DoltLite, a fork of SQLite that swaps its B-tree storage layer for a Git-style Prolly Tree engine, has reached Beta status at version 0.50.0 just five months after launch. The project reuses SQLite's SQL parser, analyzer and file system code untouched, while the underlying storage was rebuilt to support branching, merging, diffing and syncing like Dolt and Git. The maintainers say the work was largely completed through around 2,000 pull requests generated by AI coding agents using an orchestrator called Gas Town.
Bengaluru startup Alteon, founded by 20-year-old Samay Sanghvi, secured $2.5 million in pre-seed funding led by investor Lachy Groom, with Together Fund also participating. The company is developing small autonomous fixed-wing aircraft that mimic albatross flight patterns to extract energy from ocean wind shear, aiming to keep planes airborne for over a year without traditional fuel or battery limits. Alteon has tested its autonomous flight system over the Bay of Bengal but has not yet proven sustained flight purely from harvested wind energy.
Star Elevator earned Elevator World's Project of the Year award for modernizing the century-old vertical transportation system at San Francisco's Metropolis Trust Building, a Category 1 Historic Landmark at 625 Market Street. The project involved upgrading rail systems to meet modern seismic codes, replacing pushbutton and signal fixtures, and renovating cab interiors, all while addressing unreliable machinery including a car that had been taken out of service due to safety concerns.
A scientist who has logged 10,000 papers in a reference manager over 13 years describes moving from trying to read every paper closely to a selective, task-driven approach to the literature. The piece also warns that AI tools like ChatGPT, despite improved search and summarization, still risk producing uncritical or fabricated citations if used without careful reading.
India's government has introduced the Prime Minister Research Chair Scheme, offering 120 overseas Indian-origin researchers up to 50 million rupees (about $520,000) in grants plus stipends and allowances over five years to work at Indian institutions. The initiative targets strategic fields like AI, quantum computing, biotechnology and advanced materials, joining similar brain-drain reversal efforts by China, France, Germany and Denmark.
Jim Cramer highlighted August as a recovery month for several S&P 500 stocks that had been beaten down by fears over AI disruption and slowing growth. Moderna topped the index after positive melanoma vaccine data with Merck, while enterprise software names like Palantir, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Veeva rebounded as earnings and product results eased investor doubts. Cramer noted that some of the earlier declines were worsened by a hedge fund, Situational Awareness, forced to unwind large bearish software bets in late July.
The Starlink Mini X kit ships with a separate Router Mini, but the dish already includes built-in Wi-Fi 5 that covers up to 1,200 square feet and supports 128 devices. The Router Mini instead adds Wi-Fi 6 with a larger 1,300-square-foot range and support for 235 devices, and can run in mesh mode alongside the built-in radio via wireless or Ethernet link.
Darling is an open-source translation layer, comparable to Wine for Windows, that allows macOS software to run on Linux systems. Built on Apple's freely released Darwin source code along with components from The Cocotron and GNUstep, it now offers basic experimental support for graphical applications and can also run under Windows via WSL 2.
A developer has published an extensive personal account of using Tcl/Tk, a decades-old scripting language and GUI toolkit, to build console and graphical applications that run natively on Windows, Linux and macOS. The piece walks through the toolkit's threading model, small footprint, ability to produce compact single-file executables, and its BSD licensing, based on the author's hands-on experience after moving past initial enthusiasm.
A retrospective look back at Nintendo's GameCube console highlights how it became the company's second worst-selling system ever, moving just 21.74 million units. The analysis points to a limited game library, heavy dependence on first-party titles, and the omission of DVD playback as key factors behind its poor commercial performance.
The Sphere venue in Las Vegas is enhancing its immersive, AI-driven adaptation of 'The Wizard of Oz,' adding new technology to make the visuals and effects feel more lifelike. The upgrade builds on the venue's existing use of artificial intelligence to reimagine the classic film for its giant immersive screen format.
9to5Mac's report details four months of using OpenAI's Codex agent on the Mac, highlighting its April addition of a Computer Use plugin that lets the AI see, click, and type within apps using its own cursor. The feature traces back to Sky, an AI assistant previewed by former Apple Shortcuts creator Ari Weinstein's startup, which OpenAI acquired before folding its tech into Codex.
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