Published: 2026-02-17 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses the efforts of specialist online investigator Greg Squire and his team from the US Department of Homeland Security Investigations to rescue a 12-year-old girl named Lucy, who is being abused and has her images shared on the dark web. Despite challenges in identifying her location due to the abuser's careful alterations to the images, Squire observed key details within the disturbing material, specifically identifying certain electrical outlets that indicated Lucy was in North America. The article highlights the investigation's complexity and the necessity

Published: 2026-02-17 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the impact of technological advancements in the early 1990s on the video game industry, particularly the transition from arcades to home consoles. With the introduction of 3D technology, such as the Super FX chip, excitement for gaming soared. However, while arcades showcased cutting-edge experiences, home consoles began to adopt similar technology, leading to a decline in arcade viability. The launch of 5th generation consoles allowed for high-quality game ports, diminishing the unique arcade experience and accelerating

Published: 2026-02-17 | Origin: Hacker News

FastTab is a custom task switcher designed to address the slow performance of the default "Gallery" view in the Plasma desktop environment on X11, which can take up to a second to open. Built using Zig and OpenGL, FastTab runs as a daemon for instant responsiveness to keyboard shortcuts. The creator, frustrated by the delay, leveraged AI assistance from Claude to prototype and refine the task switcher despite having no prior experience with Zig or X11 internals. The collaboration with AI highlights how

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The content describes the daily work diaries of Reuben P. Box, a US Forest Service Ranger in the North Butte Protection Unit of Lassen National Forest, covering the years 1927 to 1945. The diaries detail various activities such as forest management, fire suppression, law enforcement, and road construction, as well as insights into daily life in the northern California mountains. The diaries have been digitized by Lance Orner, with handwriting transcribed using Mistral OCR and text summaries and indexes

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

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Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The post discusses how to safely run a personal AI assistant, NanoClaw, which monitors WhatsApp messages, using Docker Sandboxes. The new shell sandbox type allows users to operate in a secure, isolated environment without granting full system access. It provides a minimalistic bash shell within a microVM, enabling users to customize their environment with the necessary development tools. NanoClaw, designed with security in mind, can be enhanced by running its processes in this Docker sandbox, which limits workspace visibility to a

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a new free and open-source application named FreeFlow, created as an alternative to paid transcription apps like Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, and Monologue. FreeFlow offers features such as context-aware transcription, accurately recognizing names based on the context, and operates without a server to ensure user privacy. The application utilizes Groq’s API for transcription and post-processing, which enables faster response times compared to using local models alone. FreeFlow is available for download on Macs and is licensed under

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on three years of using synthetic data to address data issues, expressing frustration at the lack of tangible progress. They argue that instead of being a revolutionary solution, synthetic data generation has become an expensive and flawed approach requiring constant oversight. While the initial promise was to create perfectly anonymous and scalable data without compliance issues, the reality involves ongoing challenges and unforeseen biases. The hoped-for privacy benefits have also diminished, as research reveals vulnerabilities in supposedly "differentially private" datasets. Ultimately, the

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses a new addition to the Toy Optimizer series, focusing on enhancing alias analysis through type information for efficient memory access optimization. Previously, the optimizer utilized load-store forwarding with a coarse approach to manage heap memory by separating information into alias classes based on read/write offsets. This time, a lightweight form of type-based alias analysis (TBAA) will be integrated to further enhance the optimizer's efficiency in reasoning about memory. The author references a hierarchical heap effect representation, which divides memory into distinct

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: Hacker News

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Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on the challenges faced in developing a highly requested feature for Sniffnet: process identification, which reveals the applications responsible for network connections by examining open TCP/UDP ports. Despite seeming straightforward, the implementation has proven complex due to platform-specific requirements and a lack of suitable Rust libraries. Existing tools like netstat and lsof are not viable solutions for real-time monitoring, as they are not designed for library use and do not provide all necessary information. The key challenge lies in creating a system

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses an alternative approach to database transactions known as batching (or pipelining), which strikes a balance between interactive transactions and common table expressions (CTEs). It highlights the inefficiencies of the N+1 query problem, where placing a database query inside a loop results in multiple round trips, adversely impacting performance. Although CTEs can reduce these round trips, they can complicate code structure. The author provides an example comparing traditional interactive transactions, which can incur multiple round trips, with C

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the concept of "bloat" in PostgreSQL databases, which refers to the phenomenon of increasing disk usage despite a stable number of rows. This is not due to a bug, but rather an inherent aspect of PostgreSQL's design involving its storage architecture, which utilizes fixed-size pages (8 KB blocks) to store data as tuples (physical representations of rows). When a row is inserted into the database, it fills the first available page. If that page fills up, PostgreSQL alloc

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The author created Bluehood, a Bluetooth scanner designed to expose the information leaks associated with having Bluetooth enabled on devices. Motivated by a strong focus on privacy, they built the tool to understand the data being unintentionally shared, especially in light of a recent critical vulnerability in Bluetooth audio devices disclosed by researchers, which highlights the risks associated with always-on Bluetooth. Despite the normalization of having Bluetooth enabled in various devices such as phones and smartwatches, the author emphasizes that users are often unaware of the information

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

In the field of software design, making tradeoffs is a nuanced process that isn't always explicitly taught. The author reflects on this challenge while sharing their own experience with a project called Dumbo, an Open Source tool aimed at simplifying the use of databases across different relational systems. Dumbo serves as a shared dependency for other projects, such as Pongo and Emmett, and aims to abstract the complexities of SQL databases so developers can focus more on their applications. Dumbo requires setting up a specific database driver

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses system design and AI implementation, focusing on the important tradeoffs in these areas. The author shares insights from their experience in building products, aiming to help others avoid the mistakes they encountered along the way.

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses two different approaches to regular expression matching, highlighting their contrasting performance characteristics. The widely used method, exemplified by Perl, exhibits drastically slower matching times compared to the Thompson NFA approach, which is used in some implementations like awk and grep. When matching a certain regular expression (a?3a3) against a 29-character string, Perl takes over sixty seconds, while the Thompson NFA does so in just twenty microseconds—making it a million times faster for this specific case

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: Hacker News

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Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

Kokraf is a browser-based 3D modeling tool designed for real-time creativity, catering to hobbyists, designers, and developers. It offers an intuitive interface for modeling and viewing 3D objects without requiring installation. Users can try it live at kokraf.com, ideally using a desktop browser like Chrome. For local use, the project can be run by opening it in Visual Studio Code and using the Live Server extension to view the index.html file. The application encourages feedback and provides documentation for

Published: 2026-02-16 | Origin: /r/programming

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