An Amateur Codebreaker May Have Just Solved the Black Dahlia and Zodiac Killings
Los Angeles Times (non-paywalled source): When police questioned Marvin Margolis following the murder of Elizabeth Short – who became known as the Black Dahlia – he lied about how well he had known her. The 22-year-old Short had been found mutilated in a weedy lot in South Los Angeles, severed neatly in half with … ⌘ Read more

25.2% of Energy EU Used in 2024 Came From Renewables
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2024, 25.2% of gross final energy consumption in the EU came from renewable sources, up by 0.7 percentage points compared with 2023. This share is 17.3 pp short of meeting the 2030 target (42.5%), which would require an annual average increase of 2.9 pp from 2025 to 2030.

Among the EU countries, Sweden recorded the highest shar … ⌘ Read more

Vulkan 1.4.337 Debuts With Long Vector & 3D ASTC Compression Extensions
Vulkan 1.4.337 released a short time ago as what could be the last Vulkan API spec update of 2025 depending upon how much time the working group takes off or not around the holidays. In any case, it’s a nice holiday treat with the new VK_EXT_texture_compression_astc_3d and VK_EXT_shader_long_vector extensions… ⌘ Read more

Micron Says Memory Shortage Will ‘Persist’ Beyond 2026
Micron, one of the world’s three largest memory suppliers, expects the global shortage of DRAM and NAND flash memory to “persist through and beyond” 2026 as AI-driven demand continues to outstrip supply. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra made the forecast during the company’s latest earnings call on Wednesday, saying that “supply will remain substantially short of the demand for the … ⌘ Read more

New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay
Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda posted the patch a short time ago to “conclude the Rust experiment”. The “experiment” of Rust programming language code in the Linux kernel is over as it’s now accepted to be a success and “Rust is here to stay” in the kernel… ⌘ Read more

Disney Puts $1 Billion Into OpenAI, Licenses 200+ Characters for AI-Generated Videos and Images
Disney is investing $1 billion in OpenAI and has entered into a three-year licensing deal that will let users generate AI-powered short videos and images featuring more than 200 characters from its Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar franchises.

The new features are expected to launch in 2026 … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Vulkan Linux Driver Merges Shader VMA Allocator For Ray-Tracing Capture/Replay
Merged today to the Intel open-source “ANV” Vulkan driver in Mesa 26.0 is introducing a shader VMA allocator. Long story short this new allocator steps toward enabling Vulkan ray-tracing capture/replay support, which can come in hand for debugging issues with Vulkan ray-tracing on Intel graphics hardware under Linux and similarly to assist in optimizing for better performance… ⌘ Read more

Changes are coming for short-term rentals in Brisbane’s suburban areas
Up to 500 short-term rental operators will be told to return to the long-term rental market under major reforms announced by Brisbane City Council. ⌘ Read more

Council announces crackdown on short-stay accommodation
Hundreds of properties in low and low-to-medium residential-zoned areas of Brisbane will have to seek development approval or be banned from acting as short-stay accommodation. ⌘ Read more

Proposed testing changes for imported raw prawns labelled ‘short-sighted’
The federal government is being accused of allowing “trade to trump biosecurity”, over proposed changes critics claim will “weaken” and “roll back” testing of potentially diseased raw prawn imports. ⌘ Read more

Smith denied first Australian Open title as Neergaard-Petersen claims win
Cameron Smith falls agonisingly short of winning his first Australian Open, as Denmark’s Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen scores a thrilling one-stroke victory at Royal Melbourne. ⌘ Read more

1girl ai_generated blue_submarine_no._6 breasts completely_nude female mutio nipples nude nude_female pointy_ears red_eyes shipwreck short_hair silver_hair siren-module solo underwater
1girl ai_generated blue_submarine_no._6 breasts completely_nude female mutio nipples nude nude_female pointy_ears red_eyes shipwreck short_hair silver_hair siren-module solo underwater ⌘ Read more

Live: Fires, heatwaves strike across Australia with extreme warnings issued
A broad heatwave is expected to spread across Australia, with short and sharp bursts of heat throughout the southern states. Follow live. ⌘ Read more

RAM Is So Expensive, Samsung Won’t Even Sell It To Samsung
A severe spike in global DRAM prices has pushed Samsung Semiconductor to refuse a long-term RAM order from its own sibling, Samsung Electronics. The move is forcing the smartphone division into short, expensive renegotiations, which will likely mean higher costs for consumer devices. PCWorld reports: Samsung subsidiaries are, naturally, going to look to Sa … ⌘ Read more

‘Read the fine print’: Insurers are short-changing patients, doctors say
A new report from Australia’s peak doctors’ body says private health insurance is increasingly failing to deliver value to the roughly 15 million Australians who hold a policy. ⌘ Read more

Missing Woogenellup farmer described as ‘irreplaceable’ by family
Great Southern man Mark Adams went on a short fishing trip on Monday afternoon and never returned. His family are devastated by the likely loss of their loved one. ⌘ Read more

New Hyperloop Projects Continue in Europe
Hyperloop One ceased operations in December 2023, notes CNN. “Yet nearly two years on, in other parts of the world, hyperloop projects are ongoing.” For example, Rotterdam-based Hardt Hyperloop has a cool web site — and the company’s managing director tells CNN that hyperloops are the only “actionable, sustainable solution to replace short-haul air travel” over distances greater than 300 mil … ⌘ Read more

Breaking: Government projected to badly miss 2035 climate target, fall shy of 2030
The Climate Change Authority projects Australia is expected to fall well short of its commitment to cut emissions by 62 to 70 per cent by 2035 — though the minister notes that is before accounting for a number of recent commitments. ⌘ Read more

The science of swimming trunks – including tightness analysis
Feedback dives into a new piece of research on the merits of swimming briefs or looser swimming shorts – and raises an eyebrow at its conclusion ⌘ Read more

New Mars Orbiter Manuever Challenges Theory: That May Not Be an Underground Lake on Mars
In 2018 researchers claimed evidence of a lake beneath the surface of Mars, detected by the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument (or Marsis for short).

But new Mars observations “are not consistent with the presence of liquid water in this location and an alternat … ⌘ Read more

Lost my boy Jango today, 2 years just feels too short. ⌘ Read more

Disney Loses Bid To Block Sling TV’s One-Day Cable Passes
A federal judge in New York denied Disney’s request to block Sling TV’s short-term passes, which give viewers the ability to stream live content for as little as one day. From a report: In a ruling on Tuesday, US District Judge Arun Subramanian ruled that Disney didn’t prove that Sling TV’s passes caused “irreparable harm” to the entertainment giant, a … ⌘ Read more

systemd 259-rc1 Released With Musl libc Support, New run0 “Empower” Mode
Released a short time ago was systemd 259-rc1 as the first test release toward this next version of this dominant Linux init system and service manager… ⌘ Read more

Amyl and the Sniffers gig cancelled last minute due to ‘crowd safety concerns’
The Australian rock band’s free Federation Square gig was cancelled at short notice, causing major upset in the crowd. ⌘ Read more

Amyl and the Sniffers gig cancelled last minute due to ‘crowd safety concerns’
The Australian rock band’s free Federation Square gig was cancelled at short notice, causing major upset in the crowd. ⌘ Read more

Amyl and the Sniffers gig cancelled last minute due to ‘crowd safety concerns’
The Australian rock band’s free Federation Square gig was cancelled at short notice, causing major upset in the crowd. ⌘ Read more

Amyl and the Sniffers gig cancelled last minute due to ‘crowd safety concerns’
The Australian rock band’s free Federation Square gig was cancelled at short notice, causing major upset in the crowd. ⌘ Read more

‘Big Short’ Investor Michael Burry To Close Hedge Fund as He Warns on Valuations
Michael Burry, the investor made famous for his bet against the US housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, is closing his hedge fund [non-paywalled source] as he warned that market valuations had become unhinged from fundamentals. From a report: Scion Asset Management this week terminated its registration wit … ⌘ Read more

Green falls short of Shield century
Cameron Green is given out lbw on 94 in Western Australia’s clash with Queensland. ⌘ Read more

Green falls short of Shield century
Cameron Green is given out lbw on 94 in Western Australia’s clash with Queensland. ⌘ Read more

Airbnb Rival Sonder Abruptly Shuts Down, Orders Guests To Leave
Sonder, a short-term rental company and former Airbnb rival, abruptly went out of business after Marriott ended its licensing deal on Nov. 9 – leaving guests scrambling as they were told to vacate their rooms immediately. From a report: Paul Strack, 63, visiting Boston from Little Rock, Arkansas, told CBS News he received an email from Marriott on Sunda … ⌘ Read more

AI Bubble Is Ignoring Michael Burry’s Fears
An anonymous reader shares a report: Costing tens of thousands of dollars each, Nvidia’s pioneering AI chips make up a hefty chunk of the $400 billion that Big Tech plans to invest this year – a bill expected to hit $3 trillion by 2029. But unlike 19th-century railroads, or the Dotcom boom’s fiber-optic cables, the GPUs fueling today’s AI mania are short-lived assets with a shelf life of perh … ⌘ Read more

Film „The Big Short“ und die KI-Bubble: Manchmal sehen wir Blasen
Der Hedgefondsmanager Burry wettet 1,1 Milliarden Dollar gegen die KI. Vor der Finanzkrise 2008 lag er richtig, wie der Film „The Big Short“ erzählt. mehr… ⌘ Read more

Apple Launches ‘iPhone Pocket’ Limited Edition Accessory
Apple has teamed up with Japanese fashion house ISSEY MIYAKE to launch iPhone Pocket, a 3D-knitted limited edition accessory designed to carry an iPhone and other everyday items.

Image

The accessory features a ribbed, s … ⌘ Read more

World’s First Green Fuel Levy To Add Almost $32 To Air Fares
Air passengers departing Singapore will pay a green fuel levy of as much as S$41.60 ($31.95) from next year as the city-state locks in a key step in its effort to cut the aviation industry’s emissions. From a report: Travelers flying in economy and premium economy, as well as those on short-haul routes, will be charged far less. Those customers will pay an … ⌘ Read more

Did ChatGPT Conversations Leak… Into Google Search Console Results?
“For months, extremely personal and sensitive ChatGPT conversations have been leaking into an unexpected destination,” reports Ars Technica: the search-traffic tool for webmasters , Google Search Console.

Though it normally shows the short phrases or keywords typed into Google which led someone to their site, “starting this September, odd q … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net to work through both https and gemini, the site is not written in HTML, but in Gemtext, automatically converted to HTML, when needed. Gemtext is nicely explained for example here: https://garden.bouncepaw.com/hypha/gemtext . In short, it is so limited, no line can be more than one thing, so no links in a list are possible, othar than doing it through something like this primitive workaround.

Revealing how cells adhere to the surface of plastic scaffolds
Short ultraviolet/ozone (UVO) treatment optimizes cell adhesion on plastic culture substrates by selectively enriching adhesion proteins, as reported by researchers from Institute of Science Tokyo. Their latest study explains the underlying reason why there is an optimal UVO treatment time, with the optimal surface condition arising when the ability to selectively adsorb and immobilize key adhesion proteins is maximized. This study … ⌘ Read more

A Short Survey of Compiler Backends
Comments ⌘ Read more

I just adopted my first cat! Everyone, please say hello to “Nick Fury”, or “Fury” for short! He’s had a rough little life on the street, but now he has a nice warm home! ⌘ Read more

This little creature started meowing at my door on Halloween night… long story short I have a cat now. ⌘ Read more

We’re putting lots of transition metals into the stratosphere. That’s not good.
We successfully plugged the hole in the ozone layer that was discovered in the 1980s by banning ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But, it seems we might be unintentionally creating another potential atmospheric calamity by using the upper atmosphere to destroy huge constellations of satellites after a very short (i.e. 5 year) lifetime. ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Uh, that actually looks not that terrible. Somehow, I remember Swing GUIs being way uglier.

As for Visual Basic, I only had to use VBA once in my life. That was in the beginning of my career when I inherited a project from a leaving coworker. Fuck me, was that awful. Just alone the damn compiler error dialog box popping up in my face all the time while editing and the compiler already trying to parse the unfinished and hence of course uncompilable code. Boy, that left a lasting impression on me. I ported everything to Java very quickly. Luckily, the code base wasn’t all that large at that point in time. I had to add a bunch of new features after that, so I was very glad that I convinced my workmate/project manager to do that first. We didn’t even need a GUI, the button in Excel was transformed to a command line program that just generated the large file.

But I cannot comment on the VB GUI designer, I never used that. Your screenshot looks very similar to the Delphi one, though. Only towards the end of my Delphi days I found out about the possibility to make the widgets snap to window edges and corners (I don’t remember how that was called), so that resizing the windows was actually possible without messing up their entire contents.

Switching to Linux, Delphi wasn’t an option anymore. For some reason I couldn’t use Kylix. Maybe it was already dead by the time I changed OSes. Or I couldn’t get it to run. I just don’t remember. I just recall that the unavailability of Delphi was the reason it took me a while to actually settle on Linux. I then fully switched to Java. The GridBagLayout was my absolutely favorite Swing layout manager. I reckon I used it 98% of the time, because it was so powerful and made the windows resize properly, just as I had learned to do in Delphi shortly before.

Up until discovering Swing, I used Java’s AWT for a short amount of time. That was very limited I think and I hit the limits fairly quickly. Later at uni, we had one project making use of SWT. Didn’t convince me either. I could be wrong, but I think there was also a SWT GUI designer plugin for Eclipse. If there really was, that one wasn’t in the same street as Delphi’s (there must be a reason I forgot about it ;-)).

Bringing trains back: Rail’s surprising role in a sustainable future
Chelsea Haney,  Staff Writer  -  New Atlas

_Stephan: While China, Europe, and Japan have developed very sophisticated high speed-passenger rail, in fiscal year 2022, Amtrak’s long-distance trains averaged only 48 mph between stations. There are a few lines running short distances in the Northeast U.S. that get up to 150, but there is nothing like China’s long range passenger rail that avera … ⌘ Read more

Vacation in the Rhön
Yesterday, we came back from some much-needed vacation. We spent 9 nights in Fulda, went hiking a few times, visited some museums, and sometimes also just relaxed. On the way to Fulda, we also made a short break in Kassel and revived some memories. ⌘ Read more

Hunters or collectors? New evidence challenges claim Australia’s First Peoples sent large animals extinct
Tens of thousands of years ago, Australia was still home to enigmatic megafauna—large land animals such as giant marsupial wombats, flightless birds, and short-faced giant kangaroos known as sthenurines. ⌘ Read more

Understanding driver updates through Windows Update
Microsoft has published a set of short questions and answers about driver updates through Windows Update, and there’s one tidbit in there I found interesting. Driver dates might look old, but that is not true. The driver date is descriptive info set by the driver provider and can be any date they choose. When determining which driver to install, Windows Update uses targeting information set by the provider inside the driver file … ⌘ Read more

Shielding Chart
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What’s your go-to strategy for giving engineers access to production?
I’ve been in this field for almost 15 years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen two companies handle this the same way

Some other places just hand out just-in-time database access with short-lived credentials, others rely on rigid role-based permission, and others go all in on anonymized data dumps or shadow environments to avoid prod access altogether

What’s your go-to when it comes to giving access to engineers to access production app … ⌘ Read more

Moist tales about the fire bomber ⌘ Read more