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Sepehr Khosravi discusses the evolution of developer productivity tools. Evaluating the strengths of tools like Cursor and Claude Code, he explains actionable techniques for senior engineers - including context engineering, custom rules, and Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations. He shares real-world benchmarks and strategic frameworks for balancing AI adoption with clean code quality. By Sepehr Khosravi

Researchers are using machine learning algorithms to decrypt historical pencil-and-paper ciphers.

The company’s RTX Spark chips might finally turn the “AI PC” into reality.

Google, Microsoft, and other hyperscalers have come under scrutiny for their impact on water quality and availability.

The writer and anti-bullying activist is on social media, but to protect her nervous system, she prefers not to be alerted.

Fusion startup Xcimer fired up the world's largest privately owned laser.

CAP Theorem Explained: Choosing Between Consistency, Availability, and Partition Tolerance in Databases Imagine you're trying to book a flight online, and just as you're about to pay, the website crashes. When you try to book again, you find that the flight is now sold out, even though the website initially showed available seats. This frustrating experience is a classic example of a database trade-off between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. The CAP theorem, first introduced by Eric Brewer in 2000, states that it's impossible for a distributed data store to simultaneously guarantee more than two out of these three principles. In this post, we'll delve into the world of CAP theorem, exploring its fundamentals, real-world database examples, and design implications. Introduction to CAP Theorem Understanding the Basics of CAP Theorem The CAP theorem is based on three primary principles: Consistency : Every read operation will see the most recent write or an error. Availability : Every request receives a response, without guarantee that it contains the most recent version of the information. Partition Tolerance : The system continues to function and make progress even when network partitions (i.e., splits or failures) occur. Importance of CAP Theorem in Distributed Systems In distributed systems, where data is spread across multiple nodes, the CAP theorem plays a crucial role in understanding the trade-offs between these principles. By grasping the CAP theorem, developers can design more resilient and scalable databases that meet the specific needs of their applications. Brief Overview of the Blog Post This post will explore the CAP theorem in depth, using real-world database examples to illustrate the trade-offs between consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. We'll discuss the fundamentals of CAP theorem, examine CA, CP, and AP systems, and provide guidance on designing for each combination. By the end of this post, you'll have a solid un

There is a moment every embedded Linux developer hits eventually. You have spent days building something that works beautifully — a sensor pipeline, a streaming server, an MQTT client — and then you reboot the device and everything is silent. Nothing started. You SSH in, manually run your script, and it all comes back to life. The hardware is fine. Your code is fine. You just have no way of automatically running it. That is the gap systemd fills. It is the init system on virtually every modern Linux distribution, and on embedded Linux systems like the Raspberry Pi it is what decides what runs at boot, what gets restarted if it crashes, and where all the logs go. Once you understand how to write a service file, your applications stop being fragile scripts you need to babysit and start being first-class system services that survive reboots, network drops, and unexpected crashes. This tutorial builds up from the simplest possible service file to a production-ready configuration, explaining every line along the way. By the end you will have a service running your own Python application, logging to the system journal, and automatically restarting itself after failures. See Complete Tutorial in Github: Systemd Services Tutorial What systemd Actually Does Before writing any configuration, it helps to understand what problem systemd is solving, because the design of service files makes much more sense once you see the underlying model. When your Raspberry Pi boots, the Linux kernel starts and immediately hands control to process ID 1 — the very first user-space process. On modern systems, that process is systemd . Everything that happens next — mounting filesystems, bringing up the network, starting your application — is orchestrated by systemd. It reads configuration files called unit files that describe what should be started, when, in what order, and what to do if something goes wrong. A service file is just one type of unit file (there are also unit files for timers, so

At GTC 2026, Jensen Huang said something that made a lot of people pause: the PC is being reinvented. He and Microsoft launched RTX Spark with the N1X chip, cramming petaflop-level AI compute into a desktop form factor. On the surface it looks like another hardware upgrade, but this time the use case is genuinely different. Previous PC performance gains served humans: faster rendering, faster compiling, smoother gaming. This round of compute improvement is largely aimed at AI agents. Agents need to run vision-language models locally, understand screen content in real time, and execute GUI operations. These workloads demand sustained compute resources with a load profile completely different from human computer use. Agents Need Different Hardware Than Humans Humans use computers in bursts: typing, clicking, waiting for responses. The load is pulsed. Agents use computers continuously: constantly capturing screenshots, interpreting the display, making decisions, executing operations. The load is steady-state. This means agents need memory bandwidth and energy efficiency more than peak compute. This explains why Apple's M-series chips perform well in on-device AI scenarios. The unified memory architecture lets GPU and CPU share the same memory pool without data transfers between them, which is highly efficient for model inference that frequently accesses large parameter sets. M-series energy efficiency also suits long-running agent workloads without thermal throttling. NVIDIA's RTX Spark takes another path: more GPU compute and more memory (128GB unified) to handle on-device AI demands. The N1X chip has higher total compute than M-series, better suited for heavy workloads. Different tradeoffs, same destination: AI agents running on the device in front of you. There's Already a Complete Agent Stack on Mac What's worth noting is that the on-device AI agent stack on Apple's ecosystem is already fairly complete. M-series chips at the hardware layer. MLX at the framework lay

Today I started Week 3 of the Machine Learning Specialization and learned about Classification. Until now, most of my learning focused on regression, where models predict numerical values. Today I discovered that many real-world problems involve predicting categories instead. Some examples include: Detecting spam emails Predicting whether a customer will leave or stay Identifying whether a tumor is malignant or benign I also learned about Logistic Regression. Despite its name, it is used for classification tasks. The model predicts probabilities that help determine which class an example belongs to. Another important concept was the Decision Boundary, which is used to separate different classes based on predicted probabilities. To reinforce my understanding, I completed the graded assignment for this section. This week feels like an important step because classification is widely used in real-world machine learning applications. 🚀 Looking forward to learning more about classification models and improving my understanding of machine learning. MachineLearning #AI #DataScience #Python #LearningJourney

Two Hypotheses In the contemporary discussion about artificial intelligence, two distinct hypotheses intersect and are often conflated. The first hypothesis describes AI as a thin client between intention and result. Historically, a chain of translators existed between a concept and an artifact. A person formulated a task for a programmer, the programmer wrote code, the code became a program. A screenwriter passed an idea to a studio, the studio hired a VFX team, the team produced a film. A composer worked with musicians and a studio to record a track. AI shortens this chain, allowing a result to be obtained directly from a natural language prompt. The second hypothesis is more radical. It asserts that AI washes out not only performers but also apprentices. The main function of many professions was not the production of the current result, but the reproduction of knowledge. A junior was needed not because he is useful today, but because in five years he will become a senior. A student was needed not to create value now, but to become an engineer. A doctoral candidate was needed not for brilliant papers, but to undergo the school of scientific thinking. The Destruction of the Apprenticeship Mechanism The classical model of competence growth was built on review. A junior wrote code, a senior dissected it, extracted the substrate of experience, and transmitted professional intuition. Each review was an act of knowledge transfer. The new model looks different. A person formulates a prompt, AI generates the result. If code of acceptable quality appears immediately, the economic need for a junior declines. Along with it, the mechanism through which knowledge was transmitted disappears. A structural question arises that goes beyond the labor market. Where will the next seniors come from if the intermediate link does not undergo the path of learning through mistakes and reviews. This is a problem of competence reproduction, not simply automation. The Transformation of Educa

The AI world is full of old infrastructure with stochastic organs. That sentence probably explains...

I put my family on a private social network, and all I got was this lousy group chat. At least it’s secure.

"This is the sixth post in my series on Emacs completion.... This one coins a term for a special case, Incremental Suggesting Read (ISR), where the candidate set produced by incrementally typed input is a suggestion, rather than a literal completion of that input. The ability to generate inferred matches in addition to literal matches vastly expands the scope of what a 'completion' system can do. Two conceptual sources supply the suggestions: 1) semantic retrieval and 2) generative synthesis. This post is more speculative than useful, so carry that pinch of salt with you as you watch the video or read this post." submitted by /u/misterchiply [link] [留言]

After migrating Spark pipelines to Azure Kubernetes Service, two infrastructure settings interacted destructively: spark.kubernetes.local.dirs.tmpfs=true backed shuffle spill with RAM instead of disk, and a hard podAffinity rule forced all executors onto one node. Together, they caused repeated OOM kills invisible to standard diagnostics. By Pranav Bhasker

submitted by /u/_a4z [link] [留言]

We run Quackr, a virtual phone number platform that lets developers and individuals receive SMS verifications without exposing a real number. We just published our first inventory transparency report and the data was surprising enough that we thought the dev community would find it useful. The Numbers Right now, 97.6% of our entire virtual phone number inventory is actively rented. 66,214 out of 67,815 numbers assigned and in use across 15+ countries. Over 1,000 numbers available at any given moment but they move fast. That utilisation rate tells you something about how the market has shifted. Virtual numbers are no longer a niche throwaway tool. Developers, businesses, and privacy-conscious users are holding them long term. What Developers Actually Use Virtual Numbers For The obvious use case is SMS verification during testing. Spin up a number, verify an account in staging, move on. But that is not what drives the bulk of demand on our platform. The real volume comes from: Multi-account management — developers and businesses running multiple instances of platforms that require unique phone verification per account. Privacy layers in production apps — applications that need to verify users without collecting their real numbers. A virtual number sits between the user and the platform. Automated verification pipelines — this is where our API and MCP Server come in. If you need to provision numbers programmatically and retrieve OTPs without manual intervention, this is the use case we built for. Geographic flexibility — needing a UK number from Australia, a US number from Ukraine, or any combination that your real SIM cannot provide. The OTP Blocking Problem Something worth knowing if you are building anything that involves SMS verification: platform-level VoIP blocking has become significantly more aggressive over the past two years. WhatsApp, Telegram, Google, and TikTok all run detection on incoming verification requests. A VoIP number gets flagged and the OTP simp

Node.js will change its release schedule starting with version 27 in October 2026, moving from two major releases per year to one. All releases will become Long-Term Support (LTS), removing the distinction between odd and even versions. An Alpha channel for early testing will also be introduced. This decision addresses maintenance challenges and aims to align with user needs. By Daniel Curtis

Introduction: The Question of Relevance Imagine you’re a college student, fresh off mastering pandas , and you’re eyeing the freelancing market for data cleaning and automation gigs. You’ve heard of openpyxl , but as you dig deeper, you hit a wall: every resource seems to peg it as a relic for handling 2010 Excel sheets . That’s it. No modern use cases, no integration with cutting-edge tools, just a dusty library stuck in the past. So, you pause. Is openpyxl still relevant in 2023, or is it a dead end for someone trying to build a competitive freelancing portfolio? This dilemma isn’t just about openpyxl—it’s about the mechanism of perception in tech. When a tool is associated with outdated formats, its capabilities are often misinterpreted or overlooked . Openpyxl’s documentation and community discourse rarely highlight its modern applications, leaving newcomers like you to assume it’s obsolete. But here’s the catch: openpyxl isn’t just a 2010 Excel handler. It’s a low-level Excel manipulator that, when paired with libraries like pandas and numpy, can handle complex tasks that these libraries alone can’t. The problem isn’t openpyxl’s functionality—it’s the information gap between its perceived and actual utility. The stakes are clear: if you dismiss openpyxl as outdated, you risk missing out on a tool that could complement your pandas and numpy skills , making your freelancing services more efficient and versatile. But if you invest time in it without understanding its modern applications, you might waste effort on a tool that doesn’t align with current demands. The question isn’t whether openpyxl is relevant—it’s whether you’re looking at it through the right lens. In this investigation, we’ll dissect openpyxl’s role in 2023 freelancing, addressing its perceived limitations and uncovering its hidden strengths. By the end, you’ll have a clear rule for deciding whether to include it in your toolkit: If your freelancing gigs involve Excel-specific tasks that pandas ca

Here's a trace that reset how I think about evaluating tool-calling agents. An agent tries to book a flight. It calls search_flights with departure_date="next Friday" . The endpoint expected an ISO date, so it returns a 400 . The agent retries the same string four times, then apologizes to the user and gives up. Now the part that actually bothered me. Tool selection was correct. The model picked the right function out of a registry of 28. My tool-selection accuracy logged a clean 1.0 . The aggregate task-completion logged a 0 . And neither number told me which of three things broke: the argument was wrong, the model never read the 400 body, or the retry policy looped on the same input. My eval wasn't wrong. It was asking the wrong question. What "tool-call accuracy" actually grades If the only thing you measure is did the agent call the right tool , you're testing intent, not execution. Tool selection is necessary, not sufficient. It passes the moment the right function name shows up in the trace, completely blind to whether the arguments were garbage, whether the model read what came back, or whether it recovered from the 400 . That's the gap. The metric checks that the agent started the right way. Production needs to know whether it finished the right way. The reframe: it's four eval problems, not one The thing I had to internalize is that tool-calling eval is four problems stacked, each with its own root cause: Tool selection , right tool, or correctly no tool Argument extraction , schema-valid and semantically correct Result utilization , did it actually use what the tool returned Error recovery , did it retry, fall back, or escalate Score them separately and "the agent failed" collapses into "the argument extractor regressed on date strings on the flight-booking path." One bisect instead of three days. What I rebuilt Layer 1: Tool selection (with the bucket everyone drops) F1 on the tool name, so a 28-tool registry doesn't hide a regression on one rare endpoint