Here is a record of technology content worth sharing every week, published on Fridays.
This magazine is open source and submissions are welcome. There is also a “Who’s Recruiting” service that publishes programmer recruitment information. Please contact via email for cooperation ([email protected]）。
cover
The “League of Legends 15th Anniversary” exhibition held at Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai. (via)
Issues are prohibited, only PR is used
Last week, the PHP framework Laravel announced a new rule: it is prohibited to submit issues, and only Pull Requests can be submitted.
At first glance, this rule seems ridiculous. Users cannot submit issues, how can they report problems? Do you want everyone to understand the source code and solve the problem by themselves?
But if you think about it carefully, you will find that this measure is reasonable and even worthy of promotion.
(1) There are no more junk issues.
If a user is willing to take the time to create a PR, it means that he is more concerned about the issue. Those robots and harassers will only submit spam issues and are not willing to spend more time contributing to the project.
(2) More convenient for maintainers.
Project maintainers get far more information from PRs than from issues, which is more conducive to understanding and solving problems and requires less time.
(3) It does not increase the difficulty of submission for users.
Users can submit PR even if they don’t understand the source code.
He can describe the problem to AI and let AI generate PR. In the AI era, submitting a PR is almost as easy as submitting an issue.
(4) The fundamental reason for banning issues is that open source projects lack resources and cannot cope with the surge in issues.
In the AI era, projects should no longer encourage users to raise problems and expect others to solve them, but should encourage everyone to contribute to the project together.
The longest math program in history
Last week, Anthropic used Claude AI to complete the longest mathematical program in history: a programmatic proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.
In the 17th century, the French mathematician Fermat proposed a famous conjecture: an integer greater than 2 cannot satisfy the following equation.
Later generations of mathematicians found that this conjecture was beyond imagination and impossible to prove. It was not until more than three hundred years later, in 1995, that the British mathematician Andrew Wiles finally proved that Fermat’s last theorem was correct.
Andrew Wiles’s proof is 129 pages long and would take even a professional mathematician several months to read.
Since this proof was proposed, the mathematical community has been working hard to translate it into computer language and implement machine proof, so that the reasoning process of verification can be automated.
This translation project from manual proof to machine proof is also extremely difficult, the workload is huge, and it has not been completed for a long time. Until last week, a research team announced that it took Claude AI 11 days to finally complete the translation of Andrew Wiles’ proof into a Lean language program.
Lean language is a programming language proposed by Microsoft Research in 2013 specifically for mathematical theorem proving.
The researchers originally just wanted to test Claude AI’s mathematical research capabilities, but they did not expect it to actually complete this extremely difficult and unfinished project.
Before proving the final result, Claude first proved more than 30,000 auxiliary theorems, used more than 29,000 of them, consumed billions of Tokens, and the final code was 13 million lines long.
This is the longest mathematical program in history. I can’t imagine how long it would take a team of human mathematicians to write it? All code is now published on GitHub.
The significance of this matter is that there are now a large number of mathematical proofs that cannot be verified to be correct, and even mathematicians take a lot of time to understand them. Now, it turns out that AI can be used to verify that these proofs are correct.
Finally, here is an interview with Andrew Wiles, where he tells his life story and recommends it to everyone.
The interviewer asked him: “You have been exploring for so many years to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem. Now that this journey is over, you must be a little sad, right?”
Andrew replied that it was like feeling relieved after fighting a big battle.
“It is indeed a bit sad, but at the same time, I also have a huge sense of accomplishment and feel that I am finally free. I was so obsessed with this problem that I thought about it all the time – waking up in the morning and going to bed at night – this situation lasted for eight years. It is indeed not easy to think about one thing for a long time. This special journey is finally over now, and my heart is finally at peace.”
Technology trends
1. Tesla sells Cybercab
Tesla launches Cybercab taxi in the United States. According to Musk, Tesla’s main business in the future will no longer be producing cars, but operating driverless taxis.
This week, Tesla announced that the taxis are for sale.
When you buy a self-driving taxi, you don’t buy it for yourself, but for investment. The revenue from each passenger ride is split 50-50 between you and Tesla.
Since these vehicles operate 24 hours a day, Musk has always said that if you buy them, they will make money for you while you sleep.
The problem is that if you buy this car, you need to bear its depreciation and depreciation, and you also need to purchase an additional $15,000 self-driving feature package. It is hard to imagine that such a vehicle that operates all day long can last for several years.
When Tesla sells you a car, it no longer owns the vehicle hardware, but instead operates your vehicle, transforming it from an asset-heavy company to an asset-light company. Your car can also help it earn money while you sleep.
2. Dyson electric toothbrush
Dyson, the company that makes vacuum cleaners and hairdryers, has launched an electric toothbrush.
What’s special about it is that the toothbrush has a camera and a light.
It not only allows you to use your mobile phone to check the condition of your oral cavity, but more importantly, it will automatically determine where to spray water based on the scene captured by the camera to increase cleaning efforts.
I think that since we have already achieved this level, it is better to make an automatic toothbrush. When you open your mouth, it will automatically finish brushing your teeth.
3. AI walking stick
Engineers from the Harvard School of Engineering have invented an AI cane for the blind and visually impaired.
It needs to be used with a mobile phone. The mobile phone uses the camera, GPS, motion and direction sensors to capture real-time data, and then combines it with the navigation software to automatically find the next direction and transmit it to the cane.
The cane emits various beeps to remind the user whether to walk forward, left or right. It also sounds an alarm if the user goes in the wrong direction.
I feel that this invention is indeed valuable for blind people, but it requires the mobile phone to be turned on at all times, and the camera must be able to capture the street. It is better to integrate mobile phone functions into the cane to make a stronger smart cane.
article
1. The tragic story of Lee Holloway (English)
Lee Holloway, born in 1981, is the founding engineer of Cloudflare and is recognized as a technical genius. The picture above shows the three founders of Cloudflare, with him in the middle.
However, at the age of 36, he suffered from dementia praecox, brain atrophy, and later developed to the point where he could not even speak fully.
2. Open Model 2026 Summer Review (English)
Hugging face analyzes the latest development of open models and can understand the current position of Chinese models in the entire AI market.
3. I break down RSA keys from the 1990s (English)
The security of Internet communications depends entirely on whether the key can be cracked. The author attempted to crack a 512-bit RSA key issued in 1999 (current keys are at least 2048 bits).
As a result, it took 32 hours for his desktop computer to be successfully cracked. If you use a GPU cluster, it can be completed in about an hour.
Therefore, cryptocurrency is not safe in the long run, and the encryption algorithm must be upgraded from time to time.
4. The initial-scale attribute is not required in HTML (English)
Web page adaptive viewport, no longer required to specifyinitial-scale=1.0just writewidth=device-widthThat’s it.
When the early iPhone was in landscape orientation, the page would not automatically change width. To solve this problem, the initial-scale attribute was introduced.
5. How to deal with JavaScript recursion (English)
When using recursion, an error will be reported if there are too many nested stacks. Tail recursion can solve this problem. However, the JS runtime currently does not support tail recursion. This article teaches you what to do.
6. I built a studio in the backyard (English)
An American programmer built a simple studio in his backyard. He documented the construction process in detail, complete with photos.
tool
1、FlyonUI
A page component library based on Tailwind CSS.
2、endlessh-go
A tool to defend against malicious SSH logins that does not block those requests, but keeps them waiting, thereby increasing the cost to the other party. It supports Grafana panels.
3、PuTTYgen
Tool for generating key pairs for Windows platforms.
4、gh gfm-preview
A Go language program used to create a new service and view the Markdown rendering results.
5、caddy-waf
The application firewall (waf) plug-in of the web server software Caddy supports regular rules and IP/DNS/ASN/country blacklists to block malicious requests. (Contributed by @abriziosalmi)
6. One breath
A web application deployed on Cloudwork Worker uses iOS “shortcut commands” to automatically jump to the page before opening an App, and then decides whether to open the App after 10 seconds. (Contributed by @Defiabell)
7、ctty
An open source terminal application that manages SSH, serial port, Telnet and other connections in the terminal graphical interface. (Contributed by @zsuroy)
8、vet
A Bash script checking tool, you can use it to run scripts downloaded from the Internet. It will tell you what changes have been made to the script, and it will only be run after your approval.
9、Crepe
A replacement for the grep command, used to search for specified strings in text files, said to be 50 times faster than grep.
10、Inbucket
An application for testing the email sending function. Embed it in your application and use it to test the application’s email sending function. It comes with its own web backend.
resource
1. Linux Basics for Hackers
An English tutorial that explains basic concepts of Linux in plain language and can be used as an introductory textbook.
2. How DNSSEC works
This English-language website uses extensive comics to explain the mechanism of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), which prevents DNS poisoning.
3、Gorgeous GRUB
This repository collects various splash screen themes for the system startup software Grub.
picture
1. The peculiar architecture of American highways
The United States is known as a country on wheels. Without a car, it would be difficult to move.
People often build strange houses along the highway, hoping to attract the attention of passing tourists.
The Library of Congress has a photo collection that contains 11,710 color photos of this type of house, which you can view.
abstract
1. Before you start building anything, ask yourself three questions
I’ve been in product development for 10 years, and I’ve developed products that failed because they were either too complex or lacked distinctive features. After making these mistakes, I came up with three constraints.
Later, before building anything, I asked myself three questions. Only if these three questions are answered in the affirmative will I develop this thing.
(1) Can the product introduction be written as a one-page summary?
If a project description takes more than one page to write, it is too complex and should not be developed.
(2) Can core technology be separated from products?
Products will continue to adjust direction, while core technology remains consistent and continues to develop.
Separating the core technology from the product forces you to think beyond the limitations of the product itself.
For example, the core technology of mobile phones is mobile communications. A certain cell phone may fail, but mobile communications will not.
(3) Does the product have a core feature?
This feature is clear and gives your product a unique personality. For example, the game MineCraft is made entirely of blocks, and IKEA offers flat-pack, self-assembled furniture.
The feature you choose allows you to narrow your decision-making space and focus on the issues that really matter. If your product has no features, or chooses the wrong features, you will create a bloated product that tries to cover everything.
speech
1、
AI replaces writers. I didn’t speak out because I am not a writer.
Then, AI replaced the artist, and I didn’t speak out because I was not an artist.
Now that AI has replaced programmers, there is no one left to speak for me.
— “Then AI replaces programmers”
2、
Currently, one out of every five newly registered top-level domain names is a fraudulent domain name.
— “Malicious Registration of Domain Names”
3、
People let AI solve a large number of mathematical problems, but mathematical problems are non-renewable, and good problems have become scarce today.
Automated problem-solving tools do not increase human mathematical thinking and harm the future development of mathematics.
— Terence Tao, famous mathematician
4、
The world is “electrifying”, and batteries and electric motors form the basis of life. Coupled with the rapid development of AI, this means that many “unconscious things” around us will become intelligent and able to think and move independently.
— Noah Smith, U.S. economic analyst
5、
There are two kinds of science. “Science 1” is an idealized pursuit of truth, while “Science 2” is actual scientific practice, more of a social activity that takes into account social and political realities.
If you are a PhD student, you must know that you are majoring in Science 2, not Science 1.
— “Doctoral students should not try to reform science”
Review of previous years
Traffic monetization is collapsing (#365)
A Google exit report (#315)
Behind WiFi is LiFi (#265)
The internet’s favorite behavioral patterns (#215)
(over)
