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What Is the Electric Constant and Why Should You Care?

It's fun to think about the fundamental physical constants. These are special values used in our models of the physical universe. They include things like the speed of light, the gravitational constant, and Planck’s constant, and they’re “fundamental” in the sense that we can't derive them theoretically, we can only measure them. We use these in solving physics problems all the time, so it’s easy to take them for granted. But why are there such numbers in nature, and why do they just happen to

The Raft Consensus Algorithm (2015)

What is Raft? Raft is a consensus algorithm that is designed to be easy to understand. It's equivalent to Paxos in fault-tolerance and performance. The difference is that it's decomposed into relatively independent subproblems, and it cleanly addresses all major pieces needed for practical systems. We hope Raft will make consensus available to a wider audience, and that this wider audience will be able to develop a variety of higher quality consensus-based systems than are available today. Hol

McKinsey Terrified as It Realizes AI Can Do Its Job Perfectly

Illustrious consulting firm McKinsey is staring down the barrel of AI. All those highly-paid suits are at risk as AI agents, AI models designed to autonomously carry out certain tasks, promise to do what they do with instant results — and without six-figure salary demands. "Do I think that this is existential for our profession? Yes, I do," Kate Smaje, a senior partner tapped to lead McKinsey's AI efforts, told the Wall Street Journal. But, she insisted, "I think it's an existential good for u

An interactive guide to sensor fusion with quaternions

*01.00* About Welcome to quaternion.cafe! A portal into the world of sensor fusion with quaternions. This vim-inspired tutorial has interactive code editors and 3D visualizations scattered throughout. The content is centered around fusing and integrating a gyroscope with an accelerometer, and explains (with code) how to accomplish this task. All the visualization use real datasets from an actual IMU to illustrate some of the concepts. I spent the last 5 years making this IMU-based telescope ac

Latest Google Messages bug gives you two or three app icons (Update: Fixed!)

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR A bug in the new Google Messages beta, version v20250811, is causing users to see two or even three app icons in their app drawer. The bug affects only beta users. All icons launch the same app, so their functionality is the same. Google has since updated its messaging app to address the issue. Update: August 15, 2025 (6:07 AM ET): It looks like the latest Google Messages beta (v20250813) has addressed this duplicate app icon issue. Some Reddit users

SIMD Binary Heap Operations

SIMD binary heap operations Author: Wojciech Muła Added on: 2025-01-18 Introduction Binary heap is a binary tree data structure having some interesting properties. One of them is an array-friendly memory layout, achieved by building (almost) complete binary tree. A binary heap keeps at index 0 the maximum value, or the minimum one depending on convention — let's stick to maximum heaps. There is exactly one invariant: a child node, if exist, keep a value less than the parent node. For compariso

Latest Google Messages bug gives you two (or three) app icons

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR A bug in the new Google Messages beta, version v20250811, is causing users to see two or even three app icons in their app drawer. The bug affects only beta users. All icons launch the same app, so their functionality is the same. Google Messages is the default messaging app on Android flagships, and most users will stick to the stable version since that is what ships on their phone. If you’re an enthusiast, you may have opted to test the beta version

Show HN: Real-time privacy protection for smart glasses

Privacy Infrastructure for Smart Glasses Build smart glasses apps without privacy concerns. Smart glasses apps face privacy hurdles. This real-time privacy filter sits between the camera and the app, automatically ensuring compliance. How it works: Replace your raw camera feed with our filtered stream. The filter processes live video, applies privacy protections, and outputs a compliant stream in real time. Use this processed stream for AI apps, social apps, or anything else. Features: Anon

U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

A new Gallup report reveals that only 54% of American adults reporting drinking alcohol in 2025. Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle The percentage of Americans who report drinking alcohol has hit a nearly 90-year low, according to a recent Gallup poll. The results of Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits survey, released Wednesday, revealed that only 54% of U.S. adults reported drinking alcohol in 2025. This figure represents a three-year decline from 67% in 2022, and falls below the previous record low o

‘This Was Trauma by Simulation’: ChatGPT Users File Disturbing Mental Health Complaints

With about 700 million weekly users, ChatGPT is the most popular AI chatbot in the world, according to OpenAI. CEO Sam Altman likens the latest model, GPT-5, to having a PhD expert around to answer any question you can throw at it. But recent reports suggest ChatGPT is exacerbating mental illnesses in some people. And documents obtained by Gizmodo give us an inside look at what Americans are complaining about when they use ChatGPT, including difficulties with mental illnesses. Gizmodo filed a F

We caught companies making it harder to delete your personal data online

Dozens of companies are hiding how you can delete your personal data, The Markup and CalMatters found. After our reporters reached out for comment, multiple companies have stopped the practice. By Colin Lecher and Tomas Apodaca The Markup, now a part of CalMatters, uses investigative reporting, data analysis, and software engineering to challenge technology to serve the public good. Sign up for Klaxon, a newsletter that delivers our stories and tools directly to your inbox. Data brokers are re

Data Brokers Are Hiding Their Opt-Out Pages From Google Search

Data brokers are required by California law to provide ways for consumers to request their data be deleted. But good luck finding them. More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell consumers’ personal information, hid their deletion instructions from Google, according to a review by The Markup and CalMatters of hundreds of broker websites. This creates one more obstacle for consumers who want to delete their data. This story is copublished with The Markup and CalMatters. Many of the

These are my favorite Switch 2 accessories

The Switch 2 can be enjoyed right out of the box, but it’s even better with the right accessories. Some of these add-ons are more crucial than others, especially if you’re deciding what to buy early on. For example, a case and a screen protector can keep your console safe from scuffs, scratches, and drops, so both are what I’d consider to be essential. On the other hand, a microSD Express card lets you add even more digital games to your library, although the console’s somewhat generous 256GB o

Faster substring search with SIMD in Zig

Faster substring search with SIMD in Zig I’ve been learning a lot about low-level programming languages lately, and for a long time there has been one thing that has interested me: SIMD (or ‘single instruction, multiple data’) code. I’ve seen a lot of articles about having massive performance gains by utilizing SIMD and wanted to learn how to do it myself. This article is a journey into implementing ~60% faster substring searching compared to Zig’s std.mem.indexOf using a SIMD-friendly algorit

Topics: 32 const needle simd zig

Going faster than memcpy

Going faster than memcpy While profiling Shadesmar a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that for large binary unserialized messages (>512kB) most of the execution time is spent doing copying the message (using memcpy ) between process memory to shared memory and back. I had a few hours to kill last weekend, and I tried to implement a faster way to do memory copies. Autopsy of memcpy Here’s the dumb of perf when running pub-sub for messages of sizes between 512kB and 2MB. Children Self Shared Ob

Open Lovable

Chat with AI to build React apps instantly. # Required E2B_API_KEY = your_e2b_api_key # Get from https://e2b.dev (Sandboxes) FIRECRAWL_API_KEY = your_firecrawl_api_key # Get from https://firecrawl.dev (Web scraping) # Optional (need at least one AI provider) ANTHROPIC_API_KEY = your_anthropic_api_key # Get from https://console.anthropic.com OPENAI_API_KEY = your_openai_api_key # Get from https://platform.openai.com (GPT-5) GROQ_API_KEY = your_groq_api_key # Get from https://console.groq.com (Fa

Topics: ai com console dev https

Why Wisconsin's county highways are lettered, not numbered (2019)

If you’ve taken a drive on one of Wisconsin’s iconic scenic roads, chances are you’ve noticed a bit of alphabet soup. Signs with names like BB, CV, N and SS flank Wisconsin’s county roads, and Shelly from Marshall wanted to know why. She asked: “Why are Wisconsin’s county roads labeled with letters instead of numbers?” Stay connected to Wisconsin news — your way Get trustworthy reporting and unique local stories from WPR delivered directly to your inbox. Email Name This field is for validatio

Environmentalist Lawsuit Halts Construction of Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

Progress on Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” ground to a halt on Thursday, August 7, when a federal judge ordered a two-week ban on construction. The ruling follows a hearing in a lawsuit by environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians. The plaintiffs—Earthjustice, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Everglades, and the Miccosukee—allege that hasty construction of the facility in the Everglades unlawfully moved forward without public input or an environmental impact st

macOS Tahoe put your apps in icon jail? Here’s the fix

Yesterday I highlighted macOS Tahoe’s aggressive behavior of putting nonconforming app icons inside an ugly gray box of shame. The change seems to affect the Mac user experience more than it impacts the app developer. It makes the actual icon 20% smaller and 80% harder to recognize. A great thing about the Mac, though, is the ability to customize app icons. This can be a temporary solution. You just need to track down an app icon that works. Here’s how to swap out app icons on macOS Tahoe and a

Apple's history is hiding in a Mac font

Rome wasn't built in a day, and the same is true of desktop operating systems. The modern versions of Windows, macOS, and Linux we know and (sometimes) love today represent decades of iteration and overhauls, but much of that legacy is invisible. New design languages and interfaces show up every few years, and in the process, old applications and designs are covered up or replaced. It doesn't take long to find legacy holdovers in today's Windows 11—for example, that Windows 3.1-era file picker

What Does Consulting Do?

This paper provides the first systematic and comprehensive empirical study of management and strategy consulting. We unveil the workings of this opaque industry by drawing on universal administrative business-to-business transaction data based on value-added tax links from Belgium (2002-2023). These data permit us to document the nature of consulting engagements, take-up patterns, and the effects on client firms. We document that consulting take-up is concentrated among large, high-labor-product

Smartwatches Recalled for Catching Fire, Burning Hands

The Altafit af28 smartwatches have been recalled, according to a press release Thursday from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The problem? The watches can overheat on their chargers and even ignite into flames. The smartwatches were sold on the Home Shopping Network from March 2025 to May 2025 for $50, marked down from $100. There have been 39 reports of the watches melting, burning, and catching fire with at least six reports of consumers’ hands being burned along with property dam

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it—and its targets have ranged from “the international bankers” to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers. American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is

Spatio-temporal indexing the Bluesky firehose

Spatio-temporal indexing the BlueSky firehose Joel Gustafson / Posts / 2025-08-07 I recently added a "spatial feed" to Aurora, my map of Bluesky. Now, in addition to seeing community clusters laid out on a giant map, you can also see a real-time of posts from just the accounts currently in view. This works smoothly at all scales — you can see the most recent posts from the entire network when zoomed all the way out, and local posts from any neighborhood when zoomed in. How does this work? Th

Topics: const node post pub self

This macOS 26 icon strategy punishes Mac users more than developers

When it comes to iOS 26, Liquid Glass and legibility have been the subject of much discussion around the iPhone software redesign. On the Mac, however, app icon decisions have stirred up a lot of feelings for macOS Tahoe users. One change in particular arguably makes the Mac harder to use. From Finder to Macintosh HD It started with the app permanently fixed to the first position on the Dock: Finder. Apple threw decades of precedent out of the window in macOS 26 beta 1 when it flipped the usua

Topics: app apple icon icons mac

All the news from Nintendo’s August Indie World showcase

Nintendo’s latest livestreamed event is highlighting the smattering of indie games coming to the Switch consoles later this year, and the Indie World Showcase is scheduled to start on Thursday, August 7th, at 9 AM ET. Hades 2 might make an appearance, and there’s a slim chance the long-awaited Hollow Knight: Silksong might show up as well. It’s a 15-minute showcase, and while I’m not expecting any earth-shattering announcements, I am looking forward to seeing the games that’ll pad my Switch 2 l

Library of Congress explains how parts of US Constitution vanished from its website

The Library of Congress has given a fuller explanation as to why large sections of the U.S. Constitution suddenly vanished from its official website. As TechCrunch previously reported, parts of Section 8, as well as the entirety of Section 9 and Section 10, were deleted from Article 1 of the Constitution on the U.S. government’s official website over the past month. The changes to the sections, which pertained to the Congressional powers, the rights of individual states, and the rights to due p

Consistency over Availability: How rqlite Handles the CAP theorem

Consistency Over Availability: How rqlite Handles the CAP Theorem rqlite is a lightweight, user-friendly, open-source, distributed relational database. It’s written in Go and uses SQLite as its storage engine. When it comes to distributed systems the CAP theorem is an essential concept. It states that it’s impossible for a distributed database to simultaneously provide Consistency, Availability, and Partition tolerance. The challenge is in the face of a network partition, a database can only b

Comptime.ts: compile-time expressions for TypeScript

⚡️ comptime.ts A dead-simple TypeScript compiler that does one thing really well: enables compile-time evaluation of expressions marked with comptime . This is useful for optimising your code by moving computations from runtime to compile time. This project was inspired by Bun macros and Zig comptime (hence the name). Warning: You are responsible for ensuring that the expressions you mark with comptime are safe to evaluate at compile time. comptime.ts does not perform any isolation. However,

Coding error blamed after parts of Constitution disappear from US website

The Library of Congress today said a coding error resulted in deletion of parts of the US Constitution from Congress' website and promised a fix after many Internet users pointed out the missing sections this morning. "It has been brought to our attention that some sections of Article 1 are missing from the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov) website," the Library of Congress said today. "We've learned that this is due to a coding error. We have been working to correct this and e