was designed specifically for the unique needs of OpenAI’s inference systems. OpenAI’s own AI models assisted in the development of the chip, the company said. While the chip is still being tested, OpenAI says […]
Computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash
Making computer use safe in 3.5 Flash To mitigate some of the prompt injection risks for agents operating in live environments, we use targeted adversarial training for computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash. We’re also releasing two optional enterprise safeguard systems that enable enterprises to: Require explicit user confirmation for sensitive or irreversible actions. Automatically […]
The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader
I’ve had the Xteink X4 for a couple of months now, a £40 e-ink reader small enough to stick to the back of a phone. I’d seen a few posts about it (Khairul Selamat, Neil Brown, joelchrono, and moddedbear among them), so I got curious and ordered one. First impressions Out of the box, the […]