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A marriage of solar energy and farming

Published: 2025-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

Byron Kominek has transformed his family's 24-acre farm into Jack's Solar Garden, integrating 3,276 solar panels that generate electricity for around 300 homes. He initiated this project out of necessity, seeking a stable income amidst the challenges of farming. The site, named in honor of his grandfather, is recognized for its agrivoltaic research, showcasing how solar panels can coexist with agricultural practices. Under the elevated panels, animals graze and various crops thrive in the partial shade. Kom

F-Droid Fake Signer PoC

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

The document discusses various security concerns related to the F-Droid's handling of APK signing. It emphasizes the importance of feedback and documents ongoing issues surrounding APK signing block vulnerabilities that were first addressed in an F-Droid issue back in 2021, with subsequent publications and inquiries highlighting the potential for security risks due to improper certificate handling in different Android versions. There is a specific focus on the discrepancy between F-Droid's certificate checking order and the standard Android implementation, which could lead to security flaws if

Making my blog load faster

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

The author has been hosting their blog on GitLab Pages for eight years with consistent functionality but experiences latency issues due to the server being located in the US while they are based in Germany. This results in a 400–600 ms delay for the initial connection, causing page load times of around one second, which feels slower than desired. To confirm that latency is the main issue, they set up a virtual machine in Germany, resulting in significantly faster connection times (10–15 ms). The author is

VoxelSpace: Terrain rendering algorithm in less than 20 lines of code (2020)

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

The text discusses the evolution of terrain rendering in video games, specifically focusing on the advancements made in the early 1990s. It starts by acknowledging the importance of user feedback and directs readers to documentation for more information. It reflects on the state of technology in 1992, highlighting that CPUs were much slower and GPU acceleration was not commonly used. The discussion features the games "Gunship 2000" (1991) and "Comanche" (1992), the latter of which

Einsum in Depth

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

Of course! Please provide the content you'd like me to summarize.

Programming is technical writing

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/ruby

The text discusses the importance of technical writing for programmers, emphasizing that programming is essentially a form of technical writing aimed at making complex ideas understandable. The author highlights that effective technical writing should reflect the reader’s intelligence rather than the writer's, and that many programmers overlook the study of this skill. The author cites Donald Knuth's perspective that programs are primarily meant to be read by humans, underlining the need for clarity in coding. To improve technical writing skills, the author suggests extensive technical reading, recommending

It started with a satirical LinkedIn post. Now, meet Git Fakers: Automate fake activity like a pro, powered by Rust.

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

The content introduces "git-fake-rs," a Rust-based tool designed to enhance your GitHub contribution graph by generating fake commits. It encourages users to clone the repository, run the tool to create random commits, and potentially add it to crontab for continuous background operation. The aim is to make your GitHub profile appear more active and engaging. Additionally, the creators emphasize their commitment to reading and valuing user feedback, with references to documentation for further information.

How to become a Ruby Certified Programmer - Blog - Visuality

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/ruby

The Ruby Association offers a certification known as the Certified Ruby Programmer Examination, which is not widely popular in the Ruby on Rails community. The exam has two levels: Silver and Gold. Currently, it assesses knowledge of Ruby version 3.1. The Silver level tests foundational concepts, while the Gold delves into advanced topics like metaprogramming, with a prerequisite of passing Silver to attempt Gold. The exam consists of 50 multiple-choice questions, with a 90-minute time limit and a passing

Software is mostly made of people

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

The author discusses a recent conversation with a colleague that led to a deeper understanding of the collaborative nature of software development. They reflect on the challenges encountered when trying to understand a part of the system managed by another team that was on vacation, highlighting the importance of teamwork and communication in producing value-driven software. The author compares their current perspective with their earlier belief that software could be designed to run independently, likening it to publishing a book that earns royalties without further effort. They acknowledge that this viewpoint underestimated the

The Joy of Under-Engineering

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

In 2025, a software developer reflects on their journey in the industry over the past five years. Working on a web-based application with a small, frontend-heavy team, they engage with modern tools like React Server Components, Next.js, and Tailwind CSS, while enjoying the learning experience despite creating some seemingly useless features. However, they clarify that they are actually a backend engineer, specializing in data management with Go and GraphQL APIs, and prefer not to deal with frontend tasks. Their deployment strategies

Sorbet typechecking support for RSpec

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content discusses the integration of Sorbet typechecking support into RSpec through a gem called `rspec-sorbet-types`. This allows users to specify type annotations in their tests, enhancing type safety. To set it up, users need to add the gem to their Gemfile, adjust their `require.rb` to include RSpec, and regenerate type definitions using Tapioca. If using Rails, adjustments to the test schema maintenance are necessary. Once set up, users can use basic RSpec

After 8 years of development and delivering it to thousands of users, today I am open sourcing my visual programming language.

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the Programming Without Coding Technology - Second Generation (PWCT2), a visual programming language built using the Ring programming language. It emphasizes the importance of user feedback and encourages users to check the documentation for available qualifiers. PWCT2 allows for interactive visualization and supports importing/exporting Ring code. Additional resources, including tutorials and videos showcasing its features, are available online, and the software is distributed under the MIT License. Links to the application and documentation are provided.

Show HN: I completed shipping my desktop app

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

Pimosa is a versatile tool that allows users to easily convert, edit, and enhance video, audio, and image files. It supports batch processing for efficient workflows and offers over 20 functionalities for both macOS and Windows. Key features include video compression, conversion, resizing, merging, flipping/rotating, speed adjustment, GIF creation, and audio extraction. Users can also convert and merge audio files, create waveform videos, edit audio metadata, and compress images. The app facilitates the manipulation of

DeepFace: A lightweight deep face recognition library for Python

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

DeepFace is a lightweight Python library designed for face recognition and facial attribute analysis, including age, gender, emotion, and race. It integrates multiple state-of-the-art models like VGG-Face, FaceNet, and ArcFace, achieving facial recognition accuracy surpassing that of humans. Installation is simple via PyPI or by downloading the source code for potential new features. The library manages a modern facial recognition pipeline comprising five stages: detection, alignment, normalization, representation, and verification, allowing users to

Demystifying Debuggers, Part 1: A Busy Intersection

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the author's insights and experiences with debuggers, particularly focusing on their role in the computing ecosystem. As part of their work on the RAD Debugger, which was recently open-sourced, the author highlights the complexity and importance of debuggers, emphasizing that they are not just tools for fixing broken code but also valuable for analyzing and verifying the behavior of functioning code. The author reflects on how debuggers can enhance programming skills, improve understanding of computing, and serve as educational tools

B-Trees: More Than I Thought I'd Want to Know

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

The author reflects on their recent reading of "Database Internals" by Alex Petrov, which focuses on the implementation of database storage engines, particularly B-Tree data structures. They note their previous struggle to understand the practical advantages of B-Trees during college courses, where they were presented as superior to Binary Search Trees without clear motivation. The author suggests that a lack of effective visualization and motivating examples contributed to this confusion. They emphasize the importance of visualizing B-Trees as n-ary trees that

Yokai: Modular Go framework for production-grade backend applications, with observability (logs, traces, metrics, health checks) built-in.

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

Yokai is a framework designed for building backend applications in Go, aiming to simplify the process by reducing boilerplate code and managing complexities unrelated to application logic, such as dependency management and observability. It allows developers to focus on their application's core logic. The framework is built with established Go libraries and includes an extension system for enhancing application features. Yokai also offers ready-to-use application templates and a showroom repository with demo apps to showcase its functionality. Feedback from users is valued, and the release process

Don't clobber the frame pointer

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

The post discusses the diagnosis and resolution of two crashes in Go related to frame pointer unwinding, caused by faulty assembly code that inadvertently overwrote the frame pointer without properly saving and restoring it. The problems manifested in two ways: one instance involved clobbering the frame pointer register, while the other affected a saved frame pointer on the stack. The issue was tied to the Go 1.23 version, specifically when using profile-guided optimization (PGO) and primarily impacted programs built for

Ruby 3.4 is slower than 3.3 in this Rails benchmark. Are there any other benchmarks out there?

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content discusses the feedback process for a Ruby-on-Rails test application that uses Devise for authentication. It highlights performance testing done by sending continuous requests to the server, involving five specific URLs. The application runs on a Linux operating system with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X processor. Performance metrics such as mean and median response times are measured after a warm-up period, with results displayed through boxplots indicating response times and scatter plots showing individual response time calls. The analysis also includes visual markers

Kuvasz-streamer: open-source CDC for Postgres for low latency replication

Published: 2025-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

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