2025-07-11

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/world/europe/uk-post-office-scandal-report.html

We conduct a randomized controlled trial to understand how early-2025 AI tools affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers working on their own repositories. Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower.

If you ask the new Grok 4 for opinions on controversial questions, it will sometimes run a search to find out Elon Musk’s stance before providing you with an answer. …

How Apple legend Bill Atkinson approached 5-MeO-DMT as a UX problem — and what his journey reveals about consciousness.

Identity-aware VPN and tunneled reverse proxy for remote access based on WireGuard®. - fosrl/pangolin

A few months ago, I upgraded my M4 Mac mini from 1 to 2 TB of internal storage, using a then-$269 DIY upgrade kit from ExpandMacMini. At the time, there was no option for upgrading the M4 Pro Mac mini, despite it also using a user-replaceable, socketed storage drive.

But the folks at M4-SSD reached out and asked if I'd be willing to test out one of their new M4 Pro upgrades, in this case, upgrading the mini I use at the studio for editing from a stock 512 GB SSD to 4 TB.

姜黄中的铅污染物：揭开全球铅中毒之谜

全球约有8亿儿童受到铅中毒影响，其中近半数生活在低收入和中等收入国家。本文通过两位女性调查人员的视角，揭示了一起波及全球的铅中毒谜案，其根源最终指向了常见香料——姜黄。

谜案开端：两地调查

• 纽约调查员帕罗米塔·霍尔：她在纽约市卫生部门工作，负责调查儿童铅中毒来源。2000年代初，她发现纽约市孟加拉国裔儿童的铅中毒病例异常偏高，成为一大疑点。
• 加州博士生詹娜·福赛斯：2014年，她接触到一组数据，显示孟加拉国农村近半数孕妇血铅水平极高，远超美国弗林特水危机时的峰值，且在当地找不到明显的铅污染源。

关键突破：锁定姜黄 福赛斯团队在孟加拉国进行了广泛排查（包括农药、油漆、罐头、土壤、大米等），均未找到答案。最终，她从一篇小型研究论文中获得线索，开始检测姜黄。检测结果令人震惊：

1. 姜黄粉末和姜黄根中均检出铅。
2. 姜黄中铅的化学特征与孕妇血液中的铅完全匹配。
3. 污染源头：追溯至20世纪80年代，孟加拉国一次洪灾导致姜黄根无法正常晒干成亮黄色。农民为恢复外观、提高售价，开始使用最便宜的黄色颜料——铬酸铅（常用于工业涂料）对姜黄根进行抛光染色。此做法随后被广泛沿用，而农民对其健康危害一无所知。

全球联系与行动

• 纽约的调查也独立得出结论：孟加拉国及其他南亚社区儿童的铅中毒主要与从海外带来并用个人行李箱携带的香料有关。
• 2019年，双方证据汇集，并提交给孟加拉国食品安全局。
• 孟加拉国当局迅速行动：
  1. 发布公共警告，告知公众和商家避免购买颜色过于鲜艳的姜黄根。
  2. 举办研讨会，向主要姜黄农民和加工厂主宣传铅的健康与法律风险。
  3. 在达卡主要香料市场举行“流动法庭”突击检查，当庭罚款并没收了近2000磅含铅姜黄。

成效与后续

• 采取行动后，达卡批发市场的姜黄样本铅检出率从47%降至0%。
• 当地姜黄农民及孕妇的血铅水平也显著下降。
• 然而，问题远未解决：在达卡，按美国标准，仍有98%的儿童存在铅中毒。铅还潜藏于其他来源，如回收不当的铅酸电池、含铅废金属制炊具、釉料不当的厨具、以及某些化妆品（如眼妆苏尔玛、辛杜尔）。
• 福赛斯等人继续在其他国家的香料中检出铅，并致力于识别其他铅暴露源。

全球响应

• UNICEF与美国国际开发署（USAID）宣布了一项1.5亿美元的新倡议，旨在应对全球铅中毒问题。
• 资金将用于支持十多个国家消除消费品（如油漆、香料、化妆品）中的铅污染，并加强政府间合作。
• 专家指出，解决许多铅暴露问题并不需要天价投入，存在大量可迅速采取行动的“低垂果实”。

结论 这起“姜黄之谜”展示了跨学科、跨地域合作如何破解复杂的公共卫生危机。虽然在孟加拉国的特定问题上取得了阶段性胜利，但铅作为一种广泛存在的神经毒素，其全球根除之路依然漫长。持续的数据收集、国际合作与政策执行至关重要。

Apple & Google at the EU DMA compliance workshops, June 2025.

Or: why I have a blog now.

Reverse engineering and generation toolkit for Chrome's private x-browser-validation header, used for integrity. - dsekz/chrome-x-browser-validation-header

本文介绍了互联网和技术成瘾匿名者协会（ITAA），这是一个基于十二步法的互助团体，旨在帮助成员从各类互联网和数字技术成瘾中恢复，特别关注了新兴的AI成瘾。

核心概念

• ITAA：一个全球性的、免费的匿名互助团体，支持成员从包括社交媒体、手机、游戏、新闻、购物以及AI在内的各种数字行为成瘾中恢复。
• AI成瘾：被定义为强迫性和有害地使用AI应用程序（如ChatGPT、图像生成器、算法驱动平台、AI伴侣等）。它是互联网和技术成瘾的一个子类，可能导致大脑变化，损害专注力、情绪调节和现实关系。

症状与自我评估

成瘾者常见症状包括：失控使用、明知有害却无法停止、依赖AI获取情感满足、离线时感到焦虑烦躁、现实生活受到负面影响等。 文中提供了一个包含10个问题的自测问卷，帮助个人评估是否存在AI成瘾迹象，例如是否经常超出计划使用、是否因使用而忽视健康或关系、是否感到羞耻等。

成瘾的影响与风险

• 科学影响：与物质成瘾类似，技术成瘾会改变大脑结构，影响决策、认知、情绪处理等功能。研究指出，它与焦虑、抑郁、失眠、心血管疾病风险增加以及更高的自杀率相关。
• 影响人群：任何年龄、背景的人都可能受影响，其危害不仅限于个人，也波及家庭和朋友。

恢复方法与ITAA的作用

ITAA采用已被验证的十二步法（源自戒酒匿名会）来帮助成员实现长期、可持续的恢复。推荐的恢复行动包括：

1. 定期参加免费的线上或线下匿名会议。
2. 与成员进行日常联系，以获得支持并打破孤立。
3. 明确并戒断导致问题的具体数字行为。
4. 学习康复知识，利用ITAA提供的资源。
5. 寻找辅导员并践行十二步法。
6. 善用外部资源，如心理治疗、咨询等。

• 戒瘾的定义：是一个个性化发现的过程，核心是戒除引发成瘾的特定行为，并建立有意识、有节制的、以目标为导向的技术使用模式。

其他相关成瘾类型

文章还列举了社交媒体成瘾、流媒体成瘾、手机成瘾、游戏成瘾、色情成瘾和信息成瘾等多种互联网成瘾表现。

关于ITAA

ITAA是一个完全由志愿者运作、自我支持的非营利组织。其唯一目的是帮助人们从强迫性的互联网和技术使用中解脱，并帮助他人康复。该组织不隶属于任何政治、宗教或外部团体。

Axon Enterprise’s Draft One — a generative artificial intelligence product that writes police reports based on audio from officers’ body-worn cameras — seems deliberately designed to avoid audits that could provide any accountability to the public, an EFF investigation has found.Our review of...

Study Shows That Even Experienced Developers Dramatically Overestimate Gains

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Applications are open for the ACT Applied Category Theory Research School 2018! And because arithmetic science and geometric science are connected, and support one another, the full knowledge of numbers cannot be presented without encountering some geometry, or without seeing that operating in this way on numbers is close to geometry; the method is full…

My favorite memory of my M1 Pro MacBook Pro was the whole sensation of “holy crap, you never hear the fans in this thing”, which was very novel in 2021. Four years later, this MacBook Pro is still a delight. It’s the longest I’ve ever owned a laptop, and while I’d love to pick up the new M4 goodness, this dang thing still seems to just shrug at basically anything I throw at it. Video editing, code compiling, CAD models, the works. (My desire to update is helped though by the fact I got the 2TB SSD, 32GB RAM option, and upgrading to those on new MacBooks is still eye wateringly expensive.)

Released last night, Grok 4 is now available via both API and a paid subscription for end-users. Update: If you ask it about controversial topics it will sometimes search X …

https://ddkang.substack.com/p/ai-agent-benchmarks-are-broken

Why I decided to ditch Cursor and switch to running Claude Code in an isolated environment + diy guide!

https://benbridle.com/projects/bedrock.html

Ever had to make a 90-degree turn on a bridge? In India, seven engineers just got suspended for designing exactly that...

BrowserOS is the open-source agentic browser that runs AI agents locally on your computer. Privacy-first Chrome alternative with AI superpowers.

Top 500 DNS domains seen on the Quad9 recursive resolver array each day - Quad9DNS/quad9-domains-top500

Get 10X more out of Claude Code, Codex or any coding agent - BloopAI/vibe-kanban

A practical handbook for engineers building, optimizing, scaling and operating LLM inference systems in production.

https://github.com/slaily/aiosqlitepool

X’s chatbot under fire in Poland, too, over insulting comments targeted at Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

https://www.ntsb.gov:443/investigations/Pages/DCA24MA063.aspx

https://twitter.com/Kimi_Moonshot/status/1943687594560332025

George Orwell's domestic and political diary entries, posted 70 years to the day after they were written

https://c3-lang.org/blog/forget-borrow-checkers-c3-solved-memory-lifetimes-with-scopes/

A celebration of consistency, discipline, and the pursuit of movement

Here are some of the lessons I learned and how I grew as a leader and manager, as well as a bunch of behind-the-scenes photos.

My foil-wrapped lasagna has holes in the foil: what's going on here? Some chemicals in foods react badly with certain metals and can even create toxins. Here's what you need to know about reactive and corrosive metals, how your lasagna can create a sort of electric battery cell, and how to avoid this problem.

https://twitter.com/cis_female/status/1943069934332055912

Just as Australians are adjusting to the idea of having their ages checked for social media, age assurance rules are being applied to search engines and many other corners of the internet.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44524544

The U.S. State Department said it is restarting the process for foreigners applying for student visas but all applicants will now be required to unlock their social media accounts for review.

https://aras-p.info/blog/2025/07/08/Lossless-Float-Image-Compression/

https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-race-study-interstellar-interloper

Bitcoin's supply is limited to 21 million—but in the cryptocurrency's early days, one hacker was able to create 184 billion Bitcoin out of thin air.

https://openfront.io/