This records the technology content worth sharing every week, released on Fridays.
This magazine is open source , and we welcome submissions . There is also the service "Who's Hiring" , which posts programmer job listings. For collaborations, please contact us via email （[email protected]）。
Cover image
Qingyan Fishing Village in Lao Mountain, Qingdao, looks like a fairy tale world from a distance. （via)
Techno-feudalism
Today, I'm introducing a new book from 2024 that has become very popular abroad because it proposes a completely new perspective.
Do you think humans are entering a new era, the era of high-tech internet?
This book says NO.Humans are more like returning to the feudal era, just with more high technology..
Its book title is simply "Techno Feudalism," meaning feudalism caused by technology.
Author Yanis Varoufakis (Yanis Varoufakis) is also unusual.
He is a Greek economist who was once employed by Valve Corporation (the creator of the world's largest gaming platform Steam), later becoming the Minister of Finance of Greece, and after his resignation, wrote this book.
Historically, feudalism prevailed in medieval Europe, referring to the situation where large landowners (also known as lords) held extensive land and controlled everything on it, while farmers became the private property of the lords (i.e., serfs).
This has some similarities with the current internet.
The internet is vast, but the dominant players are just a few companies: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta...They are the lords of the internet, dividing up most of the digital territory.
In their own domain, they are the rulers of everything.
This book further says,The vast number of netizens are actually digital serfs (also known as cloud serfs)You post on someone else's territory and upload photos and videos, which means you're working for the lord. You don't get much in return; your free labor is just increasing the value of the lord's company.
Over time, you may even develop psychological dependence, feeling utterly lost if you don't check the lord's land even once a day.
These digital lords have a strong sense of territory, building high fences to prevent their digital assets (data) from leaking out or their territory from being encroached upon by other companies.
If you want to use a digital lord's territory, you must pay rent (usage fees). For example, if you want to sell your app on the Apple App Store, you must give 30% of the income to Apple. This is the rent Apple charges for its digital territory, and it's exactly the same as the feudal system of the Middle Ages.
After reading the book's description, it's truly mind-blowing to realize that the high-end internet economy is essentially no different from the land rent of the feudal era.
The author, Varulfakis, suggests that to break the feudalism of technology and prevent the emergence of digital lords, governments must implement some mandatory measures.
(1) Levy cloud tax , reducing the cloud rent that digital lords obtain.
(2) Promote a unified digital identity rather than letting each website implement its own user system. Once a user uses the identity of major companies like Google, Microsoft, or Apple to represent their internet identity, they become dependent on these large companies and are compelled to submit to them. Imagine how inconvenient life would be if you suddenly lost your WeChat account one day.
(3) Promote data sharing . Data generated by users in one application should be transferable to other applications. For example, posts you make on Twitter should be transferable to other social media platforms. This prevents data from being monopolized by digital lords.
Rare Earth Developers Conference: Sub-forums and Free AI Tickets
There are two announcements today.
Over the past few weeks, the weekly newsletter has been introducing the "Rare Earth Developers Conference," one of the major developer events of the year.
First, the topics for the ten sub-forums have been finalized. Take a look and see if any interest you. Due to space constraints, only a portion is posted here.The Topics of the Frontend Future Sub-forum, other information can be found on the official website.
Additionally, this year there are special AI Free Tickets available. These tickets allow participation in the outdoor AI exhibition area and the Gejin Hands-on Lab activities, and they are free of charge, but do not include access to the indoor speeches.
Many companies such as SenseTime, Moonshot AI, Jina AI, iFlytek, Silicium Flow, 01.AI, and Zilliz will be showcasing their AI products on-site. You can watch demonstrations, interact with them, and participate in the Gejin Lab, which is also an AI hands-on activity. Students interested in AI should consider attending.
The event dates are June 28th (Friday) and June 29th (Sunday) for the entire day, and the location is the Beijing Fuli Wanda Hotel.
For detailed information about the sub-forum and ticketing details, please click.Official website linkOr scan the QR code on the poster above,The free AI tickets are also available for pickup in the online ticketing area on the official website..
Tech News
Can ultraviolet light be used to disinfect and kill bacteria? So, can UV lights be installed indoors to disinfect the air?
The answer is no, because ultraviolet rays can sunburn the skin and cause skin cancer. Sunscreen products on the market are designed to block ultraviolet rays.
But in recent years, far ultraviolet lights have appeared on the market, specifically designed for indoor air disinfection.
The mystery lies in the fact that this light emits not ordinary ultraviolet light, but far ultraviolet light. The wavelength of ordinary ultraviolet light is 254 nanometers, while the wavelength of far ultraviolet light is 207 nanometers or 222 nanometers, further out on the spectrum.
Ultraviolet C (UV-C) light has a short wavelength, so it has weak penetration and does not damage human skin or eye cells, while it can kill viruses and bacteria.
Installing a few of these lights indoors can ensure air safety, and their light is invisible to the human eye, so the body won't notice anything. This seems like a good indoor air disinfection solution.
The only issue is that oxygen, when exposed to ultraviolet or UV-C light, decomposes into ozone, which irritates the respiratory tract and causes headaches and eye pain.
Therefore, UV-C lights can only be used for indoor air disinfection in well-ventilated conditions.
2, AR Laptop
Do you think your laptop screen is not big enough?
A U.S. company has launched an AR laptop with a 100-inch screen.
Its configuration includes a keyboard and a pair of AR glasses. You can only see the giant screen when wearing the AR glasses.
The official website has officially started pre-sales, with a price of $1700.
I think, Apple's Vision Pro should actually be made like this, which is glasses + keyboard. The current Vision Pro doesn't have a physical keyboard, and typing has to be done in the air. Moreover, the price of the AR notebook is only half of the Vision Pro and is more easily accepted by the market.
The marathon race times have recently made remarkable progress. Out of the top 10 world best performances, eight are by women and six by men, all achieved in the past two years. The world record of 2:00:35 was set on October 8, 2023.
Is it because the选手's abilities suddenly improved? No, the real reason is that there are now better running shoes.
The most advanced running shoes from Nike and Adidas companies all feature thick yet lightweight foam soles. They act like springs, returning energy to the athlete when stepped on. According to research, these shoes reduce energy consumption by 4%.
Above is the shoe that Kenyan athlete Kelvin Kiptum wore when he set a world record.
Some people have demanded a ban on such shoes, but the World Athletics Association has so far allowed their use, provided that manufacturers must fairly provide them to all athletes and not just a select few.
Many cameras have night-vision capabilities, using infrared to capture pedestrians in the dark.
An American artist, to evade night-vision cameras, invented the "Night-Vision Hoodie." As long as you wear it, cameras won't be able to capture your face.
This hoodie has many LED bulbs on the shoulders (as shown above), but they emit not visible light, but strong infrared. The human eye cannot see infrared, so it cannot see these bulbs glowing.
However, night-vision cameras can capture the infrared from these bulbs, presenting a bright spot that perfectly obscures the face, achieving the "anti-night-vision" effect.
Article
1, How to Simplify Boolean Expressions (English)
Google's Official Introduction to Code Tips, If a Boolean Expression is Long and Complex, How to Improve Readability?
2, CSS Timer (English)
An Advanced CSS Tutorial, Introducing How to Write a Pure CSS Timer, Which Can Perform a 5-Second Countdown.
3, How to Build a Search Engine Using a Vector Database (English)
The Author Introduces How to Use a Vector Database to Quickly Build a Search Engine for a Personal Website.
4、My Prettier Settings（English）
Prettier is a JS code beautifier tool, and the author introduces some of his settings on how to make the code look more aesthetically pleasing.
5、Understanding Docker Container Layers（English）
Docker container files are composed of multiple layer files. This article explains, through an example, how multiple layers combine to form a container file.
There is also a similar articleyou can refer to.，
6、Animation Introduction to Fourier Series（English）
A long article, starting from the simplest equation of a circle, introduces the concept of Fourier series, including a large number of animations.
AI Related
A service that needs to be set up by yourself, unifies domestic AI models to adapt to OpenAI API, unifying the interface, currently supporting Xunfei Spark, Baidu Qianfan, Tencent Hunyuan.
An open-source browser plugin that inserts an AI chat area on the video playback page of Youtube, providing a summary of the current video, and you can also ask questions about the current video.
a website that chats with PDF files, codeopen source.（@hehuangzSubmission）
4、MiGPT
a command-line tool for a Xiao Ai speaker, connects the speaker to ChatGPT and Doubao, transforming it into a dedicated voice assistant.（@idootopSubmission）
Tool
Web-based SQLite Database Browser.
An open-source speech library that supports various platforms (including mobile and PC) for local speech recognition, speech synthesis, sound event detection, language detection, etc. (Submitted by @csukuangfj)
A browser extension that provides a Cookie manager, allowing easy editing, searching, monitoring, and exporting of Cookies. (Submitted by @Dolov)
VS Code extension for image management, supporting compression, search, cropping, finding similar images, previewing large images, and more features. (Submitted by @hemengke1997)
5, Rin
A blog project based on the full stack of Cloudflare Pages + Workers + D1 + R2, see demo. (Submitted by @OXeu)
Web-based HDMI capture card, also usable as a Webcam viewer, for processing input video/audio on the web, while providing a Tauri-packed client.（@canwdev Submitted）
7、ShotEasy
Online image file compressor, supports batch drag-in or folder import for images, code open-source.（@CH563 Submitted）
A JavaScript table library for generating interactive web tables.
9、Toolong
A command-line tool for viewing log files.
10、Dozzle
A lightweight Docker log viewing tool.
Resources
1、National Administrative Region Boundary Data
Free download of national provincial, municipal, county administrative boundary data, API interface real-time updates, suitable for map applications such as echarts, viewcode repository。（@TangSY submitted）
A programmer job aggregation website, collecting from various social platforms/communities。（@Yidoon submitted）
3、Biao Bing College English Grammar
Online reading of "Biao Bing College English Grammar".
4、Understanding Deep Learning（Understanding Deep Learning）
Free English e-books for reading, an introductory textbook for deep learning. Similar books include 《Dive into Deep Learning》.
Image
In 1975, the Research Institute for Chinese Character Information Processing at Peking University was established, aiming to create an "Information Processing and Input System for Chinese Characters," researching how to input Chinese characters into computers.
At that time, computers used English keyboards, which could only input English letters, so they considered inventing a "Chinese character keyboard" that could input Chinese characters.
They developed more than ten designs for Chinese keyboards and finally settled on one with 256 keys. Among them, 29 keys were used for various functions, such as the return key and space bar, while the remaining 227 keys were used for text input.
The keyboard includes 423 complete Chinese characters and 264 character radicals. It can input a total of 7,282 characters, with the design team estimating that this accounts for over 90% of daily-use Chinese characters.
In this character set, the 423 most commonly used characters can be input with a single keystroke; 2,930 characters require two keystrokes; another 3,106 characters require three keystrokes; the remaining 823 characters need four to five keystrokes.
2. The disappearance of skeuomorphic icons
Many early icons were skeuomorphic, realistically depicting real objects, such as the "Save" icon being a disk.
However, in recent years, skeuomorphic icons have gradually disappeared, giving way to simpler, more streamlined designs.
For example, the Gmail icon has transitioned from a skeuomorphic envelope to an abstract letter M.
The Instagram icon has also shifted from a fully skeuomorphic camera to a more simplified design.
Excerpt
AI excels at the following tasks.
（1）Rapidly creating low-value written works, such as drafts of a blog post that outline the overall ideas you want to convey.
（2）Completing basic coding tasks, such as a junior programmer copying code from one project to another or copying code from Stack Overflow.
（3）Summarizing and organizing conferences, papers, and databases. AI is very good at this because it is fundamentally built around the concept of extracting useful information from large amounts of unordered data.
（4）Discovering patterns in large datasets—astronomical observations, protein interactions, clinical outcomes. While AI itself does not make any discoveries, researchers can use them to accelerate their own discoveries.
(5) AI is an amazing talker, capable of going on indefinitely, and is knowledgeable about every topic without judgment, and responds quickly!
The biggest risk of AI lies in their inability to say "I don't know."
What happens when AI encounters something it has never seen before? Since there are no existing patterns to follow, it simply guesses based on the general rules reflected by past patterns. Therefore, its response may be vague, strange, or inappropriate. We call this phenomenon hallucination.
It is unsettling that AI will not tell you which parts are its hallucinations and which are facts.
If you ask AI to summarize some research and provide citations, it might fabricate non-existent papers and authors, making it impossible for you to distinguish.
Moreover, according to the current construction of AI models, there is no practical way to prevent hallucinations.
Speech
1,
Modern civilization relies on undersea fiber optic cables. If one day, all undersea fiber optic cables break simultaneously, modern civilization would immediately stop functioning.
Banks and governments would be unable to transfer funds between countries because the international settlement system completes transactions through undersea fiber optic cables. In most parts of the world, people would find their credit cards no longer valid, and ATMs would be unable to dispense cash. As a result, the financial system would freeze immediately, monetary transactions would cease, and stock exchanges would close.
2、
China is making every effort in all fields. Because over 1 billion Chinese people are not high-income, they have no choice but to engage in the fiercest competition in everything. Such examples are numerous, including semiconductors, electric vehicles, 5G, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, shipbuilding, high-speed rail, the internet, solar panels, and more.
3、
Don't deceive yourself into thinking that the company will take care of everyone. The nature of the company determines that it must ensure normal operation even without any specific individual. For those who seek self-identity from the company's work, the outcome might be very harsh.
-- "My Career is Ending, What Did I Learn?"
4、
If you do something and feel immense pain, and all methods to alleviate the pain have failed, then you can reflect on why you came here in the first place.
-- "The Most Terrifying Ocean Voyage in the World"
Looking Back on Past Years
The Coolest LEGO Creations（2023 #256）
How to Move Beyond Disappointment and Doubt（2022 #206）
Graphics Card Shortage and Cross-Industry Competition（2021 #156）
Digital Nomads（2020 #106）
（Complete）