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Introduction to Software Development Tooling (2024)

Published: 2025-12-17 | Origin: Hacker News

The CS 4973: Introduction to Software Development Tooling course at Northeastern University for Summer 2024 focuses on teaching essential tools for software engineering. The course includes an official syllabus, lecture notes, and assignments, with the possibility of updates. It covers four main categories of tooling: command line, version control, build systems, and correctness, using hands-on projects and code exploration. Students will learn about industry-standard tools in each category to enhance their coding, collaboration, and problem-solving skills.

I ported JustHTML from Python to JavaScript with Codex CLI and GPT-5.2 in hours

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

On December 15, 2025, the author discussed their experience porting Emil Stenström's JustHTML, a Python-based HTML5 parser, to JavaScript with minimal effort using Codex CLI and GPT-5.2. The outcome was the creation of simonw/justjshtml, a dependency-free JavaScript HTML5 parsing library that successfully passed 9,200 tests from the html5lib-tests suite and mimicked the API of JustHTML. The project, which produced

No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Waterfox has launched a new website and transitioned to waterfox.com. Unlike Mozilla, which is shifting its focus to AI-driven browsing, Waterfox emphasizes that a browser's role is to serve users rather than think for them. Mozilla's CEO aims to establish the company as a trusted software provider with AI at its core, but the creator of Waterfox argues this approach is fundamentally flawed. He expresses concern over AI's opaque nature, particularly large language models (LLMs), which lack transparency and auditability

AI will make formal verification go mainstream

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

In a blog post published on December 8, 2025, Martin Kleppmann discusses the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on software development, specifically focusing on formal verification. He suggests that AI could mainstream formal verification practices that have been largely niche in the software engineering community. Formal verification involves using proof assistants and specialized programming languages, such as Rocq, Isabelle, Lean, F*, and Agda, to create formal specifications for software and mathematically prove code correctness, even in edge

Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing five major TV manufacturers—Sony, Samsung, LG, Hisense, and TCL—accusing them of being part of a "mass surveillance system" by secretly recording consumers' viewing habits in their homes. The lawsuits, filed on Tuesday, claim these companies utilize Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology to collect personal data for targeted advertising. ACR supposedly identifies content being watched, including that from streaming services and connected devices, and may even capture security camera streams

Announcing the Beta release of ty

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Astral has announced the Beta release of "ty," a highly efficient Python type checker and language server, written in Rust. Designed as an alternative to existing tools like mypy and Pyright, ty offers significantly enhanced performance, operating between 10x and 60x faster than its competitors without caching, and up to 500x faster in some scenarios. Its architecture emphasizes "incrementality," allowing for rapid live updates in response to code changes. Ty is installable via the uv package manager or

Our New Sam Audio Model Transforms Audio Editing

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Meta has launched SAM Audio, an advanced AI model that allows users to isolate specific sounds from complex audio recordings with ease. This new tool, part of the Segment Anything collection, can filter out unwanted noises, such as traffic or barking dogs, while enhancing desired sounds like vocals or instruments in videos and podcasts. SAM Audio utilizes text, visual, and time span prompts, making audio processing more intuitive and accessible for various applications in music, film, scientific research, and accessibility. The platform aims to streamline audio

No Graphics API

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Sebastian Aaltonen has 30 years of experience in graphics programming, having launched his first 3D accelerated game in 1999. He has worked across various gaming console generations and PC graphics APIs, focusing on new rendering technologies in recent years. Currently, he is developing a renderer for HypeHype using WebGPU, Metal, and Vulkan. Aaltonen has also worked on internal engines for Ubisoft, optimized Unreal Engine 4, and led the Unity DOTS graphics team. He

GPT Image 1.5

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

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Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

On January 1, 2026, GitHub will lower the price of hosted runners, and from March 1, 2026, a new charge of $0.002 per minute will be applied to self-hosted runners. However, most customers will not experience a bill change, as Actions will remain free for public repositories. This pricing update aims to align costs with usage and value, ensuring sustainable funding for ongoing innovation. While 96% of users will see no change, of the

alpr.watch

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the growing adoption of surveillance technology by local governments in the U.S., including Flock cameras, facial recognition systems, and automated license plate readers (ALPR). With over 80,000 cameras in operation, these technologies track residents' movements and collect biometric data, creating extensive databases of everyday activities. A mapping tool, alpr.watch, allows users to locate meetings where these technologies are being discussed, enabling them to take action. ALPR systems continuously capture and store data on vehicle movements

Gh-actions-lockfile: generate and verify lockfiles for GitHub Actions

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The content describes the tool "gh-actions-lockfile," which generates and verifies lockfiles for dependencies used in GitHub Actions. It ensures that all actions, including transitive dependencies, are pinned to specific commit SHAs along with integrity hashes for security. The tool is open source and licensed under AGPL-3.0.

I'm just having fun

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The author, who works professionally as a compiler developer and writes about build systems, expresses discomfort with reactions from readers who feel inferior when engaging with their content. They emphasize that their expertise, gained through personal effort and learning, should not intimidate others. The author encourages readers to recognize that everyone has different specialties and that not knowing technical details about computing does not equate to being dumb. They critique the mystique surrounding STEM fields, arguing that other disciplines, such as performance art and carpentry, also

Erdős Problem #1026

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Terence Tao's blog post discusses the recent resolution of Problem 1026 from the Erdős problem website, achieved through a blend of existing literature, online collaboration, and AI tools. The original problem, posed by Erdős in 1975, revolves around the properties of sequences of distinct real numbers and their subsequences. It involves finding optimal bounds for certain quantities related to sequence decomposition and monotonicity. Though the problem was noted to be somewhat ambiguous when it was added to the website in September

GitHub - simplepractice/langfuse-rb: 🪢 Langfuse Ruby SDK - Instrument your LLM app and get detailed tracing/observability. Works with any LLM or framework

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback, highlighting that all input is taken seriously. It introduces the Langfuse Ruby SDK, which provides tools for instrumenting LLM applications with detailed tracing and observability. The SDK is open-source and compatible with any LLM or framework, allowing users to configure settings at startup, fetch prompts, and trace LLM calls. Users are encouraged to consult the documentation for comprehensive details and to contribute to the project by following the guidelines in the CONTRIBUTING.md file.

Sharp

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The content presents SHARP, a novel method developed by a team at Apple for creating photorealistic view synthesis from a single image. SHARP utilizes a neural network to quickly regress a 3D Gaussian representation of the scene, achieving this in under a second on a standard GPU. This representation allows for real-time, high-resolution rendering of nearby views, maintaining sharp details at over 100 frames per second. SHARP demonstrates robust zero-shot generalization across various datasets and achieves significantly improved performance,

8M users' AI conversations sold for profit by "privacy" extensions

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Idan Dardikman reflects on a significant personal decision-making moment where he realized the depth of his conversations with his AI assistant, Claude, including private details he hadn't shared with anyone else. This led to a troubling thought about the security of these conversations. As a security researcher, he utilized his tools to investigate potential risks and discovered that the popular Chrome extension, Urban VPN Proxy—rated highly with millions of users—was capable of intercepting and collecting conversations from various AI platforms. Notably,

Quill OS: An open-source OS for Kobo's eReaders

Published: 2025-12-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Quill OS offers a variety of features including: - An integrated KoBox X11 subsystem - Support for ePUB, PDF, picture, and plain text display - Flexible reading configuration options - muPDF rendering engine for ePUBs and PDFs - Wi-Fi support and a web browser - Encrypted storage using EncFS - Quick dictionary and local storage search - Dark mode functionality - Option for full factory reset - Seamless update process - VNC viewer application

Native vs. emulation: World of Warcraft game performance on Snapdragon X Elite

Published: 2025-12-15 | Origin: Hacker News

At the start of the year, the author tested an unreleased Snapdragon X Elite development kit but struggled to compare the gaming performance between x86 and native gaming versions, limited to running World of Warcraft Classic in x86 format. They noted a significant FPS drop of 40-60% compared to the native version. However, recent updates in Windows, particularly the introduction of the Prism emulation layer and Windows 11 24H2, have improved compatibility and performance. Using the latest Insider Preview version

Reforging the ReScript Build System

Published: 2025-12-15 | Origin: /r/programming

ReScript 12 introduces a new build system called Rewatch, which replaces the previous system, bsb. This new build system offers intelligent dependency tracking, faster incremental builds, and enhanced support for monorepo workflows. While bsb was effective for single-package projects, it struggled with limitations in monorepo setups, particularly in watch mode, where it only tracked changes within a single package, failing to trigger rebuilds for dependent packages. Additionally, bsb built packages sequentially rather than in parallel