Former team members have either resigned or been absorbed into other research groups. Read more »

In his new book, Christof Koch views consciousness as a theorist and an aficionado. Read more »

Prices would need to be dramatically slashed to avoid increasing the national deficit. Read more »

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, the government hit whistleblower David Hale with espionage charges. All four major wireless carriers were hit with lawsuits over sharing location data, while employees of AT&T and Verizon were caught up in a DOJ bust over SIM hijacking. Canada’s Prime Minister was threatening…

It’s a funny thing what game publishers sometimes try to do when it comes to releasing games early to internet streamers as a way to boost interest in their games. I’ve heard stories of all kinds of crazy stipulations that streamers have to sign off on contractually in order to…

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of…

Jeremy Allison — Sam (Slashdot reader #8,157) is a Distinguished Engineer at Rocky Linux creator CIQ. This week he published a blog post responding to promises of Linux distros "carefully selecting only the most polished and pristine open source patches from the raw upstream open source Linux kernel in order…

Starting this week millions will see AI-generated answers in Google's search results by default. But the announcement Tuesday at Google's annual developer conference suggests a future that's "not without its risks, both to users and to Google itself," argues the Washington Post: For years, Google has been shielded for liability…

Ars Technica looks at what happened after Google's answer to Amazon's cloud service "accidentally deleted a giant customer account for no reason..." "[A]ccording to UniSuper's incident log, downtime started May 2, and a full restoration of services didn't happen until May 15." UniSuper, an Australian pension fund that manages $135…

The Model Why does biological evolution work? And, for that matter, why does machine learning work? Both are examples of adaptive processes that surprise us with what they manage to achieve. So what’s the essence of what’s going on? I’m going to concentrate here on biological evolution, though much of…

Google on Thursday asked that a judge, rather than a jury, decide whether it violated U.S. antitrust laws by building a monopoly on the technology that powers online advertising. To bolster its case, the tech giant wrote a multimillion-dollar check to the U.S. government that it says renders moot the…

A tiny, low-priced electric car called the Seagull has American automakers and politicians trembling. The car, launched last year by Chinese automaker BYD, sells for around $12,000 in China, but drives well and is put together with craftsmanship that rivals U.S.-made electric vehicles that cost three times as much. A…

As cars and trucks get smarter and more connected, the humble lights that have controlled the flow of traffic for more than a century could also be on the cusp of a major transformation. Researchers are exploring ways to use features in modern cars, such as GPS, to make traffic…

The popular repair website iFixit today shared a video with teardowns of the new 13-inch iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil Pro. The website praised the inclusion of adhesive pull tabs for the battery cells in the new iPad Pro, as they make repairs easier. We already shared another iPad…

The new iPads are here! Following their unveiling at last week's "Let Loose" Apple event, the new iPad Pro and iPad Air models launched this week alongside the Apple Pencil Pro and revamped Magic Keyboard, bringing the first updates to Apple's iPad lineup in over 18 months. This week also…

Animated GIFs have become a staple of the internet. Invented in 1987, the looping, soundless video clips can be found everywhere online, from social media networks to messaging platforms. They're often used to express emotions, communicate ideas, or just make people laugh. Because they are so short, GIF files are…

A helium leak pushed back a planned launch to May 25. Boeing's program that would shuttle astronauts to and from the International Space Station has been plagued with problems.

Last month, the world narrowly avoided a cyberattack of stunning ambition. The targets were some of the most important computers on the planet. Computers that power the internet. Computers used by banks and airlines and even the military. What these computers had in common was that they all relied on…

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Maggie Harrison Dupre, staff writer at Futurism, about her reporting into AI-generated articles appearing on major news publications.

It might be a good time to finally upgrade your iPhone if you’ve been hanging onto an older model — according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will be offering a little more than usual for some trade-ins starting next week in the US and Canada. The company itself hasn’t said…

Slack trains machine-learning models on user messages, files and other content without explicit permission. The training is opt-out, meaning your private data will be leeched by default. Making matters worse, you’ll have to ask your organization’s Slack admin (human resources, IT, etc.) to email the company to ask it to…

A full trailer just dropped for the upcoming animated show based on the popular game Dead Cells, and it looks like the creators have made a few unexpected choices. For one, the Beheaded can apparently talk.  Dead Cells: Immortalis is being produced by Bobbypills, the studio behind the game’s animated…

The latest instalment of the hugely popular series will be released in autumn 2025, its publisher says.

How a small British developer hopes to put boxing back in contention in the video game sports genre.

OpenAI and Reddit reach deal that will give ChatGPT access to content on the social media platform.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email in German (no, I don’t speak German) from Ugreen who offered to send me a charger to look at. I’ve had stuff from Ugreen before and no problem so – why not! So yesterday I received the new U green Charger……

AWS Polly is great for adding speech to Raspberry Pi and similar, especially with the “neural” enhancement. Regular readers will know that for years I was a great fan of using Ivona speech on my Raspberry Pi. In Node-Red I used the free Ivona service to provide high quality speech in Node-Red at the heart of……

Elsewhere I’ve written about moving from Raspberry Pi 4 and legacy 32-bit Bullseye (Pi OS) to Raspberry Pi 5 and 64-bit Bookworm (Pi OS). So I thought, having backed up my RPi4 and 5, I’d take the RPi4 and do a from-scratch installation of Bullseye on the latter. Armed with……

I’ve been following the press and social media coverage of Apple’s pricey new Vision Pro Augmented Reality headset, which now totals hundreds of stories and thousands of comments and I’ve noticed one idea missing from all of them: what would Steve (Jobs) say?  Steve would call the Vision Pro a…

Sorry I’ve been away: time flies when you are not having fun. But now I’m back. Moore’s Law, which began with a random observation by the late Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that transistor densities on silicon substrates were doubling every 18 months, has over the intervening 60+ years been both…

My son Cole, pictured here as a goofy kid many years ago, is now six feet six inches tall and in college. Cole needed a letter of recommendation recently so he turned to an old family friend who, in turn, used ChatGPT to generate the letter, which he thought was…

Chimps. Bonobos. Humans. We're all great apes, but that doesn’t mean we’re one happy family.This episode, a mashup of content stretching all the way back to 2010, asks the question: is cross-species cohabitation an utterly stupid idea? Or might it be our one last hope as more and more humans…

A selection of short flights of fact and fancy performed live on stage.Usually we tell true stories at this show, but earlier this spring we were invited to guest host a live show called Selected Shorts, a New York City institution that presents short fiction performed on stage by great…

Remembering is a tricky, unstable business. This hour: a look behind the curtain of how memories are made...and forgotten.     The act of recalling in our minds something that happened in the past is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process--it’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true…

Catching up on the biggest VR news this week? Here's our latest roundup with a few stories you may have missed.

VR's biggest year yet is only getting started with Flat2VR, emulation, and mixed reality changing the industry.

LG unveiled a 4K micro-OLED display for "next generation" VR headsets that can deliver increased brightness or eliminate motion blur.

With previously hidden ‘App Lab’ apps now discoverable on the main Quest store, the $1,000 WeldVR is the most expensive app you can find on Meta’s VR app store. But fret not, you can get a free trial… for 20 whole minutes. For years, Meta only allowed select apps onto the…

Clap Hanz, the Japanese studio behind hit golfing series Everybody’s Golf and Hot Shots, released their latest VR game on Quest, called ULTIMATE SWING GOLF. The game follows in the footsteps of Clap Hanz’s other iconic titles, this time featuring five outdoor courses for some arcade-style VR golfing action. The game’s main…

Blacktop Hoops (2024), the popular VR basketball game, is out of early access on Quest, now serving up multiplayer and single player streetball on standalone platforms and PC VR headsets too. Developed by Vinci Games and first released in April 2022 in alpha, the full version of Blacktop Hoops is…

You are the only one who can stem the Shadows emanating from a black hole in MASTERS OF LIGHT, out now on Meta Quest 2...

It’s tee time for a great VR golfing adventure with ULTIMATE SWING GOLF, out now on the Quest platform. No matter your golfing preference there...

Have you ever dreamed of building your own robot? Imagined a mechanical companion that could help with your daily tasks—or maybe even take over save...

Who needs an external battery when you have good old-fashioned emotions? Scientists based out of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have begun working on augmented reality (AR) contact lenses capable of displaying virtual information in the real world. But here’s the really interesting part: according to an official release…

Return to a life of crime in this sizable DLC update. Developer 3R Games this week announced a new update for its popular VR game, Thief Simulator VR: Greenview Street, which introduces a brand new neighborhood over twice the size of Greenview Street. Available now on Meta Quest headsets, the…

Experience BATL Axe Throwing on Meta Quest headsets. ArcadeXR today announced its 2.0 update for Arcade Legends which introduces axe throwing to the game for the very first time. For those unfamiliar, Arcade Legends is a unique VR experience that allows you to build your own personal arcade. Here you…

I’m excited to announce that we’re developing a new set of Code Editor features to help school teachers run text-based coding lessons with their students. New Code Editor features for teaching Last year we released our free Code Editor and made it available as an open source project. Right now…

Through Code Club and CoderDojo we support the world’s largest network of free informal computing clubs for young people. The clubs network reaches young people in 126 countries across the globe, and we estimate that the 4,557 Code Clubs and 771 CoderDojos are attended by more than 200,000 young people…

It’s been nearly two years since the launch of the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre. Today, the Centre’s Director Dr Sue Sentance shares an update about the Centre’s work. The Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre (RPCERC) is unique for two reasons: we are a joint initiative between the…

Check out this fantastic build from maker Arnov Sharma.Greetings Vault dwellers, and I’m back with a new watch project. Meet PipWatch, a PipBoy-inspired wrist watch powered by a FireBeetle ESP32 board along with a round GC9A01 display.Full details here on Hackster.io

71 years ago today, pilot Jackie Cochran broke the sound barrier. Smithsonian‘s piece from 2010 elaborates on Cochran’s trailblazing.On May 18, 1953, Cochran took off from Rogers Dry Lake, California, accompanied by Air Force Captain Charles “Chuck” Yeager, who six years earlier had been the first man to break the…

We are all burnt out by the demands of modern technology, namely our phones. It happens to me multiple times a day: I go to check something on my phone and am transported 45 minutes into the future with a few less brain cells. To combat this, Dope or Nope…

Maker culture has always been a major part of magic performance. Some tricks are well-rehearsed slight of hand, but many of them rely on clever engineering to sell an illusion. And modern technology offers a great deal of interesting possibilities. That is the idea behind Peter Boie’s Engineering Wonder “STEM…

ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) let us explore bodies of water and it is hard not to be excited by the possibilities. But traditional ROVs cost a lot of money and often require serious expertise to operate and maintain. Luckily there are affordable alternatives, such as this DIY underwater rover designed…

We’re excited to announce that the Arduino Cloud now supports Google Home™! This means you can now interact with your devices simply through your Google Home Assistant: use voice commands, the Google Home app, or create new routines integrating Arduino solutions.  This new integration expands our ecosystem of compatible applications,…

We continue with our flash contests, so keep your eyes peeled on this page to catch the current themes. Flash contests start every second Friday and last for 17 days, concluding on the Sunday after the next, effectively spanning over the... The post Flash Contests Theme: Drawing Templates appeared first…

Over the past month, we have been combining 3D printing with the science of making work more efficient and comfortable, and now it's time to announce the winners of our Ergonomic Workshop Aids contest! Throughout the contest, we received many interesting submissions!... The post Ergonomic Workshop Aids Contest Winners appeared…

Laboratories play a vital role in healthcare, but field doctors and lab technicians often find themselves in situations where they need to improvise solutions on the fly. Whether it's connecting items together, holding equipment in specific positions, or finding efficient storage... The post Contest: Lab accessories for MSF appeared first…

This is a cute little cabin. It looks like made of wood. You can print just the cabin or also the rocky base. The height of the cabin is 3.3 cm (1.3 inches). On my printer the cabin has less than 1 hour print time. Some simple glue work is…

Fallout TV show inspired coasters. Coaster holder is available here! If you have any comments/questions or if you need help with a design, please contact me and if you like any of my designs please feel free to buy a me a cup of coffee.

Nuka Cola bottle earrings inspired by Fallout - in honour of the new TV show!

Since the 1990s, the web has been a publishing place for human-readable documents. Documents published on the web are in HTML. HTML has a little bit of… Read more "Progress on the Block Protocol"

You’ve probably seen web editors based on the idea of blocks. I’m typing this in WordPress, which has a little + button that brings up a long… Read more "Making the web better. With blocks!"

The other day I was talking to a young developer working on a code base with tons of COM code, and I told him that even before… Read more "Kinda a big announcement"

As we celebrate the release of Babylon.js 7.0, we’re also looking forward and planning for next year’s Babylon.js 8.0 release and beyond.One of the features we’re looking into updating is the audio engine.The current audio engine is decent, but it is aging poorly and has design issues that make it difficult to…

The first blog I wrote to announce Babylon.js availability was made on 6/27/2013. Yes, the engine is already 11 years old:). Almost a teenager. They grow so fast!I found the link on archive.org for the curious.Initial version of the site (on IE11!!)Along all these years, we collectively built a fantastic engine alongside an…

Our mission is to build one of the most powerful, beautiful, simple, and open web rendering engines in the world, and we are excited to announce that mission takes another step forward today, with Babylon.js 7.0.https://medium.com/media/e078489a47c00c0b38b61d6e0663fce2/hrefBabylon.js 7.0 is a celebration of a year’s worth of new features, optimizations, and performance…

Is not that common of an issue, but it happens - when searching for memory leaks, remember to check any cross-referenced objects. Cross-referenced objects are, well, just that, objects that need to reference each other. For example, when "ClassA" needs to know about "ClassB", and "ClassB" needs to know about "ClassA".…

The technology and development world is always changing. First released in 1998, Xojo’s longevity is a testament to its ability and willingness to adapt from…

It's been too long since we last recognized the enormous amount of valuable assistance that the Xojo MVPs provide to Xojo and the community. We are so grateful to have such an amazing group of dedicated, passionate Xojo experts with so much Xojo knowledge. You may occasionally see MVPs on…

I’m putting Better Programming on hiatus to make room for other programming publications.I get that this is a big pivot given that we switched to a new editor recently. But things are changing at Medium and I think this will ultimately be a boon for everyone, authors, readers and publications.I…

Using Python in a Jupyter notebookContinue reading on Better Programming »

A Postgres database speed test. Who wins?Continue reading on Better Programming »

Node-RED 3.1 is now available to install. If upgrading, please read the upgrade instructions. This release is a little overdue to say the least. We released the first beta back in February - thinking it would be the only one we did. But one thing lead to another and, four…

Update: the results are now available here. Back in 2019 we published the results of the 2019 Node-RED community survey. The results painted an interesting picture of the Node-RED community. We think it is time to refresh these results so we are running the survey again. The 2023 survey is…

Node-RED 3.0 is now available to install. If upgrading, please read the upgrade instructions. The Change Log has the full list of changes in this release, but here are the highlights. Migrating from Node-RED 2.x Editor Features Context Menu Junctions Debug Path Tooltip Continuous Search Default node names Monaco Text…

There is a new PHP release in town!

There is a new PHP release in town!

There is a new PHP release in town!

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending DeveloperWeek in Oakland, CA. In addition to working the Akamai booth, making new friends, and spreading the good word of cloud computing, my team mate, Talia and I were tasked with creating a demo to showcase the new VPC product.BackgroundA Virtual Private Cloud…

Surprise! This is a bonus blog post for the AI for Web Devs series I recently wrapped up. If you havent read that series yet, Id encourage you to check it out.This post will look at the existing project architecture and ways we can improve it for both application developers…

Welcome back to the series where we have been building an application with Qwik that incorporates AI tooling from OpenAI. So far weve created a pretty cool app that uses AI to generate text and images.Intro & SetupYour First AI PromptStreaming ResponsesHow Does AI WorkPrompt EngineeringAI-Generated ImagesSecurity & ReliabilityDeployingNow, theres…

Chat GPT-4o is Out... and It's Amazing, New Plugin to Rollback Failed Auto-Updates, Squarespace Acquired by UK VC Group, and More! This article, Business Roundup Week Ending May 17, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

This Week at WordPress.org (May 13, 2024) News Thanks for reading our WP.org roundup! ... Read more This article, 📈 Project Health Dashboards📅 WordPress 6.6 Release Squad Ready 🌟 Recognizing Contributions and Acknowledging Challenges 💰 Community Support Financial Health Update, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress…

Whenever I talk to web developers outside the inner circle of the WordPress community, ... Read more This article, The biggest threat to the growth of WordPress: perceived security, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.

Today is my first day post-sabbatical, getting back in the swing of things with Automattic. W.org, all the things. What a unique experience! I found the lead up to the sabbatical and planning process to be infinitely valuable, the sabbatical itself to be interesting experentially, and I’m curious to see…

You can’t sing. I can’t sing. But we both should sing, from the depths of our bellies because it’s good for your soul. We don’t sing enough in modern society! Hence, my love of karaoke. Live band karaoke is the best, which I’ve done everywhere from the basement of Hill…

Illuminate has crossed the funding threshold it needed to actually kick off the project of bringing the Bay Lights back to San Francisco, as Heather Knight writes for the New York Times. The upgraded lights will be visible not just from San Francisco but also in Oakland, Treasure Island, Berkeley……

Here's everything you need to know about how to deregister anonymous functions in WordPress. And a plugin to help.

Simple text files or documents keep me focused more than any elaborate task management systems and it comes with additional benefits for others.

For all of the articles on the web for furthering ones career in this industry, there could stand to be more that deal with with the topic of soft skills.

In today’s digitally connected world, your website is the most critical tool for your business. It relays your branding and values, gives your audience an opportunity to experience and explore your offerings, and in some cases, it’s the main vessel through which you sell your products. As the lifeblood of…

We’re officially in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Whether you love it or you’re still leery about AI adoption, it’s important to understand how AI-powered tools will affect workflows within agencies and client outcomes.  Join us for an agency-focused webinar on Thursday, May 30 at 12 p.m. EST as…

Put simply, search engine optimization (SEO) is any process of improving the quality or quantity of traffic to a website or page via a search engine.  What used to be a little-known strategic niche is now the topic du jour, as digital agencies and marketing experts the world over battle…

SEO & Programmatic SEO: What is programmatic SEO? What is the difference in regular SEO and Programmatic SEO? Pillars of Programmatic SEO: There’re three pillars for the Programmatic SEO. These are the basement for the SEO strategy that will be implemented with an unique approach. Steps to Implement Programmatic SEO…

In this lesson, we will learn how to configure a privacy policy and how to integrate it into your footer.

In this lesson, we'll define permalinks and slugs, change permalinks with WordPress settings, modify category and tag links, adjust the permalink of individual posts or pages, and redirect links using a plugin.

On the podcast today we have Alexander Gilmanov. Alex comes to us today from Belgrade, Serbia. He’s a full-stack developer with a rich heritage of freelance and agency work. His company officially launched in 2014, and they’ve continued work with clients, as well as creating a range of WordPress plugins,…

On the podcast today we have Paolo Belcastro. Paolo works at Automattic, where he’s focused on Jetpack and .blog products. He’s been working remotely since 1994 and managing distributed teams since 1998. He’s on the podcast today to talk about AI, and he certainly brings a wealth of knowledge and…

On the podcast today we have Nahuai Badiola. Nahuai is a freelance WordPress developer, theme, and plugin creator. He also writes WordPress code tutorials and enjoys sharing everything he learns about web sustainability in his blog, podcast, and at WordPress events. Nahuai’s life took an unexpected turn one day when…

The goal of a website is to be seen. It’s your digital storefront and virtual presence online where your potential customers come to find... The post Boost Organic Traffic on Your WordPress Website appeared first on Pixel Jar.

A common trend in web design is to avoid paginating blogs. Instead, designers often opt for an infinite scroll design or a button that... The post Pagination vs. Infinite Scroll appeared first on Pixel Jar.

Podcasting continues to grow in momentum, year after year.  What was once a niche hobby with limited marketing value has now grown into an... The post How to Create a Podcast Website in WordPress appeared first on Pixel Jar.

Sail is a great and much more affordable alternative to traditional and managed WordPress hosting. It’s a free and open source CLI tool to provision and manage WordPress applications in the DigitalOcean cloud. While the 1-click WordPress installer does the job for many DigitalOcean users, it’s very limited for power-users…

Hey folks, hope you’re having a great 2022 so far! I’ve been working on some premium features for Sail CLI over the past few weeks and I would love for you to try them out. Sail Premium is a collection of additional features for Sail CLI, hosted and operated by…

Meet Surge, a brand new page caching plugin for WordPress. It’s extremely fast and has no configuration screens. There is no learning curve, the plugin works just by activating it. Surge stores cache files on the filesystem, leveraging the Linux kernel page cache for efficient in-memory caching and invalidation. In…

It’s taken about-a-million tiny steps, but as of this moment (2 May, 2024 07:42 UTC-6) this WordPress blog (jjj.blog) and a bunch of other blogs for friends & family are all calling from inside the house running on a cluster of Raspberry Pi 4’s in a server rack in my…

sudo nano /usr/bin/docker_fresh #!/usr/bin/env bash # # Obliterates containers, images, networks, volumes, and cache. # [ $(docker ps | wc -l) -ne 1 ] && echo "Stopping containers..." && docker stop $(docker ps | sed -n '1d;p' | awk -F" " '{print $1}') [ $(docker ps -a | wc -l)…

Value. Validation. Victory. Writing & releasing strong, resilient, fault-tolerant, production-quality software (for the entire world to use) – with dynamic teams of contributors over many months & years – is all about banking trust, typically through an unlimited number of positive interactions. Trust is really important (in teams) to quickly…

What do you already know about hosting WooCommerce stores? When it comes to hosting WooCommerce stores, you may have already read some of my articles on choosing a WordPress host, or how to think about WooCommerce already. But maybe you haven't. Or maybe you read the super sharp article by…

Keeping high performers engaged at work not only maximizes productivity, but also drives revenue up. I won't bore you with the research, but studies show that a single top achiever can deliver as much productivity as up to four average employees. In the heart of every small business, there are…

I couldn't get my camera to focus by pressing the shutter button down half-way. It has always worked in the past. I didn't understand what had happened. I started with checking the modes – was I in a different mode than normal? Nope. Then I went to the settings. I…