Entertainment

karpathy/nanochat: The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy.

karpathy/nanochat: The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy.

The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy. This repo is a full-stack implementation of an LLM like ChatGPT in a single, clean, minimal, hackable, dependency-lite codebase. nanochat is designed to run on a single 8XH100 node via scripts like speedrun.sh, that run the entire pipeline start to end. This includes tokenization, pretraining, finetuning, evaluation, inference, and web serving over a simple UI so that you can talk to your own LLM just like ChatGPT. nanochat will become the capstone project of the course LLM101n being developed by Eureka Labs. The fastest way to feel the magic is to run the…
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Reverse Engineering a 1979 Camera’s Spec

I bought a 1979 Chinon CM-4 film camera in Tijuana. Film is expensive, so before wasting a roll I decided to learn exactly how this machine works — by taking apart its specs, one line at a time.So here is my three step planUnderstand what I really have in my hands. Michael Butkus created a comprehensive document that covers the details and specifications of the Chinon CM 4. My main goal with this document (aside from knowing what every button does) is to understand the specs and know exactly how every aspect influences the photos captured.Make sense of the numbers…
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Jeep software update bricks vehicles

Jeep software update bricks vehicles

A software update to Jeep 4xE models caused major malfunctions over the weekend – leaving many owners stranded and some in danger after their power failed.The culprit appears to have been a buggy "over the air" (OTA) software update to the company’s uconnect software on Friday October 10, which “bricked” vehicles if owners installed it.A Jeep customer support representative on a 4XE forum posted Saturday: “Please exercise extreme caution this evening if you have completed the update. If you have NOT completed the update and see the pop-up, please continue deferring..."Posting as “Kori”, they told Jeep customers on the forum…
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Environment variables are a legacy mess: Let’s dive deep into them

Environment variables are a legacy mess: Let’s dive deep into them

Programming languages have rapidly evolved in recent years. But in software development, the new often meets the old, and the scaffolding that OS gives for running new processes hasn’t changed much since Unix. If you need to parametrize your application at runtime by passing a few ad-hoc variables (without special files or a custom solution involving IPC or networking), you’re doomed to a pretty awkward, outdated interface: Environment variables. export SECRET_API_KEY=2u845102348u234 There are no namespaces for them, no types. Just a flat, embarrassingly global dictionary of strings. But what exactly are these envvars? Is it some kind of special dictionary…
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Android’s sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move yet

Android’s sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move yet

I’m a huge fan of open source, and that’s one of the reasons I’m drawn to Android. However, new requirements surrounding sideloaded apps, which will start rolling out in October 2025, may be the most anti-consumer move yet by Google. Mandatory enforcement of the requirement will begin in September 2026 (starting with specific countries), marking a turning point where the freedom to install any app comes with conditions set by Google. I’ve used apps like NewPipe (a media/YouTube client) and Blokada (an ad blocker) for years now. However, these apps aren’t available on the Google Play Store, so I have…
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Software update bricks some Jeep 4xe hybrids over the weekend

Software update bricks some Jeep 4xe hybrids over the weekend

Owners of some Jeep Wrangler 4xe hybrids have been left stranded after installing an over-the-air software update this weekend. The automaker pushed out a telematics update for the Uconnect infotainment system that evidently wasn't ready, resulting in cars losing power while driving and then becoming stranded. Stranded Jeep owners have been detailing their experiences in forum and Reddit posts, as well as on YouTube. The buggy update doesn't appear to brick the car immediately. Instead, the failure appears to occur while driving—a far more serious problem. For some, this happened close to home and at low speed, but others claim…
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Prize in Economic Sciences 2025 – Popular information

Prize in Economic Sciences 2025 – Popular information

Navigate to: Summary- Joel Mokyr- Philippe Aghion- Peter Howitt Prize announcement Press release Popular information Advanced information Popular science background: From stagnation to sustained growth (pdf)Populärvetenskaplig information: Från stagnation till stadig tillväxt (pdf) From stagnation to sustained growth Over the past 200 years, the world has witnessed more economic growth than ever before. Its foundation is the constant flow of technological innovation; sustained economic growth occurs when new technologies replace old ones as part of the process known as creative destruction. This year’s laureates in economic sciences explain, using different methods, why this development was pos­sible and what is necessary…
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Two Paths to Memory Safety: CHERI and OMA in the Fight Against Cyber Threats

Two Paths to Memory Safety: CHERI and OMA in the Fight Against Cyber Threats

The last year has been brutal for businesses globally. Taking examples from my home country, the UK, the cost is over £1B and still rising, as well as the loss of at least one life due to cybercrime. These aren’t isolated incidents - they’re symptoms of a systemic vulnerability in how we build computer systems. According to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report, credential abuse and exploitation of vulnerabilities continue to dominate as attack vectors, accounting for 22% and 20% of breaches respectively. The exploitation of vulnerabilities saw a 34% surge year-over-year, creating what Verizon describes as a “concerning…
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Matrices can be your Friends.

Matrices can be your Friends. By Steve Baker What stops most novice graphics programmers from getting friendly with matrices is that they look like 16 utterly random numbers. However, a little mental picture that I have seems to help most people to make sense of what's going on. Most programmers are visual thinkers and don't take kindly to piles of abstract math. Take an OpenGL matrix: float m [ 16 ] ; Consider this as a 4x4 array with it's elements laid out into four columns like this: m[0] m[4] m[ 8] m[12] m[1] m[5] m[ 9] m[13] m[2] m[6]…
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American Solar Farms

American Solar Farms

Last week, Jake Stid, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University, announced Ground-Mounted Solar Energy in the United States (GM-SEUS). This is a 15K-array, 2.9M-panel dataset of utility and commercial-grade solar farms across the lower 48 states plus the District of Columbia. This dataset was constructed by a team of researchers including alumni from NOAA, NASA and the USGS. Below is a heatmap of the assets catalogued in this dataset. GM-SEUS is broken up into two datasets, one for arrays and another panels. Below you can see a solar farm with the array outlined in red and the panels…
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