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Tech News
A retro gaming FAQ author named rs1n manually wrote a lengthy Super Metroid guide in the late 1990s so that every line's right margin ended flush against the text width, without using any justification software. He achieved this simply by carefully choosing words and phrasing as he wrote, avoiding the awkward double-spacing or hyphenation typically seen in monospace text justification.
Pope Leo XIV has published an encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas, accompanied by a video presentation, addressing how artificial intelligence affects the human person. The document, discussed alongside remarks from Cardinal Michael Czerny, frames AI's trajectory as a matter of human choice and institutional responsibility rather than an inevitable outcome of the technology itself. It focuses on three central risks: loss of inner freedom despite tool use, erosion of critical judgment amid abundant data, and diminished real human connection in digital life.
The Linux Foundation's IT infrastructure director revealed that AI crawlers hunting for clean, LLM-free training data are hammering the organization's kernel.org git servers, consuming more CPU power than all legitimate human and tool access combined. Because cgit can generate near-infinite valid URLs for commits, diffs, and patches across hundreds of forks, scrapers are redundantly fetching duplicate data at massive scale.
A troubleshooting guide explains three distinct ways iPhone users can reset their device when facing software issues: a soft reset (standard restart), a hard reset (forced restart by holding buttons without going through menus), and a full factory reset that erases all data. The guide notes there's long been ambiguity in the tech community over what exactly separates these terms.
Academa is a new project that treats lecture videos like software: instructors describe what a teacher says and draws using a code-like script, which a compiler then renders into a video with text-to-speech narration and generated graphics. Because the lecture exists as editable source rather than a finished video file, mistakes can be patched and new versions shipped, much like updating a codebase. The team is now applying large language models to this text-based format, aiming to let AI generate or refine entire STEM lectures automatically.
Apple has outlined several methods for users locked out of their iPhones after too many failed passcode attempts. Depending on the iOS version and available hardware, users can revert to a previous passcode, erase and reset the device using Find My and their Apple Account credentials, or connect the phone to a computer for a full reset via iCloud backup.
Meta reached a settlement with attorneys general from 47 states who had sued the company for allegedly manipulating children's attention through its algorithms. The deal could cost Meta as much as $17 billion, though the company admitted no wrongdoing, and the Wall Street Journal reported it spent over $2 billion on legal defense in a single quarter of 2026 alone.
A massive 12TB torrent dubbed the Steam 'teraleak' has surfaced online, containing thousands of game depots from Valve's old Steam2 content distribution system used between 2003 and 2013. The trove includes public release builds as well as previously unseen prototype, pre-release, and playtest versions of games from Valve and third-party publishers. Data miner Gabe Follower says the material was pulled from a publicly accessible API endpoint, suggesting the exposure originated from Valve's own systems rather than a hack.
A wave of new research papers is reviving interest in continuous diffusion techniques for language generation, an approach that had largely been overtaken by discrete diffusion and autoregressive methods in recent years. The author reviews this resurgence, tracing why continuous diffusion for text fell out of favor and why several research groups are now revisiting it as an alternative to token-by-token autoregressive generation.
A developer describes overriding a self-imposed website blocker for 444 minutes and using it as the turning point to rebuild his relationship with distracting apps. Rather than quitting YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn, which he considers genuinely useful, he redesigned his phone to strip away addictive design cues, including switching the display to grayscale and forcing browser use instead of apps.
Chess.com quietly launched a free educational poker platform called Gambit in May, letting players learn poker and build an Elo-style rating without real-money stakes. The company says it's now developing similar rating systems for other classic games like go, backgammon, and mahjong, using AI-assisted coding to build these platforms faster with smaller teams.
Shailene Woodley has spoken about her experience being cast as Mary Jane Watson in 'The Amazing Spider-Man 2,' a role that was ultimately removed from the finished film. Her scenes were filmed but left on the cutting room floor as the studio shifted the sequel's focus.