Alvaro Lopez Ortega / 2026-07-25 Briefing

Created Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:03:13 +0000 Modified Fri, 11 Sep 2026 14:51:45 +0000
2735 Words

Prime Minister Narendra Modi switched to raw selfie videos on Instagram to address student protests over exam paper leaks, calling them “extremely painful.” Meta paused its plan to rate-limit Conversation Focus, an accessibility feature, after backlash. Meanwhile, the ICFP programming contest began, introducing a new spatial language called “littleman” that requires manual interaction to prevent AI agents from winning.

💻 Programming & Development

Zig by Example

Zig by Example is a hands-on introduction to the Zig programming language, featuring annotated example programs inspired by Go by Example. The examples are written for version 0.16, and users should verify their version if issues arise.

A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

The article demonstrates how combining the null command : with parameter expansion ${1:?message} can replace a multi-line if-statement for checking required arguments in a shell script. It also highlights the versatile uses of the null command, such as setting default values, truncating files, and checking file readability or writability.

Emacs Writing Machine

The author repurposed an old ThinkPad running Debian without a desktop environment, booting directly into Emacs with Markdown mode and deft, to create a distraction-free writing machine. The minimal setup uses Git and Codeberg for file syncing, helping the author overcome attention issues and finish blog drafts.

Sending packets directly from BPF

Tetragon’s BPF-based monitoring depends on a user-space agent to forward data, creating a vulnerability if the agent is killed. Developers proposed using netpoll to let BPF programs send UDP packets directly to remote servers, bypassing user-space, but concerns remain about UDP’s lack of network stack controls and potential bandwidth contention.

stinkpot: sqlite-backed shell history

Stinkpot is a compact SQLite-backed shell-history searcher for bash, written in about 400 lines of Go and modeled after atuin but with a narrower feature set focused on session-agnostic history management and a reverse-search TUI. It can be set up via a NixOS home-manager module or by evaluating its init script in .bashrc, and users import existing bash history with the stinkpot import command.

the perils of parsing type inference declarations in c

A parsing ambiguity in C23 causes GCC and Clang to disagree on declarations like auto x = 67 when x is a typedef: GCC treats it as a storage-class specifier and errors, while Clang correctly shadows the typedef. The standard lacks explicit disambiguation, and adding attributes further complicates parsing, with neither compiler backtracking when initial assumptions are wrong.

I’m running the ICFP programming contest (2026)

The 29th annual ICFP Programming Contest has begun, running for 3 days, and introduces a new language called “littleman” that uses spatial reasoning with two-dimensional programs where instructions are physically walked over. The contest is designed to prevent unmonitored AI agents from winning by requiring manual interaction. A free textbook on the language is available to everyone.

Writing a (valid) C program without main()

The article walks through the C compilation pipeline—preprocessing, compilation, assembly, and linking—using a hello world example and demonstrates how to remove main() while still producing a valid executable. It also explains how compiler flags allow stopping at each stage and how optimization levels affect assembly output.

Task-centered iproute2 user guide

iproute2 is a Linux networking toolkit that replaced legacy tools like ifconfig and route, unified under the ip command along with tc, bridge, and ss. This document serves as a task-centered user guide for ip and bridge, noting that iproute2 supports machine-readable output options such as JSON for scripting.

My web version of Mars MIPS, now have builtin C compiler

A web version of Mars MIPS now includes a built-in C compiler. The page shows loading status messages for webMARS modules.

Bitchat is now on Radicle

Bitchat has been added to the Radicle platform. The site requires JavaScript to be enabled in order to view the full content.

The Fedora 45 Sausage Factory

The article explains Fedora’s build pipeline from a packager’s git commit to final release artifacts like ISOs and cloud images. It details how Koji builds packages from Git URLs and how Bodhi manages updates through testing cycles, using dist-git repos, tags, and clean build environments to ensure reproducibility.

ARC-AGI Leaderboard

The ARC-AGI-3 leaderboard evaluates AI agents on adapting to novel interactive environments, measuring the relationship between cost-per-task and performance. It categorizes solutions into reasoning systems, base LLMs, and Kaggle systems operating under strict compute constraints. Only systems costing less than $10,000 to run are shown, with preview results considered unofficial.

An Introduction to Formal Logic(2020) [pdf]

This PDF is an introductory guide to formal logic, published in 2020. It covers the fundamental principles and methods of logical reasoning.

🔐 Security & Privacy

Android Restricts On-Device ADB

A Google ADB maintainer has proposed restricting on-device ADB connections to prevent abuse, which would affect legitimate uses like Shizuku-based apps, accessibility tools, and call recording. Affected users are urged to provide constructive feedback rather than spamming the issue tracker.

Tile’s security is so bad it’s a feature for stalkers

Tile’s security vulnerabilities are so severe that they effectively enable stalkers to track individuals, turning a privacy flaw into a feature for harassment. The company has faced criticism for failing to protect users from unauthorized tracking.

Why Would Meta Download So Much Porn?

Meta is being sued by adult film producer Strike 3 for allegedly downloading thousands of copyrighted videos, nonconsensual celebrity nudes, and other illicit content. The lawsuit suggests the downloads were part of Meta’s broader data collection for AI training, though Meta denies the claims and argues the material was accessed for personal use. A judge has denied Meta’s motion to dismiss the case.

UK AISI / Caisi Preliminary Assessment of Kimi K3’s Cyber Capabilities

The UK AISI and US CAISI evaluated Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 model, finding it outperformed other open-weight models on the ExploitBench benchmark (32% vs 24%) but failed to achieve arbitrary code execution on any of 41 tasks, unlike top models which succeeded on 20/41 tasks overall. Kimi K3’s cyber capability estimate has a larger confidence interval because it was derived from a single benchmark.

DentaQuest breach notices sent to 15 million after health data theft

DentaQuest notified nearly 15 million people that hackers accessed sensitive personal and health data, including over 1.7 million unique Social Security numbers, most belonging to children. The May breach, claimed by the ShinyHunters gang, exposed insurance information and medical diagnoses, with notifications sent starting July 17.

🌍 Society & Politics

Amid student protests, Modi swaps cinematic videos for self-recorded Reels targeting Gen Z

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shifted from his usual cinematic videos to raw, self-recorded Instagram Reels to address growing student protests over an exam paper leak scandal. In two selfie videos, he called the leaks “extremely painful” and vowed to punish those harming students’ futures.

Meta pauses plan to rate-limit Conversation Focus, an accessibility feature, after backlash.

Meta has paused its plan to charge a $20 monthly subscription for Conversation Focus, an on-device accessibility feature for its Ray-Ban smart glasses, following user backlash. The feature will remain free for early testers while the company explores other approaches, though Meta still intends to introduce subscription fees for some premium features in the future.

Brazilian farmers tokenized dairy cows to get loans, bypassing bank limits

Brazilian farmers in Paraná tokenized 10 dairy cows on the B3 stock exchange, raising nearly $20,000 in credit by using AI-powered smart collars to monitor health and prevent fraud. The project, led by agtech firm Cowmed, enables cows to serve as movable collateral amid tighter bank lending. Cowmed expects up to 20% of its network to adopt this model, potentially unlocking $77.6 million in agricultural credit.

Prosecutor Investigating U.S. Boat Strikes Was Murdered in Ecuador

Prosecutor Alexandra Bravo, who was investigating U.S. strikes on Ecuadorian fishing boats and survivors’ accounts of torture and kidnapping, was shot dead in Manta, Ecuador, along with her sister. Bravo is the 26th member of Ecuador’s justice system assassinated since 2020, and the United States has not responded to UN demands for information on the missing men or its involvement.

ID requirement to halt freedom of information in Germany

The German Interior Ministry plans to require real names for Freedom of Information requests and abolish the Federal Commissioner for Information Freedom, effectively dismantling transparency rights. The measures specifically target the FragDenStaat platform, which has facilitated over 170,000 simplified requests, and would also hinder journalists and politicians from accessing official documents. Critics argue the security justifications are unfounded, while internal memos reveal a long-term strategy to weaken civil society oversight.

Man convicted of child sex crime by added _ char “Fus Ro Dah” Skyrim username

Brandon Klayme was wrongfully convicted of child luring and possession of child pornography after police mistook his username “fus_ro_dah” (one underscore) for a nearly identical username with two underscores. He spent 18 months in jail before Nova Scotia’s top court discovered the error during his appeal and acquitted him, stating he was factually innocent and should never have been charged.

🔬 Science & Technology

Rauno’s Field Notes #2

The article outlines three UI improvements to Vercel project cards: reducing card height by omitting branch names and tightening layout, adding a context menu as a shortcut while keeping actions accessible via a dropdown in the detail view, and introducing customizable widgets in a two-row layout with a widget switcher that previews data without changing the active widget.

Wind turbine is being used to produce zero-carbon “green ammonia” fertilizer

The University of Minnesota’s West Central Research and Outreach Center uses a wind turbine to power an on-site plant that produces carbon-free ammonia fertilizer from water and air, aiming to decarbonize agriculture and reduce reliance on fossil fuels and volatile global supply chains. The pilot plant generates about one metric ton of green ammonia daily for local use.

The Dark Night of Mathematics

The author describes a profound spiritual crisis triggered by recent LLM-generated counterexamples to long-standing mathematical conjectures, arguing that the true issue is not job security but the loss of mathematical discovery as a vital human spiritual and mystical experience. They reject coping narratives that mathematicians can still practice math for fun, because the essence of mathematics lies in the human discourse of original creation, which AI threatens to render obsolete.

The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)

The Silurian Hypothesis proposes that pre-human industrial civilizations could have existed millions of years ago but left no lasting physical evidence due to geological processes like plate tectonics. Such civilizations might only be detectable through ancient climate-change signatures in the rock record, such as “hyperthermals” caused by industrialization.

Hannah Fry Wins the Leelavati Prize in 2026 for Mathematics Outreach

Professor Hannah Fry has been awarded the 2026 Leelavati Prize at the International Congress of Mathematicians for her outstanding work in increasing public awareness of mathematics. She is the first person to hold the role of Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and the prize citation praised her creativity in making mathematics accessible and wondrous for the public.

Russia can jam Starlink using the Tobol electronic warfare system, but the interference relies on basic radio principles and can be mitigated by digging a 50 cm deep pit for the antenna, optionally lined with metal mesh. This straightforward solution blocks terrestrial jamming while also providing additional protection from explosions and debris.

📰 Media & Culture

BOFH: This printer engineer knows every trick in the book

A printer engineer is confident in his knowledge of every trick in the book, but he soon discovers that the customer is equally savvy and can match him move for move. The article details the ensuing battle of wits between the two.

Amen Break

The Amen break is a seven-second drum break from the 1969 Winstons track “Amen, Brother,” performed by drummer Gregory Coleman, and became one of the most sampled recordings in music history. Despite its use in thousands of tracks across genres like hip-hop and drum and bass, the Winstons received no royalties, and Coleman died homeless in 2006.

League of Legends designer shares game design field manual

Game systems communicate a developer’s true values more effectively than patch notes or announcements, and players rigorously analyze and respond to these systemic messages. Examples from League of Legends and Apex Legends show that when systems contradict stated intentions or create unintended incentives, player backlash often forces reversals. Designers cannot hide these messages, so they should intentionally design systems that align with their actual priorities.

Being Linux Torvalds

Linus Torvalds largely stopped writing code early in Linux’s development to focus on leading and coordinating the project, a rare shift that enabled the kernel to scale massively. His primary role became communicating with subsystem maintainers rather than reviewing every patch line by line.

Extinct Media Museum Tokyo

The Extinct Media Museum in Tokyo is a private, hands-on museum housing over 4,000 obsolete media items, with 3,000 on permanent display and 80% donated. It specializes in home-use motion picture cameras from film to digital, and also features a basement library of 3,000 product catalogs. Visitors can freely touch, photograph, and scan items, while 90% of the collection is accessible via a free online database.

🛠️ Hardware & Gadgets

Harddrive Probably Full

Hard drives tend to remain nearly full regardless of capacity, reflecting a broader pattern where resources are consumed until a pain point forces action. The proposed solution is to impose artificial limits—such as budgets—to prevent runaway consumption and optimize resource use proactively.

Scanwheel is a drum style mechanical television you can build yourself

Scanwheel is a DIY drum-style mechanical television featuring five side-by-side windows, each displaying separate images using 20 scan lines and a shared scanning drum. It uses a Raspberry Pi Pico’s PIO hardware to drive LEDs for high horizontal resolution, and the project requires 3D-printed parts, a stepper motor, specific LEDs and resistors, and accompanying software for streaming or displaying images.

MouthPad: A Tongue-Controlled Touchpad

MouthPad is a discreet, hands-free touchpad worn inside the mouth that translates tongue and head movements into cursor control, clicks, and scrolling. It connects via Bluetooth to multiple devices and is custom-fit from a dental scan. Developed with input from users with diverse abilities, it aims to enhance digital independence.