Original link: http://www.ruanyifeng.com/blog/2023/03/weekly-issue-246.html
Here is a record of the technology content worth sharing every week, released on Friday.
This journal is open source and contributions are welcome. The weekly magazine also has a service called “Who’s Recruiting” , which publishes programmer recruitment information. For cooperative promotion, please email ([email protected]).
cover picture
Pedestrians walked through bags of rubbish piling up on the streets of Paris this week as cleaners went on strike. How many days can a modern city last if no one cleans up the garbage? ( via )
Topic of the Week: Never Lost Online Identity
1,
In film and television works, everyone may have seen such a plot: someone wakes up from a coma, loses his memory, and can’t remember “who am I” anyway.
He does not know his name, age, address, ID card or other evidence, nor any insiders.
In this way, he became a person without identity and lost everything that once belonged to him.
However, such plots are rare, because now there are DNA databases, and you can know who you are by looking up your DNA. Even if you can’t find your own person, you can find your relatives.
The question of “who am I” has largely been resolved. You will always be you, and your identity will never be lost.
2,
However, in addition to social identities, people now have online identities. The loss of online identity is a more real problem.
An online identity is your Internet account number. If you lose it, you lose everything you have under that account, and you may even disappear from the Internet.
In the future, the plot of the film and television drama will probably become as follows: a certain person wakes up from a coma, loses his memory, and cannot remember his screen name no matter what.
Without his online identity, his online assets, contacts, and activity records are all lost.
3.
The risk of losing your online identity is actually greater than you think.
People don’t necessarily realize that your online identity doesn’t really belong to you, and it can be not only lost and forgotten, but also taken away.
Current Internet services generally require users to register with a mobile phone number or email address. Neither of these things really belong to the user.
The mobile phone number belongs to the telecommunications service provider, and the mailbox belongs to the mailbox service provider and domain name service provider. If they take back your mobile phone number, email address, and domain name, your online identity will be troublesome. If it cannot be changed, it may be lost.
4.
Not only does the name of the account not belong to you, but the legal ownership of the account does not belong to you.
For example, the ownership of WeChat accounts belongs to Tencent . Article 7.1.2 of the WeChat service agreement clearly states:
“The ownership of the WeChat account belongs to Tencent, and the user only obtains the right to use the WeChat account after completing the application and registration procedures.”
Basically, the accounts of various network services belong to the service provider, and users only have the right to use them.
Therefore, service providers can unilaterally suspend or cancel your account at any time, which is completely legal. This is the case with Trump being banned from Twitter.
5.
If we don’t really own our online identities, we don’t really own everything on the Internet that we put our name on.
So, is there a way to make the online identity truly belong to the user, completely under your control, and no one else can take it away, and it will never be lost?
The answer is that there is a way, and it has been realized.
The method is that you use a key pair as your network identity, the public key is your user ID, and the private key is used for authentication.
This ensures that each user’s identity is unique, as long as the private key is not leaked, no one can take away your account.
In fact, the identity system of cryptocurrency is designed in this way. Users use wallets to represent their identities. The number of each wallet is the user’s public key, and the corresponding private key must be used to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrency. This guarantees you absolute control over your wallet.
A while ago, there was an up and coming social network called Nostr .
You can speak on it and communicate with others just like you can use Twitter. The difference is that its account is everyone’s public key, and it can set up services by itself, so there is no such thing as an account being shut down, and there is no binding relationship between the account and the domain name.
6.
If everyone chooses the public key as their account, it is not difficult to imagine that everyone’s public key can be put on the blockchain. In the future, looking up someone’s online identity will be as simple as searching the blockchain.
In fact, this is the best use of blockchain I can think of. The only problem is that blockchain reading is free, but writing requires a fee.
We can think of the cost of writing as the registration fee of the network identity. As long as you pay once, your identity can be checked anytime and anywhere, no one can tamper with it, and it will never be lost.
7.
After reading this, careful readers will say that this still does not solve the scene at the beginning of the article.
If you suffer from amnesia and forget your public key, isn’t your online identity still lost?
In fact, someone has come up with a solution to this problem, and he is Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which is now in full swing.
He co-founded the WorldCoin project in 2020 to solve this problem.
At the heart of the project is a business called World ID , which aims to provide everyone with a global online identity.
The specific method is to scan the user’s iris, store the user’s biological information into the WorldCoin blockchain, and generate a key pair for the user as the network ID.
In this way, even if you lose your memory, you only need to scan your iris to retrieve your public key and get your online identity.
World ID just released the SDK this month, and it is officially in operation. If you are willing to have your iris scanned by it, you can get your World ID. Interested students can pay attention to it. It is hoped that this practice of “key pair as network identity” can be promoted and popularized.
Technology dynamics
1. Moon time
In the next ten years, multiple lunar projects will be carried out at the same time, and they need to communicate with each other, such as the communication between multiple lunar rovers.
Currently, all lunar devices use Earth time. The European Space Agency is considering establishing an independent lunar time and lunar positioning system.
It is equivalent to the GPS of the moon. It can accurately locate the location and course of action of an object on the surface of the moon at a certain moment without passing through the earth.
Obviously, in addition to being convenient for machines, lunar time should also be convenient for humans to use. However, the revolution and rotation period of the moon is about 28 days, so it is still difficult to combine it with the earth’s time naturally.
2. Anti-cheating measures in the Philippines
In a university in the Philippines, students cheated on exams and copied each other.
One teacher thought of a countermeasure, stipulating that students can only take the exam if they wear hats that can cover the corners of the eyes on both sides.
In the end, the students DIYed all kinds of hats, and the photos went viral online, getting thousands of likes and being reported by the news media. According to teachers, the exams worked well and no students were caught cheating.
A foreigner programmer did it himself and made a giant air filter at home, dedicated to the ceiling fan.
His method is actually very simple, that is, to set up a HEPA filter around the ceiling fan.
The advantage of this is that the blades of the ceiling fan are long, so it is quieter, there is no noise, and the air filtration effect is not bad. After testing, it can effectively reduce the indoor PM2.5 index.
In February 2021, the US Perseverance rover successfully landed on Mars. Inside this Mars rover, there is an oxygen machine called MOXIE, which is used to test whether oxygen can be produced on Mars.
According to the latest report disclosed by the US government, this oxygen machine has successfully operated 7 times, and can produce 6 grams of oxygen on Mars per hour, enough for an adult to breathe for 10 minutes.
The Martian atmosphere is filled with carbon dioxide, and this oxygen machine uses electrolysis to break down carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon monoxide.
If the evaluation proves that this method is feasible, the United States will build a larger oxygen machine to produce a large amount of oxygen on Mars before humans land on Mars.
article
1. How to run LLaMA on a personal computer (English)
LLaMA is Meta’s AI model, and its effect is claimed to exceed ChatGPT. It was cracked just after the internal beta was opened.
This article teaches you how to run this model on your personal computer to have your own local ChatGPT. It doesn’t even need a GPU, it just runs on the CPU.
2. The initial-letter property of CSS (English)
CSS has added an initial-letter property, which is used to set the style of the initial letter.
3. How was WordPress born? (English)
This article introduces how 19-year-old American programmer Matt Mullenweg created the open source software WordPress in 2003. The content of the article is quite exciting.
4. The Birth of Replit (English)
Replit is a programming IDE that runs on the web. The author is a Jordanian who immigrated to the United States. This article introduces his entrepreneurial process.
5. I made a NAS with Orange Pi (English)
From hardware to software, the author made a NAS network storage device from scratch by himself, which is very powerful.
6. History of Web Browser Engines (English)
This article sorts out the browser engines that have appeared in history.
AI related software
Tools for optimizing input prompts for generative AI. (Contributed by @hanxiao )
2. Chatbox
OpenAI API cross-platform desktop client, mainly used as Prompt Debugging Console. (Contributed by @Bin-Huang )
3. Chatty
A command-line tool that supports the use of one command to complete various operations related to ChatGPT. (Contributed by @cosin2077 )
4. PowerGPT
A Windows PowerShell tool, enter the operation you want to complete, and it will use AI to return the corresponding Windows command line command. (Contributed by @ouromoros )
5. Writely
A Chrome browser plugin, similar to Notion AI, that enables writing assistance on any editor page. (Contributed by @anc95 )
6. Smart copywriting assistant
An open source ChatGPT front-end form page, input prompts, and automatically generate copywriting. (Contributed by @CatsAndMice )
tool
1. Jami
An open source team collaboration software that can text chat, video call, screen sharing, etc.
MacOS system PHP and Web development environment management tools, which facilitate the startup/restart of each software, configuration viewing and modification, log troubleshooting, etc. (Contributed by @xpf0000 )
3. Huntly
A self-hosted information management tool that can subscribe to RSS and automatically save browsed web pages, and supports multi-dimensional classification and search. (Contributed by @lcomplete )
4. CircuitJS1
Web page circuit simulator, you can add electronic components, export circuits, share URLs, etc. (Contributed by @jerrylususu )
5. RxEditor
An open source visual low-code front-end tool that can drag and drop to generate and edit components, currently only supports React, see Demo . (Contributed by @rxdrag )
6. Zarm
React-based enterprise-level mobile UI group library. (Contributed by @dominicleo )
resource
This site provides User Agent strings for various latest versions of browsers.
2. web Яcade
An open source website that allows you to play games from old game consoles (Nintendo, Sega, etc.) on the web, and upload game ROMs by yourself.
A four-day Rust course written by the Android team, from basic syntax to advanced topics, including how Rust can be used for Android development on the final day.
4. A Gentle Introduction to Assembly Language Programming
An open-source tutorial in English that introduces C/C++ learners to ARM 64’s assembly language.
picture
Students of San Francisco State University may not know that there is one of the oldest live cameras in the world on the fourth floor of the school’s administrative building, which is still live broadcasting campus conditions on the Internet until today.
In 1994, a graduate student set up the camera. At first, it was just to check online whether the coffee pot in the office was full or empty, and whether he needed to bring his own coffee.
Later, he began to broadcast live on campus. With his stay in school, the broadcast lasted for more than 20 years. In 2019, he announced that he would take the camera offline.
The news outlets picked up on it, the school eventually decided to take it over, and it’s been live-streamed to this day.
You can watch it live on the FogCam website .
abstract
Wind power is being developed in full swing all over the world.
However, there is a prerequisite for wind power generation, that is, there must be a steady stream of wind. So, is it possible for the wind to appear still?
In fact, during the summer and autumn of 2021, “wind and drought” will occur in most parts of Europe. Wind speeds in many places were at least around 15% slower than the annual average, with the UK experiencing its windiest period in 60 years.
In September last year, wind power still accounted for 18% of the UK’s electricity generation, but in September last year, this proportion dropped sharply to 2%. To make up for the energy shortfall, the UK has been forced to restart two mothballed coal plants.
Wind speeds are falling around the world, with a 2.3% decline per decade from 1978 to 2010, according to a study. However, it rebounded from 2010 to 2019. From 7 mph to 7.4 mph.
Still, scientists believe wind speeds will continue to slow down in the future, with global average wind speeds likely to drop by as much as 10 percent by 2100.
The reason involves a fundamental question: why is there wind on the earth?
The main reason for the wind belts on the earth is that the temperature is uneven: the poles are cold, and the tropics are warm. This temperature difference causes the air to move, which creates wind.
But due to global warming, the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics is decreasing because the poles (especially the Arctic) are warming faster than the tropics.
Another reason for the decrease in wind speed may be the increase in the “roughness of the earth’s surface”. The number and size of urban buildings around the world is increasing, which blocks the flow of wind.
Slower wind speeds have serious consequences, not just for wind power generation. (1) Strong winds can alleviate urban pollution and replace stagnant air with fresh air. (2) Slower winds will make heat waves harder to ease. (3) Slow winds also make it harder for the plane to take off because the pilot relies on headwinds to get into the air. At an airport in Greece, the maximum take-off weight of an Airbus 320 has decreased by 4 tons over the past 30 years due to easing headwinds and rising temperatures.
remarks
1,
What the artist sees is not the world as it is, but something richer, simpler, and more powerful.
A work of art is not meant to make the viewer relive reality, but to create something out of reality, to convey a stronger emotion to the viewer.
2,
A common misconception is that expired food should not be eaten.
But in fact, most of the time, the shelf life only indicates when the food is freshest, not when it is inedible, and has little to do with food safety. Throwing away food that has just expired will cause a lot of waste.
— “Four Common Misconceptions About Food”
3.
I don’t consider using polls to select policies. I think this shows a weakness in the minds of the leaders and their inability to chart a course.
Whichever way the media encourages people to go, you go with it. You are not a leader.
— Lee Kuan Yew
4.
Action is the antidote to despair. (Action is the antidote to despair.)
—Joan Baez , American musician
5.
Some software companies can turn the simplest software project into a series of painstaking processes, involving endless meetings and involving a large number of “stakeholders”.
These companies kill the fun and productivity of programming through a series of rituals and processes that must be completed each week.
this week in history
Russia’s HTTPS certificate problem (2022 #199)
New energy vehicles, who will be the winner? (2021 #149)
Young people who struggled for exams (2020 #97)
Is eating and broadcasting considered a formal job? (2019 #47)
thank you
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(over)
document information
- Copyright Notice: Free Reprint-Non-Commercial-Non-Derivative-Attribution ( Creative Commons 3.0 License )
- Date of publication: March 17, 2023
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