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A leader who recently moved from Monzo to Engine by Starling describes a structured approach to starting a new role: first listening and gathering context, then synthesizing findings into categorized opportunities, and only then taking decisive action. The framework argues that quick wins should come after understanding stakeholders and legacy processes, not before.
Researchers at UCLA's RePL lab are developing Prela, a query language that replaces SQL's multi-column tables with simple binary relations of just two columns. A tutorial shows how a wide table, such as one listing movie IDs, titles and years, can be broken into three binary relations, each pairing a row number with a single column's value, and demonstrates a movie-search query that takes 11 lines in Prela versus more than 20 in equivalent SQL.
Andy Moliski, working with brothers Adam and Alex, built A Trail Tale, a web-based interactive journal chronicling his Appalachian Trail hike through pixel art styled after 1990s adventure games. Alex composed an original score blending nature sounds with acoustic instruments, and the site uses an Oregon Trail-like interface tracking Andy's fortitude, morale, and daily encounters with landmarks and weather.
Hollywood actors, producers and investors are increasingly moving into microdramas, short scripted series built for phones with soap-opera plots and cliffhangers meant to keep viewers paying for more. James Franco now stars in "Love, Lies & Frank" on the app Shortical, one of the first such projects made under SAG-AFTRA's new verticals agreement. Omdia projects the U.S. microdrama market will hit $1.5 billion this year, drawing apps like ReelShort, DramaBox and TikTok's own PineDrama.
The creator of the posuto package describes how Japan Post's official postal code CSV file breaks basic data conventions, embedding human-readable parenthetical notes that reference row order and splitting overly long fields across multiple duplicated lines. These quirks stem from the file's origins as a printed reference rather than a machine-readable dataset, forcing developers to write extensive workaround logic just to extract clean address data.
Japanese researcher @dydt_Nao successfully demonstrated a dinner-plate-sized USB flash drive built from magnetic core memory, transferring both a text file and a small monochrome bitmap image between two PCs. The device, which uses a Raspberry Pi Pico as its controller, stores only 128 bytes of data and displays activity through a 32x32 LED array that lights up as each magnetic core is accessed. The creator plans to showcase the device at Maker Faire Tokyo 2026 in early September.
Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds reflects on the racing series' evolution from a fledgling 2014 championship, where cars needed mid-race swaps to finish, into a global motorsport with vehicles exceeding 200 mph. Dodds, a former Volvo and Honda motorsport executive, frames Formula E as both a competitive sport and a real-world laboratory for electric vehicle technology, noting it remains the only sport certified as a B Corporation.
Apple is preparing to release its first smart glasses as early as next year, built around Siri and Visual Intelligence rather than augmented-reality displays. The glasses will use cameras and microphones to let Siri interpret surroundings, translate text, and answer contextual questions, plus built-in speakers for audio, according to a Bloomberg report citing Mark Gurman. Apple is designing multiple frame styles in-house using acetate material, with possible future versions adding health-tracking features like heart-rate sensors.
A technical blog post by Martin Uecker examines how GCC compiles nested functions using trampolines placed on the stack, which normally require the stack to be executable. He shows that by extracting the code address and static chain values embedded in the trampoline and passing them to the __builtin_call_with_static_chain built-in, developers can indirectly call nested functions on older GCC versions without needing an executable stack.
Amazon is selling the Samsung Odyssey G55C, a 32-inch curved VA gaming monitor, for $199.99, down 39% from its $329.99 list price. The display features 1440p QHD resolution, a 165 Hz refresh rate, 1ms response time, and a 1000R curve, along with AMD FreeSync and HDR10 support.
San Francisco startup Mara raised $7 million in pre-seed funding to build Spike, a portable counter-drone system carried in a backpack. The system pairs a launcher holding up to 48 lightweight 250-gram Seeker interceptors with a Spotter sensor unit that fuses optical, acoustic and optional radar detection to track fiber-optic and autonomous drones that evade radio-frequency jammers. Mara says each Seeker costs roughly the same as the sub-$1,000 FPV quadcopters it's meant to destroy, undercutting rival interceptors by a claimed 20-fold margin.
A new buyer's guide breaks down what shoppers should evaluate when choosing a USB Bluetooth adapter for a PC, from budget picks like the ASUS USB-BT500 and TP-Link Nano 2-in-1 AC600 to advanced options such as the Avantree DG80, Creative BT-W5, and Sena UD100-G03. It explains that basic $10 adapters suit simple headset pairing, while pricier models offer better codecs, lower latency, and multi-device support.