Technology

Taylor Larenz describes the importance of section 230 and ongoing efforts to dismantle it

Taylor Larenz describes the importance of section 230 and ongoing efforts to dismantle it

I had been using KDE Plasma for about a year. Plasma really is great. It works great out of the box. Before that I used to use i3. Comparatively the amount of scaffolding Plasma has is extremely helpful. I love the Breeze aesthetic to. It's right up my wheelhouse.

My only complaint with Plasma is the window management. Coming from i3 it is tolerable and allows you to customise the shortcuts. I prefer the idea of arranging windows in workspaces, changing focus between windows and between workspaces using the keyboard only and I couldn't get Plasma to work this way.

Right now I have some free time and I found a spare laptop. So I tried setting up Niri, a scrolling Wayland compositor on it.

The window management in Niri is amazing. Overall it seems polished as well. The animations are smooth and the configuration is easy and updates to it are loaded on the fly.

The problem here is the missing scaffolding that something like GNOME or Plasma provides for you. I spent like half of all day yesterday trying to figure out how to make gtk and qt apps look acceptable and the password manager (keepassxc) still does not follow the theme. I still don't have a taskbar set up so I never know what the time is or how much battery I have left without using the terminal. This is just a drop in the bucket of the user friendly stuff missing from a bare compositor install.

There are some projects like DankMaterialShell and Noctalia that try to provide a lot of this missing functionality in one package. I tried both of them but I dislike how they both look.

This will read like a rant but it isn't. Right now I have some luxury to engage with the friction so I wanna find out how things work at the lower level in Waylandland. I am hoping I am able to stick with Niri because the window management really is great.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10639210

Archive.ph links are currently broken! A preview of the article can be found below:

Chinese scientists have developed a plant-inspired method to convert carbon dioxide and water into valuable chemicals, such as the building blocks for petrol, by using solar energy.

The process – inspired by photosynthesis, where plants harness sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to generate energy – could help produce a sustainable source of fuel, the researchers said.

The team, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said they had developed a material able to store small amounts of electrical energy to help efficiently drive chemical reactions.

When paired with catalysts that converted carbon dioxide into various chemicals, it enabled the solar-driven production of carbon monoxide.

This could be further converted into fuel, offering a possible alternative for hard-to-electrify sectors such as aviation and shipping.

“This work establishes a bioinspired charge reservoir strategy for efficient carbon dioxide photoreduction, providing a universal approach to solar fuel production,” the team wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications last week.

The rest of the article is paywalled.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10636596

Archive link: https://archive.ph/bgODC

Chinese researchers have revealed progress on a weapon concept that could compress hypersonic performance into a form small enough for conventional artillery.

The team is developing an ultra-small, smart hypersonic glide missile that can be fired from an 80mm anti-aircraft gun

If deployed, the system could blur the line between traditional gunfire and missile-based air defense.

According to the research, the projectile exits the gun barrel at speeds approaching Mach 6. That velocity far exceeds conventional anti-aircraft shells.

It also gives the weapon extended reach. Simulations suggest it can engage fighter jets or drones more than 20 km, or 12 miles, away.

Targets flying at altitudes around 10,000 meters, or 32,800 feet, would also fall within range.

The concept relies on speed, scale, and cost. The projectile’s small size and hypersonic flight profile sharply reduce warning time for enemy aircraft.

That compression of reaction windows could alter air combat dynamics.

As reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the missile’s designers argue that detection would come dangerously late for defending aircraft.

At such extreme speed, onboard warning systems may only spot the projectile when it is about 2 miles away.

That distance leaves only seconds to respond.

Even at that point, the missile would still travel at roughly Mach 3.6. Computer simulations show it can adapt aggressively.

If a target executes a near-90-degree turn, the missile can still correct its trajectory.

The models indicate a kill probability of 99 percent.

Rate of fire adds to the threat. A standard anti-aircraft gun can fire roughly once per second.

That enables repeated launches without relying on expensive interceptor missiles.

Researchers suggest the low cost and high availability of such projectiles could challenge medium- and short-range air defense systems.

Two-stage guidance system

Extreme speed also introduces control challenges. Hypersonic projectiles face intense aerodynamic forces during sharp maneuvers.

Traditional guidance methods may fail under such conditions, increasing the risk of misses.

To overcome this, Wang Xugang’s team designed a two-stage guidance architecture.

The first stage manages the mid-course flight. It plans an efficient trajectory that preserves speed and energy.

The second stage governs the terminal phase. It focuses on fine adjustments during the final seconds before impact.

The researchers used a mathematical approach called “multi-objective optimisation” to balance speed retention with smooth maneuvering.

This approach reduces stress on the projectile while maintaining accuracy.

In the terminal phase, the missile switches to an advanced “sliding-mode variable-structure guidance” law.

This method allows the projectile to anticipate target movement and closely track even highly agile aircraft.

Simulations show the guidance method reduces maneuver load by more than 90 percent compared with conventional approaches.

Shifting air combat models

The researchers argue the technology could reshape future air warfare. “Hypersonic guided projectiles represent a new generation of precision-strike weapons,” the team wrote.

“With advantages such as rapid strike, precision guidance and high lethality, they are profoundly reshaping traditional firepower combat models and have broad application prospects in future air warfare.”

The findings appear in a peer-reviewed paper published last month in the Journal of Naval Aviation University.

While the system remains at the simulation stage, the work highlights China’s growing interest in compact hypersonic weapons designed for scalable deployment.

If proven viable, such systems could complicate air operations and force changes in aircraft defense strategies.

Firefox is getting a new config page called "AI Controls" that is set to become the home for all the AI features in the browser. When live, it will be found in the browser settings, accessible via the hamburger button on the top-right or via the following address about:preferences.

As for what it can do for you, well, if you don't want any AI features at all, then you can toggle the option called "Block AI Enhancements" to switch off every AI feature in Firefox (this is not enabled by default btw).

Moltbook is a “social media” site for AI agents that’s captured the public’s imagination over the last few days. Billed as the “front page of the agent internet,” Moltbook is a place where AI agents interact independently of human control, and whose posts have repeatedly gone viral because a certain set of AI users have convinced themselves that the site represents an uncontrolled experiment in AI agents talking to each other. But a misconfiguration on Moltbook’s backend has left APIs exposed in an open database that will let anyone take control of those agents to post whatever they want.

• Clone any voice with just a 3-second audio sample
• Fine-tune parameters (temperature, top-k, top-p) with quality presets
• Generate complete podcasts from just a topic – AI writes the script, assigns voices, and synthesizes everything
• 10 languages supported (Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

Currently uses gpt5.2 for script generation, but the architecture is modular – you can swap in any local LLM (Qwen, Llama, etc.) if you want fully local.