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Tech News
A software engineer walked through a theory-of-computation textbook exercise asking for a proof, via finite automata, of a language property, then reformalized that informal constructive proof in the Lean proof assistant. The write-up builds a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) and leans on existing theorems in Lean's Mathlib library to formally verify it recognizes the target language.
CNET is running a reader survey throughout October asking which security and privacy software people rely on to protect their devices. The two-minute survey covers threat protection, ease of use, performance impact, value and overall satisfaction, and applies to both free and paid tools. Results will be compiled into a roundup of top-rated products published the following month.
CNET has opened a reader survey through October asking which security software people rely on most, covering threat protection, ease of use, performance impact, value and overall satisfaction. The company says it will compile responses into a roundup highlighting top-rated privacy and security tools.
Research firm Epoch AI reports that the cost of achieving a fixed level of AI performance on the GPQA Diamond benchmark has dropped nearly 50% per quarter, or about 13-fold annually. The firm found OpenAI's GPT o3, released January 2025, cost $0.30 per question to hit a 75% score, while GPT-5.6 Luna later matched that score for $0.0004 per question. Epoch says this decline outpaces historical cost curves for lithium-ion batteries, DNA sequencing, and computing hardware.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that most 'AI-native' products are really 'AI-assisted,' with AI simply layered atop unchanged workflows. The piece contends that real gains come from rebuilding workflows from scratch around what AI can do, while reserving human judgment for tasks involving relationships and decision-making.
YouTube plans to let creators publish multiple 'variant' versions of the same video to test which performs better, similar to A/B testing. In a video essay, Marques Brownlee says YouTube engineers he spoke with couldn't answer basic questions about how the feature would work—like whether viewers know they're seeing a variant, or how comments and shared links would function across different versions. Brownlee is publicly asking creators not to use the feature once it ships.
Apple has brought back the Messages Suggestions feature in the iOS 27.2 beta after pulling it from the iOS 27 public release earlier this fall. The feature shows one-tap action buttons under messages, letting users quickly add reminders, notes, or calendar events, or find relevant photos based on conversation context.
Chase Bliss has published the complete files and documentation for its CHOMPI portable sampler as a permanent open-source release, marking the end of official updates to the product. Users can clone the project's GitHub repository to customize the device themselves. Ongoing discussion and community-made variations will be hosted in a dedicated CHOMPI Open Source channel on the Chase Bliss Discord.
A software developer describes shifting from writing detailed, first-person commit descriptions by hand to working in an agentic coding era where AI writes both code and commit messages. They note that when AI agents lack access to the full context behind a change — often scattered across chat tools, project trackers, or offline conversations — the agents invent plausible-sounding but inaccurate explanations for why a change was made.
A software engineering piece describes 'Change Coupling,' a pattern where files that appear unrelated in code still must be edited together, forcing small fixes to ripple across many files. The author distinguishes this from physical, logical and temporal coupling, arguing static analysis alone cannot detect it and developers must build intuition over time working in a codebase.
Android Authority ran a reader poll asking how often people upgrade their smartwatch, offering options ranging from yearly upgrades to waiting until the device stops working. With seven votes recorded so far, 57% said they upgrade only when their smartwatch malfunctions, while 43% said they replace it every three to five years; no respondents chose annual, biennial upgrades, or not using a smartwatch at all.
Amutable has introduced Quarry, a software delivery system designed to distribute the immutable OS images built with its earlier tool, tine. The design shifts all logic to the client side, serving update payloads and metadata as static blobs from simple, 'dumb' hosting rather than requiring a server capable of generating dynamic responses.