Researchers studying the Parque Arqueológico do Solstício, a megalithic stone circle near Calçoene, Brazil, have found that one of its 127 granite blocks loses its shadow entirely on the December solstice. Pottery found at the site dates it to between 500 and 2,000 years old, though the granite blocks themselves have not been directly dated. Archaeologists believe indigenous peoples built the site for astronomical, ceremonial, or burial purposes.
A technical post explains intrusive linked lists, a linked-list variant where the 'next' pointer is embedded directly inside the data structure being linked rather than stored in a separate wrapper node. It walks through how to construct such a list in C, including how to recover the address of a containing object by subtracting the offset of its embedded list member.
Wirewiki, a site for inspecting DNS records, delegation and email deliverability data, has built an autocomplete feature that predicts and prefetches results before a user finishes typing. By fetching suggestions for the current character plus every possible next character during the keyDown event, then rendering them on keyUp, the tool displays matches from a 240-million-domain index with almost no perceptible delay.
A technical note explains how to move large files directly between two computers by connecting them with a standard Ethernet patch cable, manually assigning IPv6 addresses to each machine's interface, and piping data through tools like socat and dd. The author reports this setup can reach roughly 900 Mbits per second on ordinary hardware, translating to about 6.7 GB per minute, far outpacing USB drives or cloud uploads for nearby machines.
A workplace group that previously argued over sandwich definitions turned its attention to salads, eventually concluding through lengthy logical debate that virtually all edible food technically qualifies as a salad. The findings, originally written up internally in May 2017, are now being published publicly in response to other recent food-categorization theories the authors feel misrepresent what a salad actually is.
Elon Musk launched Grok in November 2023 through his AI startup xAI as a sarcastic rival to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, initially limited to paying X subscribers. The tool has since spread to grok.com, dedicated iOS and Android apps and select Tesla vehicles, gaining reasoning models, voice chat, image and video generation, coding features and autonomous agents along the way. SpaceX absorbed xAI in February, and the newest version, Grok 4.6, arrived in August targeting coding and complex agent-based tasks.
Washington expanded its restrictions on foreign-made robotics and drones in July and August, citing national security, adding steep tariffs on imported drones that take effect this September, with component tariffs to follow in 2027. The rules extend the FCC's Covered List, which previously targeted telecom firms like Huawei and Hikvision, to now cover drones and advanced robotic devices, even as Chinese firms dominate global humanoid robot shipments.
Multikernel Technologies has published the first public version of its multikernel Linux tree, mklinux v7.0-mk2, which lets one physical machine run multiple independent Linux kernels simultaneously, each with dedicated CPU and memory allocations. A host kernel manages hardware assignment via device tree overlays and boots new kernel instances directly onto hardware using kexec, bypassing any hypervisor layer. The initial release supports only x86_64 systems, though the company says the architecture-specific code is built to allow future ports.
Network Address Translation, introduced in RFC 1631 in 1994 as a stopgap for IP address depletion, let multiple devices share a single public IP by rewriting packet headers. That fix, paired with restrictive ISPs and CGNAT, made it hard for ordinary devices to act as servers, pushing users toward centralized cloud services instead of direct peer-to-peer connections.
Grindr, under CEO George Arison since 2022, has grown revenue from $195 million to a guided $540 million-plus this year while keeping adjusted EBITDA margins above 40%, mostly by charging existing users more rather than expanding its user base. The company is now expanding beyond dating into healthcare services and travel features, and plans to launch a pricier 'EDGE' subscription tier later this year that has already drawn criticism online. Arison also argues that institutional investors continue to undervalue Grindr's stock because of stigma tied to being a gay dating app.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work on July 9th as a paid feature for $20+/month subscribers, and it actually comes in two forms: a cloud-based version accessible via chatgpt.com and mobile apps, and a local version built into the desktop app (formerly Codex) that can access files and run programs on a user's computer. The cloud version, described as the more interesting of the two, adds capabilities not found in standard ChatGPT Chat, including selection among multiple models and reasoning-effort levels.
Luffu, a health app built for families and caregivers, has introduced a new wearable device created by Fitbit's founders. The device aims to reimagine wearable tech by focusing on caregiving and family health monitoring rather than individual fitness tracking, drawing inspiration from older concepts like Life Alert's emergency pendant.
GoKawiil