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A Nice Little Cryptography Primer

By itss | 28/06/2021
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Pun Intended.

Category: Technology
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  • Sam Altman's Home Targeted a Second Time, Two Suspects Arrested
    by EditorDavid on 13/04/2026 at 3:34 am

    "Early Sunday morning, a car stopped and appears to have fired a gun at the Russian Hill home of OpenAI's CEO," reportsThe San Francisco Standard, citing reports from the local police department: The San Francisco Police Department announced the arrest of two suspects, Amanda Tom, 25, and Muhamad Tarik Hussein, 23, who were booked for negligent discharge... [The person in the passenger seat] put their hand out the window and appeared to fire a round on the Lombard side of the property, according to a police report on the incident, which cited surveillance footage and the compound's security personnel, who reported hearing a gunshot. The car then fled, and a camera captured its license plate, which later led police to take possession of the vehicle, according to the report... A search of the residence by officers turned up three firearms, according to police. The incident follows Friday's arrest of a man who allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman's house. The San Francisco Standard also notes that in November, "threats from a 27-year-old anti-AI activist prompted the lockdown of OpenAI's San Francisco offices." Sam Kirchner, whose whereabouts have been unknown since Nov. 21, was in the midst of a mental health crisis when he threatened to go to the company's offices to "murder people," according to callers who notified police that day. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Robot Birds Deployed by Park to Attract Real Birds - Built By High School Students
    by EditorDavid on 13/04/2026 at 1:34 am

    "Robotic bird decoys are being deployed at Grand Teton National Park," reports Interesting Engineering, "to influence the behavior of real sage grouse and help restore a declining population.". Robotics mentor Gary Duquette describes the machines as "kind of a Frankenbird." (SFGate shows one of the robot birds charging up with a solar panel... "Recorded breeding calls are played at the scene, with clucking and cooing beginning at 5 a.m. each day.") Duquette builds the birds with a team of high school students, telling WyoFile that at school they "don't really get to experience real-world problems" where failures lurk. So while their robot birds may cost $150 in parts, the practical experience the students get "is priceless." Spikes in the electric currents burned out servo motors as the season of sagebrush serenades loomed, Duquette said. "The kids had to learn the difference between voltage and amperage...." To resolve the problem, the team wired a voltage converter in line with the Arduino controller and other elements on an electronic breadboard. "We pulled through and got it done in time," he said... A noggin fabricated by a 3D printer tops the robo-grouse. Wyoming Game and Fish staffers in Pinedale supplied grouse wings from hunter surveys, and body feathers came from fly-tying supplies at an angling store. Packaging foam from a Hello Fresh meal kit replicates white breast feathers, accented by yellow air sacs... The Independent wonders if more national parks would be visited by robot birds... During this year's breeding season, which runs through mid-May, researchers are using trail cameras to track whether real sage grouse respond to the robotic displays and return to the restored lek sites. If successful, officials say similar robotic systems could eventually be used in other national parks facing wildlife management challenges. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Has the Rust Programming Language's Popularity Reached Its Plateau?
    by EditorDavid on 12/04/2026 at 11:32 pm

    "Rust's rise shows signs of slowing," argues the CEO of TIOBE. Back in 2020 Rust first entered the top 20 of his "TIOBE Index," which ranks programming language popularity using search engine results. Rust "was widely expected to break into the top 10," he remembers today. But it never happened, and "That was nearly six years ago...." Since then, Rust has steadily improved its ranking, even reaching its highest position ever (#13) at the beginning of this year. However, just three months later, it has dropped back to position #16. This suggests that Rust's adoption rate may be plateauing. One possible explanation is that, despite its ability to produce highly efficient and safe code, Rust remains difficult to learn for non-expert programmers. While specialists in performance-critical domains are willing to invest in mastering the language, broader mainstream adoption appears more challenging. As a result, Rust's growth in popularity seems to be leveling off, and a top 10 position now appears more distant than before. Or, could Rust's sudden drop in the rankings just reflect flaws in TIOBE's ranking system? In January GitHub's senior director for developer advocacy argued AI was pushing developers toward typed languages, since types "catch the exact class of surprises that AI-generated code can sometimes introduce... A 2025 academic study found that a whopping 94% of LLM-generated compilation errors were type-check failures." And last month Forbes even described Rust as "the the safety harness for vibe coding.." A year ago Rust was ranked #18 on TIOBE's index — so it still rose by two positions over the last 12 months, hitting that all-time high in January. Could the rankings just be fluctuating due to anomalous variations in each month's search engine results? Since January Java has fallen to the #4 spot, overtaken by C++ (which moved up one rank to take Java's place in the #3 position). Here's TIOBE's current estimate for the 10 most popularity programming languages: Python C C++ Java C# JavaScript Visual Basic SQL R Delphi/Object Pascal TIOBE estimates that tthe next five most popular programming languages are Scratch, Perl, Fortran, PHP, and Go. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • How Good is Windows on Arm With Snapdragon X?
    by EditorDavid on 12/04/2026 at 9:52 pm

    A new powerful chipset has arrived to take on x86 CPUs and Apple's M5, writes Wccftech. The blog Windows Central writes that "Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 processors are here" — and they run Windows: Microsoft has done a massive amount of work to improve compatibility and has also convinced developers to embrace Windows 11 on Arm. Users of Windows 11 on Arm PCs spend 90% of their time on Arm-based apps that run natively. Additionally, apps that do not run natively can often run through Prism emulation, which has improved dramatically since launch... [A]pp compatibility issues are overblown by many, and unfortunately those sharing false information are the same folks people rely on to make purchases... Works on Windows on Arm maintains a list of compatible apps and games for the platform. There, you'll see well-known apps like Google Chrome, the Adobe Creative Suite, and Spotify. We also have a collection of the best Windows on Arm apps to help you out. Snapdragon X PCs aren't gaming PCs, but there is a growing library of games that can run on the chips. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • 'Super Mario Galaxy Movie' and 'Project Hail Mary' Combine for Best Box Office in 7 Years
    by EditorDavid on 12/04/2026 at 8:13 pm

    The Super Mario Galaxy Movie "is officially the year's highest-grossing film to date with $629 million at the global box office," reports Variety — and it will likely earn over $1 billion. Project Hail Mary now becomes the year's second highest-grossing movie, with four-week ticket sales over $510, notes The Hollywood Reporter: The two films have helped propel year-to-date revenue to $2.113 billion — the best showing for the first part of the year since before the pandemic in 2019 ($2.619 billion), according to Comscore. And revenue is running 25% ahead of the same corridor last year. Some context from ScreenRant: Even though The Super Mario Galaxy Movie reviews were largely negative, earning it a disappointing 43% score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it a far superior score of 89% from audiences, making it Verified Hot on the platform's Popcornmeter. This indicates that the movie should continue to climb up the global box office chart thanks to strong word of mouth, even as it trails consistently behind the original 2023 movie in terms of commercial performance. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen called Project Hail Mary "an inspirational example.. We all thought that movie was really uplifting and inspiring." Before the Artemis astronauts launched their mission, Space.com points out "they were treated to a viewing of Amazon MGM Studios' Project Hail Maryto bolster their spirits ahead of their monumental 10-day lunar voyage. " Marking the occasion and providing encouraging words to the three American astronauts and one Canadian astronaut, Ryan Gosling recorded a brief encouraging video for the moon-bound foursome. Today NPR took a spoiler-filled look at the science in the film, asking: Would it be possible for humans to travel to a place as far away as the Tau Ceti star system? It's not possible right now, says Lisa Carnell, division director for NASA'S Biological and Physical Sciences Division. "I don't think we are fully prepared to send humans to Mars, let alone light years away," she says. Given the leaps in technology that humanity has made in just the past century, however, she didn't want to rule it out.... "I believe it's possible [one day]"... The hypothetical study of how humans and extraterrestrials might communicate is a real scientific field, called xenolinguistics, that includes researchers from linguistics, animal communication, and anthropology. Martin Hilpert, a professor of linguistics at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, says the film "gets a lot of things right" for how such an encounter might occur, though it also employs a lot of "happy coincidences" too. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Hisense's New Backlit RGB LED TV 'a Shot Against OLED's Bow', and Includes a DP Port
    by EditorDavid on 12/04/2026 at 6:55 pm

    "RGB LED TVs have been the talk of the TV world this year," argues The Verge, with models coming from all the manufacturers." And the first one of 2026 is here — the UR9 from China's Hisense — "the first look at the viability of the new backlight technology outside of demo rooms." They call it "a step above the traditional mini-LED TVs of years past." and "a great first shot against OLED's bow." HDR is colorful and accurate, it has great brightness, and it is capable of showing colors beyond the P3 color space for movies and TV shows that have wider color. But at $3,500, the 65-inch model I reviewed is priced comparably to high-end OLEDs from LG and Samsung, which is tough competition... One of the touted benefits of RGB LED TVs is their ability to achieve 100 percent of the BT.2020 color space... [But] even if a TV is capable of extending beyond P3 and into BT.2020 colors (which the UR9 absolutely is), with most movies and TV shows it doesn't matter. It's also a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg situation — we need TVs that can accurately display BT.2020 before the color space is fully adopted by TV and movie creators, but if there's no content, why get a BT.2020 TV? BGR points out this new mini LED TV also "includes a DisplayPort (DP) connection alongside HDMI." "Well, technically, it's a USB-C port that delivers full DisplayPort functionality, but it's labeled as DisplayPort." The TV also has three HDMI 2.1 ports, making it a great choice for game consoles and PCs. And while HDMI 2.1 supports 4K/120Hz, the Hisense UR9S will deliver 4K/170Hz or 4K/180Hz visuals [a higher refresh rate] when connected to a gaming PC via DisplayPort. Better yet, the TV is AMD FreeSync-compatible, and Hisense plans on adding Dolby Vision 2 HDR in future firmware. The Hisense UR9S will be available in four sizes: 65, 75, 85, and 100 inches. It's worth mentioning that the two largest sizes will max out at 180Hz for the refresh rate, while the 65 and 75-inch screens come in at 170Hz. This is exciting news for serious gamers looking for the best gaming TVs and a huge step forward in the evolution of panel tech. RGB Mini LED TVs were showcased by a handful of manufacturers at CES 2026, including Samsung, Sony, and LG; so Hisense will certainly have some competition. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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