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Formal specs as sets of behaviors

Amazon’s recent announcement of their spec-driven AI tool, Kiro, inspired me to write a blog post on a completely unrelated topic: formal specifications. In particular, I wanted to write about how a formal specification is different from a traditional program. It took a while for this idea to really click in my own head, and I wanted to motivate some intuition here. In particular, there have been a number of formal specification tools that have been developed in recent years which use programmi

Where are vacation homes located in the US?

As of 2023, the US has around 142.3 million housing units: roughly one home for every 2.4 people in the country. The vast majority of these homes – 127.5 million – are occupied. The remaining 14.8 million homes are vacant. Of these, around 4.8 million homes, or around 3.5% of the total, are vacant because they’re seasonal, or vacation, homes. I’ve spent a lot of time writing about patterns of housing and home construction in the US, but virtually none of it has been looking at vacation homes sp

Users claim Discord's age verification can be tricked with video game characters

Discord’s new age-verification tool may not be as rigorous as it seems, after users reportedly discovered it can be tricked using video game characters. The instant messaging and VoIP platform, commonly used for gaming, implemented an age-check tool earlier this month for UK users in anticipation of a new set of laws aimed at restricting potentially harmful content for under-18s. The Online Safety Act, passed in 2023, requires service providers that host user-generated content to implement age

Google took a month to shut down Catwatchful, a phone spyware operation hosted on its servers

Google has suspended the account of phone surveillance operator Catwatchful, which was using the tech giant’s servers to host and operate the monitoring software. Google’s move to shut down the spyware operation comes a month after TechCrunch alerted the technology giant the operator was hosting the operation on Firebase, one of Google’s developer platforms. Catwatchful relied on Firebase to host and store vast amounts of data stolen from thousands of phones compromised by its spyware. “We’ve

iOS 26 Public Beta 1 Brings AI Summaries Back to News Apps With a Warning

If you have an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone, the first public beta of iOS 26 is bringing AI notification summaries back to news and entertainment apps after being partly removed earlier this year. Apple disabled AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in January. That came a few weeks after the BBC pointed out in December that the feature twisted the media organization's notifications and displayed inaccurate information. The latest beta brings those AI summaries back wi

Home Safe? Snap Map Will Let Your Friends and Family Know With Alert

"Let us know when you're home." How many times have you heard that from friends or family at the end of the night, but forgotten to follow up when you get through the door? Snapchat has added a feature to its popular Snap Map that will take care of it for you. The messaging app launched a new feature on Thursday called "Home Safe," which will alert friends and/or family that you're home safely even when you forget to do so. It's ideal to let folks know when you're back from a vacation, a night

Snapchat can automatically let a trusted friend know you got home safe

Snapchat can now let your friends know if you're back home from an outing safe and sound without you having to send a message. The app has launched a new feature called Home Safe, which sends one-time alerts to contacts of your choice. You can only send these alerts to people you already share your location with, and since that off by default, you'd have to activate it on Snap Maps for all your friends or for specific ones. Your friends will only get the notification once, and it will shut off a

Snapchat will notify your friends when you’ve made it home safe

Snapchat is launching a new Home Safe feature that makes it easier to inform your loved ones when you have arrived safely after making your way home. Building on the app’s existing location capabilities, Snapchat’s Home Safe allows you to send an automatic alert to chat conversations with friends to let them know you’re back at home without having to remember to send direct messages. While many communications apps like Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger enable you to share live location

Snapchat will now let your friends know you’ve made it home safe

Snapchat is launching a new way for users to let their friends and family know they’ve made it home safe after an outing, called “Home Safe,” the social network announced on Thursday. To use the feature, you need to set your home location by tapping your Bitmoji on Snap Map and then “My Home.” When you head out and want to notify a friend when you get home, open the conversation, tap the Map icon, and then the Home Safe button. Your friend will receive an automatic alert in your chat conversat

Google’s Phone app could make resuming on-hold calls easier (APK teardown)

Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority TL;DR Google is testing a new “Unhold” shortcut in call notifications through its Phone app. The new button replaces the “Mute” button whenever a user puts a call on hold. Although not yet live, this change would improve usability by allowing users to resume held calls more efficiently. Google doesn’t mess around that much with the Google Phone app. It makes sense too, as you don’t want to disturb muscle memory for people for crucial tasks like calls. But e

Here’s what Apple Intelligence summarized news notifications look like on iOS 26

After launching notification summaries as one of the flagship features of Apple Intelligence, Apple disabled the feature for apps in the News and Entertainment categories in the iOS 18.3 update, following backlash from publications like the BBC about Apple Intelligence portraying its news headlines inaccurately. Having been disabled entirely for these apps since mid-January, Apple announced this week the feature will return as part of iOS 26. Users running the developer have noticed that these

Show HN: Header-only GIF decoder in pure C – no malloc, easy to use

I built a lightweight GIF decoder in pure C, ideal for embedded or performance-critical environments. It’s header-only, zero dynamic memory allocations, and fully platform-independent. Supports both static and animated GIFs, with turbo and safe decoding modes. Works great on microcontrollers, IoT devices, and anything with a framebuffer. Would love feedback or ideas where this could be useful. Github: https://github.com/Ferki-git-creator/TurboStitchGIF-HeaderOn...

Asymmetry of verification and verifier's law

Asymmetry of verification is the idea that some tasks are much easier to verify than to solve. With reinforcement learning (RL) that finally works in a general sense, asymmetry of verification is becoming one of the most important ideas in AI. Understanding asymmetry of verification through examples Asymmetry of verification is everywhere, if you look for it. Some prime examples: Sudoku and crossword puzzles take a lot of time to solve because you have to try many candidates against various c

Asymmetry of Verification and Verifier's Law

Asymmetry of verification is the idea that some tasks are much easier to verify than to solve. With reinforcement learning (RL) that finally works in a general sense, asymmetry of verification is becoming one of the most important ideas in AI. Understanding asymmetry of verification through examples Asymmetry of verification is everywhere, if you look for it. Some prime examples: Sudoku and crossword puzzles take a lot of time to solve because you have to try many candidates against various c

Apple Intelligence news summaries are back, with a big red disclaimer

Apple has released the fourth developer betas of iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26 and its other next-generation software updates today. And along with their other changes and fixes, the new builds are bringing back Apple Intelligence notification summaries for news apps. Apple disabled news notification summaries as part of the iOS 18.3 update in January. Incorrect summaries circulating on social media prompted news organizations to complain to Apple, particularly after one summary said that Luigi M

Apple alerted Iranians to iPhone spyware attacks, say researchers

Apple notified more than a dozen Iranians in recent months that their iPhones had been targeted with government spyware, according to security researchers. Miian Group, a digital rights organization that focuses on Iran, and Hamid Kashfi, an Iranian cybersecurity researcher who lives in Sweden, said they spoke with several Iranians who received the notifications in the last year. Bloomberg first wrote about these spyware notifications. Miaan Group published a report on Tuesday on the state of

Microsoft Will Wipe Out Your Passwords on Aug. 1. What to Do Now

Microsoft is getting rid of passwords in less than two weeks. On Aug. 1, the Microsoft Authenticator app will no longer store or manage passwords, which could be a problem for a lot of users. Microsoft Authenticator has been one of the best password managers for years. You were able to save passwords, enable two-factor authentication and auto-fill. This change means that if you're using the Authenticator app as a password manager, you'll need to look for another option soon. At the same time,

Report: Apple alerted Iranians to spyware attacks in lead-up to war with Israel

You may have never heard of them, but Apple sends “threat notifications” to users when it believes they’re being targeted by cyber attacks. Earlier this year that happened with several Iranians in the lead-up to the Iran-Israel war, per a new Bloomberg report. Here are the details. Apple threat notifications were sent to over a dozen Iranian cyberattack victims Patrick Howell O’Neill writes at Bloomberg: More than a dozen Iranians’ mobile phones were targeted with spyware in the months prior

Tesla Diner: Photos show opening of Musk's futuristic California drive-in

People dine inside during the opening of the Tesla Diner and Drive-In restaurant and Supercharger on Santa Monica Blvd in the Hollywood neighborhood Los Angeles, California on July 21, 2025. Elon Musk's flagship Tesla Diner opened Monday in Hollywood, California, and the CEO is already eyeing expansion "If our retro-futuristic diner turns out well, which I think it will, @Tesla will establish these in major cities around the world, as well as Supercharger sites on long distance routes," Musk w

Galaxy Watch Ultra users rejoice: Wear OS 6 rolls out ahead of schedule!

Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority TL;DR The Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra (2024) is receiving the One UI 8 update with Wear OS 6 earlier than expected. The rollout has started for T-Mobile, AT&T, and Google Fi models in the US, as well as in some overseas markets. New features include better notifications, new gestures, improved health tracking, and more personalization options. The Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, Watch 8 Classic, and Watch Ultra (2025) are the first smartwatches to get Wear OS 6 upda

FCC to eliminate gigabit speed goal and scrap analysis of broadband prices

The Federal Communications Commission is ditching Biden-era standards for measuring progress toward the goal of universal broadband deployment. The changes will make it easier for the FCC to give the broadband industry a passing grade in an annual progress report. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's proposal would give the industry a thumbs-up even if it falls short of 100 percent deployment, eliminate a long-term goal of gigabit broadband speeds, and abandon a new effort to track the affordability of

The next Files by Google update could fix some annoying search quirks (APK teardown)

Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Files by Google could soon get improved search filters, letting users filter out “Other” file types beyond common media types. Users will also be able to filter files based on internal and external storage. Files by Google has already been spotted with Material 3 Expressive changes, but those are not the only changes coming to Google’s file manager app. Files by Google v1.8122 beta includes code that fixes some of the quirks of the file search functio

Threat actors downgrade FIDO2 MFA auth in PoisonSeed phishing attack

A PoisonSeed phishing campaign is bypassing FIDO2 security key protections by abusing the cross-device sign-in feature in WebAuthn to trick users into approving login authentication requests from fake company portals. The PoisonSeed threat actors are known to employ large-volume phishing attacks for financial fraud. In the past, distributing emails containing crypto seed phrases used to drain cryptocurrency wallets. In the recent phishing attack observed by Expel, the PoisonSeed threat actors