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Understanding Deflate

Understanding Deflate I’m trying to understand how Deflate works so decided to compress a simple string TOBEORNOTTOBEORTOBEORNOT using GZIP then decode the resulting file by hand. Compressing the data Pretty simple here, text in bytes out: $ echo -n 'TOBEORNOTTOBEORTOBEORNOT' | gzip -n | xxd -ps -u 1F8B08000000000000030BF17772F50FF2F30F09013342605C00F14E3D2D 18000000 Reading the GZIP data Even though I’m really interested in the compressed data I have to decode the GZIP “wrapper” in order

Procedural Island Generation (III)

Resulting terrain elevation with multi-scale noise layers and mountain peaks This post continues from Part II, where we established the paint map foundation and mountain ridge system. Now we’ll add detailed noise layers, distance-based mountain peaks, and do blending to create the final terrain elevation. Paint Map (recap) Before applying noise layers, we start with the foundation established in Part I - the paint map that defines our base land/water distribution: The paint map from Part I -

Folks, we have the best π

In the past couple of months, I published a number of articles on recreational math. I did my best to keep them accessible and fun, but my goal was usually to shed light at deeper mathematical truths. For example, the discussion of 0.999… = 1 served as a springboard to highlight some of the subtler properties of real numbers and the different meanings of infinity. Today, I have no agenda. This article exists because I discovered a somewhat obscure paper that says something unexpected and cool.

Analog optical computer for AI inference and combinatorial optimization

Experimental set-up The key components of our experimental set-up are shown in Fig. 1a and Extended Data Fig. 1. Optical subsystem The optical subsystem performs matrix–vector multiplication. The basic components are the optical sources (input vector), a system of fan-out optics to project the light onto the modulator matrix and a system of fan-in optics to project the light onto a photodetector array (output vector). The corresponding schematic is shown in Extended Data Fig. 2. The incohere

The Universe Within 12.5 Light Years

The Universe within 12.5 Light Years The Nearest Stars Number of stars within 12.5 light years = 33 About the Map This map shows all the star systems that lie within 12.5 light years of our Sun. Most of the stars are red dwarfs - stars with a tenth of the Sun's mass and less than one hundredth the luminosity. Roughly eighty percent of all the stars in the universe are red dwarfs, and the nearest star - Proxima - is a typical example. Information on the Nearest Stars Sun - Type= G2 , Magnitu

BMW and Qualcomm announce jointly developed driver assistance system

Qualcomm's driver-assistance system Snapdragon Ride Pilot will debut on the BMW iX3 electric SUV, offering hands-free highway driving, automatic lane changes and parking assistance. The jointly developed software stack announced today will be powered by Snapdragon Ride system-on-chips and will make its first formal appearance at IAA Mobility 2025. Snapdragon Ride Pilot is a Level 2+ driver-assistance system, not self-driving, which means drivers will still be responsible for supervising the veh

Drew Barrymore Wants To Remake Cult Horror Comedy ‘Death Becomes Her’ With Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston

Hollywood remakes—be they sequels or reboots—are so extremely in vogue that they verge on being among the only movies that seem to get made these days. So it makes sense that Drew Barrymore is soft-pitching a remake of the 1992 cult classic dark horror comedy film, Death Becomes Her. Speaking on her eponymous talk show, Barrymore said she wants to work with friends Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler to revive a bunch of older films. And chief among them is Back to the Future director Robert Zeme

This Hidden iPhone Feature Could Help Protect Your Eyes

According to my iPhone, I spend about four hours a day looking at my phone. I'm sure I hold my iPhone close to my face at times, especially at night, and that might be why my eyes hurt sometimes, like I've got something in them. Luckily, there's a hidden iPhone feature called Screen Distance that could help all of us take better care of our eyes. CNET The feature warns you when you're holding your iPhone or iPad too close to your face, sort of like having a parent tell you to sit farther back

You Can't Trust Your Car's Driving Assistance System Yet, AAA Report Finds

Active driving assistance systems seem like a convenient way to get from point A to point B. But you can't fully trust them yet, according to the American Automobile Association's latest study released Thursday. AAA's automotive engineers put five cars with Active Driving Assistance systems to the test. The systems, also known as Traffic Jam Assistance, were used to navigate heavy traffic. The study found a dangerous datapoint: "notable events" (like people cutting into your lane) where the ADA

Google says the quiet part out loud: IP68 protection doesn’t last

Designed to comply with dust and water protection rating IP68 under IEC standard 60529 when each device leaves the factory but the device is not water or dust proof. The accessories are not water or dust resistant. Water resistance and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and will diminish or be lost over time due to normal wear and tear, device repair, disassembly or damage. Phone is not drop/tumble proof and dropping your device may result in loss of water/dust resistance. Damage from

AWS in 2025: Stuff you think you know that's now wrong

One of the neat things about AWS is that it’s almost twenty years old. One of the unfortunate things about AWS is… that it’s almost twenty years old. If you’ve been using the platform for a while, it can be hard to notice the pace of change in the underlying “foundational” services. More worryingly, even if you’re not an old saw at AWS scrying, it’s still easy to stumble upon outdated blog posts that speak to the way things used to be, rather than the way they are now. I’ve gathered some of thes

AWS in 2025: The Stuff You Think You Know That's Now Wrong

One of the neat things about AWS is that it’s almost twenty years old. One of the unfortunate things about AWS is… that it’s almost twenty years old. If you’ve been using the platform for a while, it can be hard to notice the pace of change in the underlying “foundational” services. More worryingly, even if you’re not an old saw at AWS scrying, it’s still easy to stumble upon outdated blog posts that speak to the way things used to be, rather than the way they are now. I’ve gathered some of thes

Why Pooping on Planes Might Actually Be a Good Thing

Researchers have developed a new critical warning system for the spread of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) superbugs: poop and pee from airplane bathrooms. Scientists predict that by 2050, AMR superbugs, or pathogens that don’t respond to antimicrobial medicines, might take more lives than cancer. As such, it’s critical for countries to keep an eye on the global propagation of these dangerous pathogens, which can travel with people, in order to best prepare for future infections. In a study publi

MKBHD reviews CarPlay Ultra

Tech’s favorite YouTuber MKBHD has reviewed CarPlay Ultra for the first time. We’ve seen a few CarPlay Ultra walkthroughs since Aston Martin shipped the first instance of next-gen CarPlay earlier this year. MKBHD always has an approachable and understandable take on tech, of course. His latest video on his cleverly named Auto Focus channel is no exception. CarPlay Ultra in the wild is incredibly rare as it’s only supported in select Aston Martin vehicles for now. There are currently no EVs wi

ECScape: Understanding IAM Privilege Boundaries in Amazon ECS

This post is Part 2 of our educational series on Amazon ECS security. In Part 1 – Under the Hood of Amazon ECS on EC2, we explored how the ECS agent, IAM roles and the ECS control plane provide credentials to tasks. Here we’ll demonstrate how those mechanisms can lead to a known risk when tasks with different privilege levels share the same EC2 host. This cross-task credential exposure highlights the inherent risks of relying on per-task IAM scoping and task execution boundaries when workloads s

Best Resistance Bands of 2025

Resistance bands are usually made out of latex, but there are some that are latex-free and some that come with a fabric cover to prevent injury if it snaps. Resistance bands come in light, medium and heavy weights. The tension weight will vary per brand, but this is how they are usually labeled. There are different types of resistance bands that vary in length and style. Some come in closed loops, some with handles and then there are mini bands. CNET staff -- not advertisers, partners or busi

Perfecting anti-aliasing on signed distance functions

← index Doing anti-aliasing on SDF is not as straightforward as it seems. Most of the time, we see people use a smoothstep with hardcoded constants, sometimes with screen space information, sometimes cryptic or convoluted formulas. Even if SDFs have the perfect mathematical properties needed for a clean anti-aliasing, the whole issue has a scope larger than it appears at first glance. And even when trivial solutions exist, it's not always clear why they are a good fit. Let's study that together

3 Best Hall Effect Keyboards for Gamers and Serious Typists (2025)

Polling rate is likely one of the most prominently displayed details on any Hall effect keyboard, purely because the large numbers emphasize one of the most important aspects of these keyboards: Speed. Whether a keyboard has a 1,000- or 10,000-Hz polling rate, this number represents how many messages are sent from the keyboard to the PC every second. For example, a keyboard with 1,000-Hz polling will send 1000 messages every second. Most office equipment operates at 125 Hz. In high-performance g

Slack is getting a host of new AI tools

Slack, the cloud‑based team messaging juggernaut, is charging ahead with further integration of AI into users’ day‑to‑day experience. The company is introducing a series of tools aimed at improving productivity and improving team communication. AI writing assistance has been built directly into Slack Canvas, allowing users to create assets like project briefs as well as refine the content they create using natural‑language prompts. Writing assistance can also be used to generate and assign acti

Petabit-class transmission over > 1000 km using standard 19-core optical fiber

An international research team led by the Photonic Network Laboratory at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki Ph.D.), and including Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (Sumitomo Electric, President: INOUE Osamu) have set a new world record in optical fiber communications, achieving data transmission at 1.02 petabits per second over a distance of 1,808 kilometers (roughly equivalent to the distance from Sapporo to Fukuoka, from Misso

Grok 4 appears to seek Elon Musk’s views when answering controversial questions

Elon musk and the xAI logo. Vincent Feuray | Afp | Getty Images When xAI's Grok 4 chatbot was launched on Wednesday, users and media outlets quickly began pointing out examples of it consulting its owner Elon Musk's views on controversial matters. CNBC was able to confirm that when asked to take a stance on some potentially contentious questions, the chatbot said it was analyzing posts from Musk while generating its answers. When asked, "Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? O

HyAB k-means for color quantization

HyAB k-means for color quantization Color quantization in CIELAB space, visualized. The input is converted to CIELAB space and a special “HyAB” distance formula is used when clustering. This in theory should result in better image quality. I’ve been obsessing over color quantization algorithms lately, and when I learned that an image conversion app called Composite did its so-called pixel mapping step in CIELAB space, I instantly thought of the “HyAB” color distance formula I’d seen in the FLI

Collatz's Ant and Σ(n)

Collatz's Ant and Σ(n) Relevant preceding posts here and here. Consider the corresponding ant’s landscape development for $n = 500$: with the last frame being: Let’s also consider a score function $\Sigma(n)$ which returns the number of 1’s (or marked states) left by the ant on the corresponding landscape (regarding the last frame). With the prior example, we would have $\Sigma(500) = 54$. We might also want to normalize this by the corresponding stopping time $\tau_{n}$ characteristic of th

Mandatory battery throttling is coming for more Pixels with poor battery health (APK teardown)

Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority TL;DR Google could potentially force Battery Health Assistance to remain enabled on Pixel phones with poor battery health. Users may not be able to change/disable the feature until they replace their phone’s battery. Pixel 9a users have Battery Health Assistance already enabled and mandatory, even on new devices. Update, July 2, 2025 (1:58 PM ET): Well, that didn’t take long! Just hours after sharing our findings with you about Battery Health Assistance cha

Is mandatory battery throttling coming for more Pixels with poor battery health? (APK teardown)

Aamir Siddiqui / Android Authority TL;DR Google could potentially force Battery Health Assistance to remain enabled on Pixel phones with poor battery health. Users may not be able to change/disable the feature until they replace their phone’s battery. Pixel 9a users have Battery Health Assistance already enabled and mandatory, even on new devices. Pixel smartphones have been a staple recommendation as great Android phones, but lately, we’ve been hearing more and more about their battery issu

Painting with Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching (2023)

Most of my experience writing GLSL so far focused on enhancing pre-existing Three.js/React Three Fiber scenes that contain diverse geometries and materials with effects that wouldn't be achievable without shaders, such as my work with dispersion and particle effects. However, during my studies of shaders, I always found my way to Shadertoy, which contains a multitude of impressive 3D scenes featuring landscapes, clouds, fractals, and so much more, entirely implemented in GLSL. No geometries. No

Painting with Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching

Most of my experience writing GLSL so far focused on enhancing pre-existing Three.js/React Three Fiber scenes that contain diverse geometries and materials with effects that wouldn't be achievable without shaders, such as my work with dispersion and particle effects. However, during my studies of shaders, I always found my way to Shadertoy, which contains a multitude of impressive 3D scenes featuring landscapes, clouds, fractals, and so much more, entirely implemented in GLSL. No geometries. No

DARPA program sets distance record for power beaming

In a series of recent tests in New Mexico, the Persistent Optical Wireless Energy Relay (POWER) program achieved several new records for transmitting power over distance. The team recorded more than 800 watts of power delivered during a 30-second transmission from a laser 8.6 kilometers (5.3 miles) away. Over the course of the test campaign, more than a megajoule of energy was transferred. Previously, the greatest reported distance records for an appreciable amount of optical power (>1 microwat