Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Phil Salvador @philsalv.bsky.social · 3d

‪It's October, which means it's time to play ｓｋｕｌｌ, a game that is only available in October ultimatewalrus.com#skull

An isometric game with skulls in it. The graphics are done in the 4-color DOS CGA palette (red, orange, green, black).

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Kyle Barron @kylebarron.dev · 1d

New blog post! kylebarron.dev/blog/fast-py...

This dives into performance pitfalls of Python bindings, why projects like Lonboard are so fast, and why I care about Apache Arrow so much. The post is high level and you don't need to know C/C++/Rust to understand it!

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Bryce @brycemecum.com · 1d

This is really amazing!

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Antoine Pitrou @pitrou.net · 1d

Great news for Arrow (and more work for us 😄).
Also, those work items also implicitly apply to #ApacheParquet. @julien.ledem.net

QuantStack @quantstack.bsky.social · 1d

The Sovereign Tech Agency backs Apache Arrow's Future with QuantStack!

This funding will empower Arrow maintainers at QuantStack, @pitrou.net and @raulcumplido.bsky.social, to advance security, modularity, and long-term sustainability of @arrow.apache.org.

medium.com/@QuantStack/...

The Sovereign Tech Agency Invests in Apache Arrow’s Future with QuantStack

We are thrilled to announce that the Sovereign Tech Fund is providing critical funding to sustain and improve Apache Arrow, an essential…

medium.com

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ceej @ceej.online · Apr 21

the Wisconsin supper club is about as close as you can get in modern America to experiencing a medieval tavern

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torcado @torcado.com · 2d

I made a tool that lets you find the treasure in your computer.

It's called Windows Explorer 2

torcado.itch.io/windows-explorer-2

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Bryce @brycemecum.com · 4d

How much do you like the Wasm decoders thing? It seems like a broadly applicable pattern, even outside the file formats space.

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Openscapes @openscapes.bsky.social · 6d

📣 Come work @openscapes.bsky.social ! We're looking for a NASA Openscapes Team Member to improve access & use of NASA suborbital data thru reproducible notebook clinics. Apply by October 26, 2025. Start December 2025.

Details including pay rate: openscapes.org/connect#work...
Please share!

connect – Openscapes

openscapes.org

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MondySpartan @mondyspartan.bsky.social · 10d

Spotify circa early 2000 (mockup)

Sign in prompt (+ Spotify icon at the desktop)

Main interface, showing an album overview and a player window.

Displaying search results. The player can be seen being minimized to its compact form at the bottom bar when it's closed.

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Bryce @brycemecum.com · 12d

Yes! It also totally misses the stochastic part of LLMs and the value of repeated prompting. And I'd much rather route my review through OpenRouter and compare a few models while I'm at it.

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Andrew Lamb @andrewlamb1111.bsky.social · 12d

CloudFlare's Distributed R2 SQL engine's is a pretty good exemplar of how to build a serverless database to process petabytes in seconds using Apache DataFusion and Apache Parquet

blog.cloudflare.com/r2-sql-deep-...

R2 SQL: a deep dive into our new distributed query engine

R2 SQL provides a built-in, serverless way to run ad-hoc analytic queries against your R2 Data Catalog. This post dives deep under the Iceberg into how we built this distributed engine, from its metad...

blog.cloudflare.com

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Katie Drummond @katie-drummond.bsky.social · 13d

"This used to be the best job I’ve ever had, the best environment I’ve ever had, the best culture I’ve ever had—and they fucking ruined it.

I will never ever forget how much they ruined it."

The Story of DOGE, as Told by Federal Workers

WIRED spoke with more than 200 federal workers in dozens of agencies to learn what happened as the Department of Government Efficiency tore through their offices.

www.wired.com

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Dewey Dunnington @paleolimbot.bsky.social · 13d

I'm beyond excited for this! Built on Apache DataFusion and Apache Arrow, a composable single-node analytical database with spatial types as first-class citizens. GeoPandas IO, KNN joins, CRS support, R/Python bindings, and top-notch lazy GeoParquet reads.

sedona.apache.org/latest/blog/...

Introducing SedonaDB: A single-node analytical database engine with geospatial as a first-class citizen - Apache Sedona

Apache Sedona is a cluster computing system for processing large-scale spatial data. Sedona extends existing cluster computing systems, such as Apache Spark, Apache Flink, and Snowflake, with a set of...

sedona.apache.org

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Cyan Worlds @cyan.com · 14d

Thirty-two years ago today, Myst was released.
Happy Birthday, little guy!
🎂

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Apache Arrow @arrow.apache.org · 14d

The schedule for the Apache Arrow Summit Paris 25 (October 2nd) is out: www.meetup.com/pydata-paris....
The event is hosted by
@pydataparis.bsky.social organizer of pydata.org/paris2025 (September 30th - October 1st)

We are looking forward to seeing you there and talking about all things Arrow.

Apache Arrow Summit, Thu, Oct 2, 2025, 9:30 AM | Meetup

The day after the PyData Paris conference, we’re excited to host the first-ever Apache Arrow Summit - a gathering dedicated to fostering collaboration and innovation within

www.meetup.com

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Bramus @bram.us · 15d

🎂 Happy 23rd birthday, Firefox

(Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004 but the first version of the thing that lead up to it – Phoenix 0.1 – was released on September 23, 2002)

Screenshot of Phoenix 0.1, later to become Firefox. Screenshot from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#History

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Bryce @brycemecum.com · 16d

Oh?

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Bryce @brycemecum.com · 16d

hrm www.seriouseats.com/how-honeycri...

How Honeycrisp Apples Went From Marvel to Mediocre

An investigation into the Honeycrisp apple and how a complex string of events led to a decline in the quality of a beloved apple variety.

www.seriouseats.com

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OKURA Masafumi @okuramasafumi.com · 22d

youtu.be/IaUXMYR5MRg...

My talk at #RailsWorld 2025 was uploaded! I really appreciate their hard work of the team.
This talk includes lots of demos using Neovim to read through the code (not because of DHH using Neovim, I'm a big fan of Vim since years ago😁), hope you enjoy it!

Masafumi Okura - Reading Rails 1.0 Source Code

Rails is great and has been since the very beginning. In terms of technical details, however, Rails 1.0 was very different from Rails 8. Lots of things have ...

www.youtube.com

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Benj Edwards @benjedwards.com · 17d

The Iomega Tower of Power

Zip + Jaz + Ditto

1990s Zip + Jaz + Ditto computer backup drives stacked on a workbench

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Bryce @brycemecum.com · 17d

I feel this. For me, I think it's that that these tools add chrome to my terminal and I'm in the terminal to avoid chrome. To pick on bat, I don't know why I'd run `bat foo` instead of `vi foo`.

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Monterey Bay Aquarium @montereybayaquarium.org · 18d

🦦 Be aware.

PSA: A sea otter shell-ebration is sweeping social media next week! Text📲OTTERMEDIA to 54159 to opt into Aquarium texts and stay hip to the coolest sea otter content all week long.

A PSA-style graphic spelling out jokey otter-themed alternatives to common texting acronyms.

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tj ♏️ahr @tjmahr.com · 18d

Costco has toy warehouses for cats

Two of our cats inside/on top of the cat warehouse

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Ryan Broderick @ryanhatesthis.bsky.social · 20d

In the 2010s, this country's elites were thrown onto social platforms with everyone else and could finally read what we all think about them and it caused them so much psychic damage that they decided to destroy both the internet and democracy to make sure nothing like it ever happened again.

Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 20d

If this is what it took for you to be pushed into fascism you were probably already there

This predates the social media wars of the late 2010s: One Trump appointee told me that a radicalizing experience was being booted out of the Gawker comments section, way back in the day. But as progressive movements swept through social media, others were tossed off Twitter and Facebook for stepping over a variety of lines, from allegations of harassment to claims of election misinformation. Pandemic era public health rules and fevered enforcement cost others their accounts.

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Bryce @brycemecum.com · 19d

This is a good tip! On macOS you can use `say "some phrase"` to get a creepy computer voice to tell you it's done. Or `say -v Zarvox "some phrase"` if you want a really creepy computer voice to tell you it's done.

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