Best of Tech News — November 2024

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   Medium·1y

   Goodbye ChatGPT: Here Are 8 (New & Free) AI Tools That Will Blow Your Mind

   Discover 8 new and free AI tools that can significantly enhance your productivity. The featured tools include Fiverr's Logo Maker for quick logo designs, APIDNA for easy API integration, Mailbox AI for email management, Skibs for creating animated 3D characters, Overlap for converting long videos into short clips, Loomos for enhancing video presentations, Paperguide for conducting research, and Runway Act-One for generating expressive videos. These tools provide innovative solutions for various tasks while being accessible for free up to certain limits.

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   Dev Squad·1y

   PORTFOLIO WEBSITE

   I’ve just launched my updated portfolio, showcasing my work, skills, and projects. I’d love your feedback—let me know what you think!

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   Hacker News·1y

   the tech utopia fantasy is over

   The initial optimism about tech and its potential to improve lives has faded. Despite some benefits like increased political awareness and connectivity, tech now often exacerbates social issues such as misinformation, disinformation, economic inequality, and environmental harm. Companies continue to push a utopian vision that fails to materialize, while engaging in practices that contradict their marketed images. Additionally, various tech giants and VCs have supported right-wing policies, further diverging from the progressive ideals they promote.

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   Backend Developer·1y

   Google to Sell Chrome: A Major Shift in Tech

   Google plans to sell its Chrome browser following a proposal from the US Department of Justice aimed at breaking up Google's monopoly on online searches. This change could significantly alter the tech landscape and foster new competition in the browser market.

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   ByteByteGo·1y

   EP139: Design a Live Streaming System

   Live streaming involves sending video content over the internet in near real-time, which is both compute-intensive and time-consuming. The process includes encoding video and audio, connecting to point-of-presence servers, transcoding into different resolutions, segmenting videos, and using HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) for delivery. Additionally, content is cached by CDNs for efficient delivery, and videos can be stored for replay on platforms like Amazon S3.

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   Medium·1y

   20 AI Coding Tools To Know in 2025

   This post reviews 20 AI coding tools available as of 2025, including GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Replit, Hope AI, and more. These tools aim to enhance developer productivity, provide intelligent code suggestions, and automate numerous coding tasks. Special emphasis is placed on tools that create managed, reusable code components and offer organizational controls and analytics.

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   ThePrimeTime·1y

   PHP 8.4 Is Good

   PHP 8.4 introduces significant updates including property hooks, asymmetric visibility, and an enhanced DOM API. It also brings performance improvements, bug fixes, and additional features such as better support for computed properties, new array functions, and improved database driver interfaces. These changes are aimed at bringing modern features and improved usability to the language.

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   Towards AI·1y

   Apple: LLMs CANNOT Reason

   Apple's recent research suggests that large language models (LLMs) can't truly reason but instead rely on pattern recognition from their training data. Tests showed that slight modifications in problem statements led to decreased performance, especially in smaller models. Larger models resisted these changes better but still showed some decline, indicating they mimic reasoning but don't fully understand the logic. An intriguing experiment revealed that LLMs can be misled by irrelevant information, exposing their limitations in logical thinking.

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   Theo - t3․gg·1y

   My favorite browser is (kind of) dead

   The post discusses the current state of web browsers, acknowledging that Chrome has largely dominated the market. However, it highlights a surprising resurgence of chrome-based browsers offering unique features, specifically focusing on the Arc browser. The author shares their mixed feelings about Arc, having initially disliked it, but eventually falling in love with its functionality after multiple attempts. Despite its loyal user base, concerns are raised about the future of Arc following the announcement of Arc 2.0, which suggests a pivot away from browser development. The post also criticizes the Arc team for not adequately addressing long-standing performance issues and questions the future of the browser, appealing for better user engagement and communication from its developers.

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    Article

    Quastor Daily·1y

    The Architecture of Dropbox's Load Balancing Service

    Dropbox reduced the sizes of its hardware fleets by 25% and saved millions annually by deploying the Robinhood load balancing service in 2020, improving load distribution among backend machines. Key components of Robinhood include a service discovery system, a routing database, and a proxy for aggregating load reports. Dropbox evaluates load balancer performance using CPU utilization ratios such as max/avg and p95/avg. They emphasized simplicity in configuration, minimizing client changes, and early migration planning as crucial lessons learned.

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    Article

    Lobsters·1y

    The two factions of C++

    The C++ community is divided on the language's future, particularly over backward compatibility and modernizing the language. While the Evolution Working Group aims to maintain ABI compatibility and avoid disruptive changes, other camps, including key tech companies like Google and Microsoft, are moving towards modern practices and adopting languages like Rust. The divide is notably between older industries with legacy systems and modern tech firms with sophisticated automated tooling. The C++ committee appears committed to maintaining backward compatibility, but this has created tensions within the community.

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    Community Picks·1y

    Top 10 Must-Listen Software Developer Podcasts in 2024

    Staying updated with industry trends is crucial for both veteran and junior programmers. One effective way to achieve this is through podcasts. This curated list includes top software developer podcasts such as Software Engineering Daily, Talk Python to Me, Dev Interrupted, The Cloudcast, The Changelog, Thoughtworks Technology, The CSS Podcast, Neil on Software, In Machines We Trust, and Software Engineering Radio. These podcasts cover a wide range of topics from Python, cloud computing, and open source to AI and latest tech trends, providing valuable insights and knowledge to enhance your skills and career.

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    AlternativeTo·1y

    LocalSend 1.16: enhanced features and improvements

    LocalSend 1.16 introduces enhanced transfer speeds through Rust-based HTTP client operations and multithreading. The update includes automatic file receipt from favorites, improved spacing in RTL languages, and new macOS-specific functionalities like drag-and-drop into the menu bar icon and a share menu integration. Several platform-specific bugs have been resolved to enhance overall functionality.

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    Dev Leader·1y

    I knew being a programmer would pay off 😎

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    Hacker News·1y

    A Washing Machine for Human Beings, from 1970

    At the 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan, Sanyo exhibited an Ultrasonic Bath machine that provided a 15-minute cycle involving water jets, ultrasonic bath, hot rinse, and drying with warm air, as well as germ-killing infrared and ultraviolet light. Although it never went into production, a modern version of the concept is being developed for the 2025 expo in Osaka with potential healthcare applications.

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    Article

    Jeff Geerling·1y

    M4 Mac mini's efficiency is incredible

    The M4 Mac mini demonstrates impressive efficiency gains, achieving 6.74 Gflops/W on the HPL benchmark, a significant 32% improvement over previous models. It operates at 42W to achieve 283 Gflops, significantly exceeding the efficiency of the M1 Max Mac Studio. The system draws between 3-4W at idle and includes advanced features like 10 Gigabit Ethernet and 32 GB of RAM, making it a highly efficient machine for its size.

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    Article

    selfh.st·1y

    This Week in Self-Hosted (1 November 2024)

    This week's self-hosted updates feature new releases and improvements across various software like Jellyfin, Docmost, and Listmonk. Notable launches include Immich Public Proxy, Investbrain, and KoalaKeys. The newsletter celebrates reaching 10,000 subscribers and highlights Etherpad for real-time collaborative document editing.

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    selfh.st·1y

    This Week in Self-Hosted (29 November 2024)

    This edition provides updates and news on various self-hosted applications and deals for Black Friday 2024, including sales on storage solutions and VPNs. Software updates featured include ByteStash's new SSO support, Grist's Debian-based Docker image, and features like the new timeline layout in Lychee. New releases discussed include Bearlytics for privacy-first analytics and Jellyplist for syncing Spotify playlists to Jellyfin. Highlighted is the Readeck platform for bookmarking and article saving.

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    funinaiofficial·1y

    🛠️ Build your own 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 🤖 (with the trending 𝗳𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀)

    Explore various open-source frameworks for building AI agents, including AutoGen by Microsoft, CrewAI, Letta, Llama Stack by Meta, and AutoRAG. These frameworks offer solutions for creating scalable, resilient, and stateful AI applications with advanced reasoning capabilities. They also enable optimal RAG pipeline evaluation and seamless collaboration among AI agents.

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    Socket·1y

    Tech's $90B Ghost Engineer Problem: Stanford Study Finds 9.5...

    A recent Stanford study has revealed that approximately 9.5% of engineers in tech companies, termed 'ghost engineers,' do minimal work while earning high salaries. This issue is more prevalent among remote workers. The economic impact is significant, with companies potentially saving billions by addressing this inefficiency. Moreover, ghost engineers pose security risks due to unreviewed code and outdated systems. The challenge highlights systemic inefficiencies in talent management and performance evaluation, raising questions about the effectiveness of remote work policies.

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    Watercooler·1y

    Google Code Leaked 👀👀

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    selfh.st·1y

    This Week in Self-Hosted (8 November 2024)

    A comprehensive update on the latest in self-hosted software for the week ending November 8, 2024. Highlights include updates to Home Assistant, Actual Budget, and new self-hosted applications like Amazon Price Tracker and YouTube Summarizer. The newsletter also covers breaking changes in some software, newly added directory apps, and insightful content from the self-hosting community.

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    Data Engineering·1y

    Medallion Architecture Hype or Useful?

    Medallion Architecture is a term coined by Databricks that aims to simplify data architecture for business and domain experts. However, it may be confusing for data professionals who are accustomed to classical data architecture models such as stage, cleansing, core, and mart, where marts are typically persisted in cubes for faster responses.

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    Hacker News·1y

    Hackers now use ZIP file concatenation to evade detection

    Hackers are exploiting ZIP file concatenation to deliver malicious payloads on Windows machines without detection. This technique leverages how different ZIP parsers handle concatenated files. Researchers from Perception Point discovered a phishing attack using this method, where the malicious payload was hidden in one of the concatenated ZIPs and disguised as a legitimate file. Security solutions supporting recursive unpacking and treating emails with ZIP attachments suspiciously are recommended as defensive measures.

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    Dev Squad·1y

    We're now a family of 5000+ genius minds! 🎉

    The DevSquad community has reached an impressive milestone of over 5000 members. The growth of this community is a testament to the collective effort, support, and shared knowledge among its members. Let's continue to learn, build, and inspire each other.

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