A technical analysis by Valentin Ignatev, discussed by a Python performance blogger, shows that Python's set and dict data structures, though usually treated as constant-time O(1) for lookups and insertions, can be forced into quadratic-time behavior. By constructing integers that share the same hash value (using a Mersenne prime modulus), it's possible to trigger repeated hash collisions that slow insertion and lookup dramatically as the collection grows.
lemire.me
· 2026-09-08
Galaxy has published Filament, an open-source tool written in Go that moves data between systems using full, incremental, or change-data-capture replication. It tracks progress with durable checkpoints, verifies batches on both the read and write sides, and can pause or resume runs safely, while letting developers swap in custom sources, sinks, storage, and event transport.
github.com
· 2026-09-08
The ShinyHunters extortion group says it broke into Florida's DAVID driver database used by law enforcement, allegedly exploiting a password-reset weakness to hijack multiple accounts, including one belonging to an FBI agent. The hackers claim to have exfiltrated over 200,000 driver records and posted Jeffrey Epstein's DMV file—complete with his address, Social Security number, and vehicle history—as proof, while listing the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles agency on their leak site to pressure payment.
bleepingcomputer.com
· 2026-09-08
Thailand's government has asked operators of 49 data centers under construction to voluntarily halt work while officials draft comprehensive legislation covering the industry, according to NESDC secretary-general Danucha Pichayanan. The country currently lacks specific laws for data centers, resulting in loopholes such as facilities being zoned as warehouses next to hospitals, and officials plan to spend about a month drafting rules after gathering data from agencies through September 11.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-08
Former Opendoor CEO Eric Wu has emerged from a year-long break to found a new company, now out of stealth since May, that builds AI-powered voice assistants for construction and field workers. The tool acts as a hands-free coach guiding laborers through tasks, aiming to address a labor shortfall the industry group Associated Builders and Contractors pegs at roughly 349,000 missing workers this year.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-08
The World Bank has begun attaching 'reproducibility packages'—containing raw data and analysis code—to all research it publishes, following concerns that findings in social and behavioural sciences are often hard for independent researchers to replicate. The move, underway since 2023 and standard since 2025, follows broader studies this year documenting widespread reproducibility problems across scientific fields.
nature.com
· 2026-09-08
An anonymous researcher alerted the UK Biobank in April to sensitive participant data being sold on Alibaba's Xianyu marketplace, prompting officials to work with UK and Chinese authorities to remove the listing. The biobank then suspended researcher access for nearly five months while investigating the breach and rebuilding its data security infrastructure, with access set to resume this month.
nature.com
· 2026-09-08
A data visualization project has mapped every structure in Los Angeles as a 3D box color-coded by the decade it was constructed. Users can pan, rotate and tilt the view to watch the city's growth unfold chronologically from 1880 through 2026.
lax-skyline.parcelscope.net
· 2026-09-07
BZip3, an open-source successor to BZip2, combines a Burrows-Wheeler transform with suffix arrays, an LZ77/PPM-style matching pass, and an order-0 context-mixing entropy coder to boost both compression ratio and speed. In a benchmark compressing every historical Perl 5 release bundled into one tar file, BZip3 with a large block size produced a much smaller output than bzip2, xz, and zstd, while also decompressing faster than the other tools tested.
github.com
· 2026-09-07
US safety regulators have opened an investigation into how Tesla self-certified its Cybercab, a robotaxi that notably lacks a steering wheel and pedals. The probe examines whether Tesla's internal approval process for this unconventional vehicle design met required safety standards before deployment.
technologyreview.com
· 2026-09-07
The Economist reports that despite fears of AI-driven job destruction, US employment data shows no broad downturn: unemployment sits at 4.1% and young workers' job prospects remain strong. While companies like Microsoft, Meta, Block and Intuit have cut roles tied to automation—averaging about 16,000 AI-related layoffs monthly—the publication estimates AI has simultaneously generated roughly 1 million new jobs through data-center construction, startup hiring and new corporate AI roles, dwarfing the roughly 200,000 layoffs attributed to the technology since mid-2023.
slashdot.org
· 2026-09-07
A developer found that CodePen's updated editor sends everything typed into its code fields to codepen.dev within one to two seconds, even without saving. Using a unique test marker in an HTML file, they confirmed CodePen triggered a build with save disabled and the marker still appeared verbatim in the generated preview page served from a codepen.dev subdomain.
news.ycombinator.com
· 2026-09-07
GoKawiil