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EXAMPLE Sequence reads 1 3 7 12 18 26 35 45..., differences are 2 4 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 ... and the point is that every number not in the sequence itself appears among the differences. This property (together with the fact that both the sequence and the sequence of first differences are increasing) defines the sequence!
Roughly every two years, the density of transistors that can be fit onto a silicon chip doubles. This is Moore’s Law. Roughly every five years, the cost to build a factory for making such chips doubles, and the number of companies that can do it halves. 25 years ago, there were about 40 such companies and the cost to build a fab was about $2-4 billion. Today, there are either two or three such companies left (depending on your optimism toward Intel) and the cost to build a fab is in excess of $1
Using the Internet without IPv4 connectivity A few days ago my ISP broke the IPv4 connectivity from my router after a power cut. Fortunately IPv6 connectivity still worked fine, but only a small fraction of websites were accessible. In this post I'll cover how Linux, WireGuard, and Hetzner came to the rescue - keeping the whole internet usable with only an IPv6 connection. Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer. Background One morning I
Apple doesn’t often discount products, and AirTags have never been on sale from the Apple website or in Apple stores. Amazon, however, occasionally surprises us with exclusive pricing on these useful Bluetooth trackers. For the best value, a pack of AirTags is nearly always a better buy than a single one. Amazon is also running a great deal just in time for Prime Day: purchase three AirTags and receive a fourth free. That drops the price of four AirTags to just $74, down from the regular $99 ($
Death is inevitable. But the journey getting there is far from universal. The average life expectancy at birth worldwide is now around 73 years but varies widely between countries and even between individual states in America. I, and presumably many readers, know some people who have barely lost a step as they’ve gotten older, as well as people who sharply declined as they entered their golden years. These realities invite the question: How can we significantly slow down our biological clock? A
The worst part of travel is the planning: the faff of finding and booking transport, accommodation, restaurant reservations—the list can feel endless. To help, the latest wave of AI agents, such as OpenAI’s Operator and Anthropic’s Computer Use claim they can take these dreary, cumbersome tasks from befuddled travelers and do it all for you. But exactly how good are they are digging out the good stuff? What better way to find out than deciding on a last-minute weekend away. I tasked Operator, w
Before anything else, you'll have to decide between ink and laser. I'll get into the details when it comes to each model, but the most important consideration is paper type, because it’s a limitation rather than a benefit. Laser printers use heat in the bonding process, which means if you regularly print on windowed envelopes or photo paper, you'll need to either use an ink printer or change to a thermally-safe alternative, which can be cost prohibitive if you print a lot. Inkjets are the most
According to Apple leaker Majin Bu, Apple will once again be repositioning the Apple logo on the next iPhone. Apple last repositioned the Apple logo with the iPhone 11 lineup, and it’s remained centered on the iPhone ever since. Six years later, that may be changing once again – if this rumor holds up. Majin Bu has a spotty track record with Apple rumors, though they have shared a number of accurate tidbits in the past, including the ‘Desert Titanium’ marketing name for the new iPhone 16 Pro co
Throttling is a very accepted concept in computer science. But this is the most misused and misunderstood lever of computer science. When new engineers join Roblox, their first solutions often include, “If we could just tell our creators to tweak this config or slow down their events…”. Veteran Roblox engineers then gently explain our value of respecting the community and that we don’t tell our creators what to do. For example, most gaming systems have a simple solution for matchmaking when mil
To Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and all other publishers of America: We are standing on a precipice. At its simplest level, our job as artists is to respond to the human experience. But the art we make is a commodity, and our world wants things quickly, cheaply, and on demand. We are rushing toward a future where our novels, our biographies, our poems and our memoirs—our records of the human experience—are “written” by artificial intell
R eams of papers have been published on the cognitive advantages of multilingualism. Beyond the conversational doors it can open, multilingualism is supposed to improve “executive function”, a loose concept that includes the ability to ignore distractions, plan complex tasks and update beliefs as new information arrives. Most striking, numerous studies have even shown that bilinguals undergo a later onset of dementia, perhaps of around four years, on average. But some of these studies have faile
As I read more about the Columbidae, though, I came to appreciate pigeons for more than just their beauty. Their big appetites are crucial to the health of forests around the globe. Researchers observing fig trees in Malaysia once found that green pigeons consumed far more fruit than any other animal in the jungle, visiting some trees more often than all other animals combined. Most animals defecate seeds near the parent tree, but pigeons are long-distance fliers who retain seeds in their guts l
In the past 57 years of tennis matches since 1968 , some score combinations have still never occurred. This project is designed to track and discover these missing scorelines.
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Synthesized video from Dawid van Straaten, prompt (“Generate me a video of two men playing chess”) in which the player for black reaches across the table and, in the midst of a rather unusual position moves his opponent’s pawn horizontally, and quite illegally, several squares across the board. A few weeks ago, I had the singular honor of recording a podcast (to be released soon) with one of my heroes, Garry Kasparov, not only one of the greatest chess players of all time, but also one of the b
Once again, I find myself gloriously behind the times. In this particular case, a few thousand years behind the times. I built and maintain a wall beehive — a colony housed in the wall of my bedroom. I have been calling it my Observation Hive because it has a plexiglas cover on the inside wall, but our ancient ancestors have been keeping such hives, called walled hives, for millennia. I know this now because of a fascinating Bee World article from 1998 by Eva Crane that details wall hives and w
👋 Hey there! Let's play with gradient descent. This mini-app acts as an interactive supplement to Teach LA's curriculum on linear regression and gradient descent. Not sure what's going on? Check out the lesson notebook and the corresponding slides.
Nvidia has a long tradition of building giant GPUs. Blackwell, their latest graphics architecture, continues that tradition. GB202 is the largest Blackwell die. It occupies a massive 750mm2 of area, and has 92.2 billion transistors. GB202 has 192 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), the closest equivalent to a CPU core on a GPU, and feeds them with a massive memory subsystem. Nvidia’s RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell features the largest GB202 configuration to date. It sits alongside the RTX 5090 in Nvidia’s
Community is Motivation on Tap A good community can have tremendous influence on one’s motivation. I never appreciated this fact enough so I wanted to write about it here. Looking at successful athletes, founders, musicians, game speedrunners, or overachievers in any area, they seem to have unlimited motivation to do loads of tedious work or practice. One might say they are interested in the work itself, but how inherently interesting can beating super mario 1ms faster be? The work of a founde
28.Jun.2025 (ANF) Group of investors represented by Youtuber Perifractic buys Commodore Three weeks ago, Youtuber Christian 'Perifractic' Simpson announced in a video that he had received an offer to take over Commodore B.V., the owner of the remaining Commodore trademark rights. In a second video published today he now announces the completed takeover: A group of unnamed angel investors has acquired the company for a low seven-figure sum. He himself is now the acting CEO, but the purch
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How we ran a Unix-like OS (Xv6) on our home-built CPU with our home-built C compiler [Thanks for many comments and votes on Hacker News! ] It’s been two years since I started working as a software engineer. I sometimes tell my colleagues about a student project I did in my junior year of university, and it’s so well-received that I’m writing this post. Now, let me ask you a question. Have you ever designed your own ISA, built a processor of that ISA on FPGA, and built a compiler for it? Furth
My general vintage computing projects, mostly microcomputers, 6502, PalmOS, 68K/Power Mac and Unix workstations, but that's not all you'll see. While over the decades I've written for publications likeand, these articles are all original and just for you. My promise: No AI-generated article text, ever. Be kind, REWIND and PLAY.Old VCR is advertisement- and donation-funded, and what I get goes to maintaining the hardware here at Floodgap. I don't drink coffee, but the Mr Pibb doesn't buy itself.
Rollie Pemberton was barely a teenager when he started rapping. His hometown, Edmonton, didn’t have much of a hip-hop scene in the early aughts, so he honed his craft online. He plugged an old-school microphone into his mom’s desktop computer, recorded a few verses, later turned them into tracks, and sent them out into the burgeoning music blogosphere. Within a few years, he’d adopted the emcee name Cadence Weapon and earned a reputation as a shrewd critic and sharp lyricist. This work didn’t p
There's a trend at the moment of solving online games with programming, let's do one from the UK called Passport Application, which is developed by "His Majesty's Passport Office" or HMPO. It's a cultural phenomenon in the UK: despite being quite expensive (about £100 just to start) for the standard online version (a masterpiece of minimalist design, entirely text-based), most British play the game, and do so every 10 years or so. It's an adventure puzzle document collection game. The premise i
Gael Cooper CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Denmark has proposed sweeping legislation to curb the rise of AI-generated deepfakes, positioning itself as a leader in European digital rights protection. The suggested amendment to Danish copyright law would grant individuals explicit ownership of their image, voice, and facial features – empowering them to demand the removal of unauthorized digital copies from online platforms. The move comes as deepfake technology grows more accessible and sophisticated. These digital forgeries convincingly
TL;DR: Hackers have cracked Brother's method of generating default admin passwords for hundreds of its printers, scanners, and label makers, putting users who haven't changed them at risk. Additionally, researchers found seven other serious vulnerabilities affecting Brother and other brands. Users should visit company websites for security advisories and update their firmware. Security researchers at Rapid7 recently reported eight vulnerabilities affecting over 689 printers, scanners, and label
Why it matters: As Android 16's new security features roll out with the next generation of smartphones, users will, for the first time, have a tool to detect invisible digital surveillance. Whether this prompts broader reforms in how such technology is used and regulated remains to be seen. Still, the feature reflects a growing awareness of the need to protect personal privacy in the mobile age. An upcoming Android update will introduce a warning system to help users detect one of the most elus
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the automaker completed its first driverless delivery of a new car to a customer, routing a Model Y SUV from the company's Austin, Texas, Gigafactory to an apartment building in the area on June 27. The Tesla account on social network X, which is also owned by Musk, shared a video overnight showing the Model Y traversing public roads in Austin, including highways, with no human in the driver's seat or front passenger seat of the car. Tesla did not say which version of