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Halt and Catch Fire: TV's Best Drama You've Probably Never Heard Of (2021)

Published: 2026-02-18 | Origin: Hacker News

**Summary:** "Halt and Catch Fire," a show that debuted in 2014, explores themes of human connection, the challenge of change, and the journey of characters within the tech industry. Despite poor initial viewership and declining ratings, the series evolved from an antihero-centric drama into a deeper ensemble narrative focused on empathy and collaboration in creation. The story follows Joe MacMillan, a charismatic but troubled salesman, as he partners with a struggling engineer and a rebellious coder to build a competitive computer

Thousands of CEOs just admitted AI had no impact on employment or productivity

Published: 2026-02-18 | Origin: Hacker News

In 1987, economist Robert Solow pointed out a surprising stagnation in productivity growth despite advances in technology related to the Information Age. Following innovations like transistors and microprocessors in the 1960s, productivity growth decreased significantly—from 2.9% (1948-1973) to 1.1% (post-1973). This paradox, known as Solow's productivity paradox, highlighted the contradiction of seeing the computer age's presence without corresponding productivity improvements. Recent data

Beyond Vector Databases: Choosing the Right Data Store for RAG

Published: 2026-02-18 | Origin: /r/programming

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Minimal x86 Kernel Zig

Published: 2026-02-18 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a minimal bare-metal kernel developed entirely in Zig, without any assembly files. This kernel operates on x86 (i386) machines using the Multiboot 1 protocol, displaying a colored greeting on a VGA text-mode display before halting the CPU. It is designed for cross-compilation from any host, including Apple Silicon Macs, and can be tested immediately with QEMU without requiring an ISO image, GRUB, or bootloader binaries. The project has no external dependencies as Zig

Open-source game engine Godot is drowning in 'AI slop' code contributions: 'I don't know how long we can keep it up'

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

Open-source projects like Godot are experiencing an influx of contributors submitting AI-generated code, often without a full understanding of the changes being made. This situation has raised concerns among project maintainers regarding the quality and comprehensibility of the contributions. The content also promotes various newsletters for gaming and tech updates, including specialized ones for GTA 6 and Nintendo's Switch 2.

BarraCUDA Open-source CUDA compiler targeting AMD GPUs

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

The content discusses an open-source CUDA compiler designed for AMD GPUs, capable of compiling .cu files directly into GFX11 machine code without relying on LLVM or a translation layer like HIP. With a codebase of 15,000 lines of C99, the compiler produces ELF .hsaco binaries for AMD RDNA 3 architectures. Despite the complexity involved in creating this tool, it successfully implements several CUDA features, validated against LLVM for accuracy. The author emphasizes rigorous coding standards with no dynamic memory allocation

WebSocket: Build Real-Time Apps the Right Way (Golang)

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

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Show HN: AsteroidOS 2.0 – Nobody asked, we shipped anyway

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

AsteroidOS 2.0 has been released, introducing significant features and improvements as a result of community contributions. Key updates include: - **Always-on Display**: A new feature providing constant visibility of information. - **Expanded Watch Support**: Enhanced compatibility with more watches, alongside an "Experimental" category for watches that are not fully supported yet. - **New Launcher Styles and Customizable Quick Settings**: Users can personalize their experience more than before. - **Performance Enhancements**: Optim

Claude Sonnet 4.6

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

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the latest and most advanced model in the Claude series, offering significant upgrades in coding abilities, long-context reasoning, and design tasks. It features a 1 million token context window in beta and is now the default model for users on Free and Pro plans without any change in pricing, which remains at $3/$15 per million tokens. Users report a notable preference for Sonnet 4.6 over its predecessor, Sonnet 4.5, and even

The Interest Rate on Your Codebase: A Financial Framework for Technical Debt

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

The article discusses the concept of "technical debt," noting its varied interpretations among engineers and the controversy it generates, which often hinders productive discussions on improving codebases. The author argues that the term has become too broad, encompassing anything disliked in a codebase, which can obscure clear decision-making about necessary fixes. The post aims to clarify the financial metaphor of technical debt as envisioned by Ward Cunningham, emphasizing the importance of managing interest rather than just focusing on the debt itself. It defines technical debt as a

Gentoo on Codeberg

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

Gentoo has established a presence on Codeberg, enabling contributions to its repository mirror at https://codeberg.org/gentoo/gentoo as an alternative to GitHub. This transition is part of a gradual migration away from GitHub, as highlighted in the 2025 end-of-year review. Codeberg is a platform based on Forgejo, operated by a dedicated non-profit organization in Berlin, Germany. While these mirrors facilitate contributions, Gentoo continues to host its own repositories. Contributors are encouraged

Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives

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

The author reflects on their journey with Watsi, a nonprofit that gained significant traction after receiving funding from Paul Graham and becoming the first Y Combinator nonprofit. Initially, the founder aimed to create a more efficient and transparent nonprofit, immersing themselves in user interactions and development. However, they encountered challenges with fundraising, realizing that donations did not match the exponential increase in care requests. The founder struggled with burnout and linked their self-worth to Watsi's success, especially when comparing their progress to for-profit

props_template 1.0: A high performance, more opinionated jbuilder replacement

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

The thoughtbot team invites collaboration and questions during a live event. They celebrate the release of props_template 1.0, a highly efficient JSON builder that has been instrumental for Superglue. Unlike Jbuilder, props_template does not auto-format keys, such as camelCase, to enhance code greppability and performance. It is designed to make the payload structure clearer, yielding benefits as complexity increases. The tool includes features that support React and Rails integrations but can also be useful independently. An example

Pytorch Now Uses Pyrefly for Type Checking

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

PyTorch has integrated Pyrefly for type checking across its core repository and associated projects like Helion, TorchTitan, and Ignite. This shift aims to enhance development workflows by providing faster and more consistent type checking, essential for preventing bugs in a large project like PyTorch. The transition to Pyrefly was influenced by the need for a tool that is quick, user-friendly, consistent across environments, and actively maintained. Benchmarking showed a dramatic reduction in type checking time, with MyPy taking

The Servo project and its impact on the web platform ecosystem

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

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Webinar on how to build your own programming language in C++ from the developers of a static analyzer

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

The content introduces a webinar series titled "Let's make a programming language," which aims to teach participants how to create a programming language using C++. The first session, scheduled for February 20, 2026, will focus on the fundamental components of language construction, including the lexer, parser, semantic analyzer, and evaluator. The presentation promises to be engaging and accessible, providing clear explanations of these elements and their importance. Additional topics and events are mentioned but not detailed.

SOLID in FP: Single Responsibility, or How Pure Functions Solved It Already · cekrem.github.io

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

The author reflects on their experience studying the SOLID principles of software architecture, particularly the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP), and how their perspective has evolved after spending more time with Elm, a functional programming language. They note that many issues prevalent in React, such as monolithic components that handle multiple responsibilities, are less of a concern in Elm. This is because Elm's architecture inherently enforces separation of concerns, as side effects must be managed outside of view functions, making the view a pure function of

How would you design a Distributed Cache for a High-Traffic System?

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

ByteByteGo is currently offering a 50% discount on their lifetime plan to help individuals prepare for coding interviews. The importance of distributed caching in high-traffic systems is emphasized, as failures often arise from scale rather than business logic. With many users accessing APIs at once, databases can become bottlenecks, making distributed caching essential. However, simply using tools like Redis isn't sufficient; careful consideration must be given to aspects such as cache invalidation, eviction policies, replication, consistency trade-offs, and

Runtime validation in type annotations

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

The content discusses the use of type annotations for runtime validation in Python, particularly in libraries like FastAPI and Pydantic. It emphasizes the use of `typing.Annotated` and the retrieval of type annotation metadata with `typing.get_type_hints`. The author shares a minimal example to illustrate how to implement this validation, highlighting that developers must handle the metadata themselves, including the use of callable objects as metadata. The author also mentions some choices made in the implementation, such as using `object.__

Dark web agent spotted bedroom wall clue to rescue girl from abuse

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