Nvidia and Microsoft asked Washington to avoid broad restrictions on open AI models, in a rare point of agreement between two giants competing for AI infrastructure. The debate revives the question of whether publishing a model’s weights amounts to exporting controlled technology, just as Chinese open models gain ground.
Skip lists are a probabilistic data structure that Redis uses to implement sorted sets and that LevelDB uses in its MemTable. Instead of balancing a tree with rotations, each node flips a coin to decide how many levels of shortcuts to have. The result is expected O(log n) performance with an implementation much simpler than an AVL or red-black tree.
Universities in the United States have returned to handwritten exams after years of digital assignments, due to the widespread use of generative AI. Neal Stephenson explains in his essay how handwriting engages the brain more, and which fountain pen or rollerball works best for writing a lot without tiring your hand.
Neal Stephenson has spent 25 years composing his novels with a fountain pen on paper and never felt the classic writer’s cramp. His recent essay explains which instrument to use, which paper to avoid, and why the right amount of friction is key, just as schools return to handwritten exams to curb AI use.
Learn WebGPU for C++ is open source documentation that teaches native 3D graphics programming in C++, using the same API that runs inside browsers. It covers Windows, macOS, and Linux with CMake, and lets you choose between the wgpu-native and Dawn backends. The same native code also compiles to WebAssembly with Emscripten.
