Stoop Coffee: How a Simple Idea Transformed My Neighborhood
substack.com — Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Patty Smith. Patty and her husband enjoy the kind of neighborhood so many of us would like - connected, helpful, fun - but it wasn’t that way two years ago. A simple tradition changed their neighborhood and is a good reminder of how small, consistent actions can have outsize results. It also shows you don’t have to share a kitchen or a roof to live in community. STOOP, 1
Kylie Minogue song about a typeface
abcdinamo.com — Sometimes we invite artists, writers, and other friends to take over our newsletter and write about fonts from a cultural perspective. And this time, New York-based writer and editor Whitney Mallett took a deep dive into the 1997 Towa Tei track GBI (German Bold Italic), for which Kylie Minogue sang from the perspective of a typeface. KYLIE, 2
Gemini 2.5: Our most intelligent AI model
blog.google — Gemini 2.5 is a thinking model, designed to tackle increasingly complex problems. Our first 2.5 model, Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, leads common benchmarks by meaningful margins and showcases strong reasoning and code capabilities. GEMINI, 3
Prospero challenge, now with more garbage collection
bernsteinbear.com — Matt Keeter put up The Prospero Challenge, which is like catnip for me. It’s a well-scoped project: we have a slow program. Make it faster within these constraints. In this post, I will describe two very small changes that can speed up his sample program with minimal effort. PROSPERO, 4
Why is C the symbol for the speed of light? (2004)
ucr.edu — "As for c, that is the speed of light in vacuum, and if you ask why c, the answer is that it is the initial letter of celeritas, the Latin word meaning speed." Isaac Asimov in "C for Celeritas (1959)" [1] WHY, 5
VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer
github.com — [CVPR 2025] VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer VGGT, 6
Borne Back Ceaselessly into the Past: Fitzgerald, Gatsby and WWI
theworldwar.org — Born in September 1896, Francis Scott Key (F. Scott) Fitzgerald was 20 years old and attending Princeton University in 1917. He had been courting a young girl named Ginevra King. (That failed relationship is thought to be one of the inspirations for the character Daisy in “The Great Gatsby.”) Fitzgerald was already writing for university clubs and nearing graduation when Congress declared war. Despite this, he chose to drop out of Princeton to join the U.S. military, accepting a commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. BORNE, 7
The Jakt Programming Language
github.com — The Jakt Programming Language JAKT, 8
My Favorite C++ Pattern: X Macros (2023)
danilafe.com — When I first joined the Chapel team, one pattern used in its C++-based compiler made a strong impression on me. Since then, I’ve used the pattern many more times, and have been very satisfied with how it turned out. However, it feels like the pattern is relatively unknown, so I thought I’d show it off, and some of its applications in the Chapel compiler . I’ve slightly tweaked a lot of the snippets I directly show in this article for the sake of simpler presentation; I’ve included links to the original code (available on GitHub) if you want to see the unabridged version. FAVORITE, 9
Were large soda lakes the cradle of life?
ethz.ch — Life needs sufficient phosphorus. However, the element is scarce, not only today but also at the time of the origin of life. So where was there sufficient phosphorus four billion years ago for life to emerge? A team of origin-of-life researchers has an answer. LARGE, 10
There are perhaps 10k reasons to doubt Oracle Cloud's security breach denial
theregister.com — Oracle Cloud's denial of a digital break-in is now in clear dispute. A infosec researcher working on validating claims that the cloud provider's login servers were compromised earlier this year says some customers have confirmed data allegedly stolen and leaked from the database giant is genuine. THERE, 11
German parliament votes as a Git contribution graph
abstimmung.eu — Namentliche Abstimmungen im Bundestag GERMAN, 12
Hann: A Fast Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search Library for Go
github.com — A fast approximate nearest neighbor search library for Go HANN, 13
How 'animal methods bias' is affecting research careers
nature.com — Christine Ro is a freelance writer in London, UK. ANIMAL, 14
Nearly half of Canadians have cut cable entirely: report
mobilesyrup.com — An estimated 46 per cent (7.35 million) of Canadian households didn’t have a TV subscription with a cable, satellite, or telecom-based provider in 2024, according to a new report from Convergence Research. NEARLY, 15
Search My Site – open-source search engine for personal and independent websites
searchmysite.net — What is the search engine and why should I use it? SEARCH, 16
Polypane, The browser for ambitious web developers
polypane.app — A desktop browser with all the tools you need to build responsive, accessible and performant sites. POLYPANE, 17
BBC – Organizing music for organic discovery
bbc.co.uk — Orbit is our pilot for a music discovery service that lets you find your next favourite song by exploring recently played tracks from BBC Introducing — the BBC’s platform for unsigned and undiscovered music. Every track is a crossroads where you have to decide with your ears: do you want to find out what you’re listening to, or do you want to try a related track? You can quickly move through the spectrum of musical genres, discovering what interests you and moving past what doesn’t. There’s no AI and no recommendation algorithms — you decide. BBC, 18
Reflecting on WikiTok
aizk.sh — REFLECTING, 19
A study reveals that deciduous trees' roots remain active in winter
creaf.cat — Deciduous trees — such as beeches and birches — change colour from season to season. Between autumn and winter, they lose their leaves and go into a state of dormancy, halting their above-ground growth to save energy for the coming spring, when they will sprout new leaves. Until now, their roots were also thought to become dormant, ‘hibernating’ along with the rest of the tree. However, a study published today in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution shows that the roots of deciduous trees actually grow without pause all year round. The study was led by University of Antwerp researcher Lorène J. Marchand and involved CREAF and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Its findings suggest that forest soils have a greater carbon sink capacity than was previously believed, as they accum... STUDY, 20
Bitcoin in the bush – the crypto mine in remote Zambia
bbc.com — The roar of the Zambezi is deafening as millions of gallons of water crash over rocks and tumble down rapids. BITCOIN, 21
New NASA satellite mapped the oceans like never before
zmescience.com — We know more about our Moon and Mars than the bottom of our oceans. NASA, 22
The Lost Towers of the Guelph-Ghibelline Wars
exurbe.com — Looks fake, doesn’t it? This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. We don’t see many such towers today… or think we don’t, but actually their remnants are all over Italy. LOST, 23
Writing your own C++ standard library from scratch
nibblestew.blogspot.com — The C++ standard library (also know as the STL) is, without a doubt, an astounding piece of work. Its scope, performance and incredible backwards compatibility have taken decades of work by many of the world's best programmers. My hat's off to all those people who have contributed to it. WRITING, 24
Spammers are better at SPF, DKIM, and DMARC than everyone else
toad.social — To use the Mastodon web application, please enable JavaScript. Alternatively, try one of the native apps for Mastodon for your platform. SPAMMERS, 25
Samsung CEO Jong-hee Han has died
engadget.com — One of Samsung's CEOs, Jong-hee Han, has died due to a heart attack, according to Reuters and CNBC. He was 63. Han joined the company in 1988 and became the head of product research and development for visual display in 2011. He then led Samsung's TV business before he was named as the head of Samsung DX, which is what the company calls its merged mobile and consumer electronics divisions, in 2021. In 2022, he officially became the company's Vice Chairman and CEO. Han had no experience in mobile before he started leading the company's DX group, but Samsung gave him credit for helping it get to the top of global TV sales for 15 years. SAMSUNG, 26
Qwen2.5-VL-32B: Smarter and Lighter
qwenlm.github.io — QWEN CHAT GITHUB HUGGING FACE MODELSCOPE DISCORD QWEN2.5-VL-32B, 27
Three Hundred Years Later, a Tool from Isaac Newton Gets an Update
quantamagazine.org — Michele Sclafani for Quanta Magazine THREE, 28
Status as a Service (2019)
eugenewei.com — Editor's Note 1: I have no editor. STATUS, 29
Activeloop (YC S18) Is Hiring Senior Python Back End and AI Search Engineers activeloop.ai
Langfuse (YC W23) Is Hiring in Berlin, Germany langfuse.com
Modern Realty (YC S24) Is Hiring workatastartup.com