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Reading NFC Passport Chips in Linux

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses accessing the NFC chip data in a passport using Linux, specifically with a tool called pypassport. The NFC chip, which stores passport information including biometrics, is secured by a password located in the Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) on the passport. This password comprises three data pieces, each with its own checksum, and the entire string also has a checksum, which can be partially lost if the passport is canceled by cutting the MRZ. The author faces a challenge since using

OpenAI charges by the minute, so speed up your audio

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses a method to expedite and reduce the cost of OpenAI transcriptions by speeding up audio playback. The author recommends using ffmpeg to process audio at 2x or 3x speed before transcription, resulting in fewer tokens used and a shorter waiting time, with minimal impact on transcription quality. The writer shares a personal anecdote about attempting to summarize a 40-minute talk by Andrej Karpathy, during which they mistakenly believed the built-in YouTube auto-transcription feature wasn't available.

Gemini CLI

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

Gemini CLI is a new open-source command-line interface designed for developers, integrating the Gemini AI directly into their terminal. This tool enhances the terminal experience by providing lightweight and versatile access for various tasks, including coding, content generation, problem-solving, research, and task management. It is integrated with Google’s AI coding assistant, Gemini Code Assist, allowing all developers to utilize AI-driven coding prompts in both VS Code and Gemini CLI. Users can access Gemini CLI for free by logging in with a personal Google

Start Alone, Then Together: Why Software Modelling Needs Solitary Brainstorming

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses the differences between improvisational creativity in jazz and structured processes in software development, particularly in modeling sessions. It highlights a phenomenon referred to as “the CTO effect,” where the first person to speak—often a senior leader—dominates the discussion, causing quieter team members to lose their voices. To counteract this, the author recommends starting modeling sessions with 10-15 minutes of silent brainstorming. This allows all team members to generate ideas simultaneously, preventing any single individual from steering the conversation

How we cut CKEditor's bundle size by 40%

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses enhancements made to CKEditor 5, a popular JavaScript library, focusing on reducing its bundle size by 40% through tree-shaking and optimization techniques. It outlines the importance of bundle size for performance in a modular framework with numerous packages and details the challenges of maintaining a library that must be user-friendly, fast, and compatible with various environments. The initiative, dubbed "Madagascar," aims to improve developer experience across installation, configuration, and documentation. Overall, the article provides

OpenAI is Ditching TypeScript to Rebuild Codex CLI with Rust

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: /r/programming

OpenAI is transitioning its Codex CLI from a TypeScript-based implementation to Rust to enhance performance and address limitations as the tool matured. While the TypeScript version served well for prototyping, it struggled to meet the demands of various use cases. OpenAI will retire the TypeScript CLI, which will still receive bug fixes temporarily, and focus on achieving feature parity with the new Rust build. The shift to Rust, as explained by OpenAI's Fouad Matin, is not ideologically driven;

Gemini CLI: your open-source AI agent

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

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How renewables are saving Texans billions

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

The discussion around renewable energy costs is often clouded by misinformation aimed at promoting fossil fuels. A key point of contention is whether renewables can lower energy costs. An analysis of ERCOT data from Texas shows that they indeed can. Comparing August 2018 to August 2024, peak electricity demand rose from 65 GW to 80 GW, while solar power production surged from 1.2 GW to 18.8 GW. Despite the increased demand, the wholesale price of electricity in August

PNG Is Back

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

A new PNG specification has been released, marking a significant revival of the PNG format after over two decades of stagnation. This update is notable as the PNG format is recommended by major institutions like the U.S. Library of Congress and Canada’s Library and Archives. The new specification introduces High Dynamic Range (HDR) support using only 4 bytes in addition to the standard PNG overhead. Chris Lilley, a co-author of the original PNG, has written about how this HDR feature works. Additionally, animated

Build your first iOS app on Linux / Windows

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

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Thnickels

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

Theodore Nichols is advocating for the creation of "thnickels," which are thicker coins intended to offer a heftier feel compared to regular nickels. He has experienced issues, including a dispute with a neighbor regarding a prototype and an incident where burglars did not take him seriously when he defended himself with a bag of nickels. Theodore has set up a minting facility to produce these coins and is taking pre-orders with limited slots available. He has received significant interest through flyers and emphasizes the satisfaction

Microsoft Releases Classic MS-DOS Editor for Linux Written in Rust

Published: 2025-06-25 | Origin: Hacker News

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback and highlights an accessible text editor designed for simple needs, inspired by the classic MS-DOS Editor but featuring a modern interface similar to VS Code. Users can download binaries from the Releases page, and the latest version can be installed using WinGet, with the executable named "edit" and an alternative name "msedit." To avoid conflicts with existing commands, it's recommended to use "msedit" instead of "edit," and to assign an "edit" alias

Fair(er) DRM GPU scheduler

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: /r/programming

The DRM GPU scheduler is a component of the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) in the Linux Kernel, utilized by various GPU drivers to manage job submissions from multiple rendering contexts to the GPU. Its key functions include resolving dependencies, detecting timeouts, and crucially, implementing scheduling algorithms to select the next task for execution based on GPU capacity. Different kernel drivers interact with the scheduler in diverse ways; some utilize it primarily for dependency resolution and timeout detection, while others leverage its scheduling capabilities to determine the sequence

The Bitter Lesson is coming for Tokenization

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: /r/programming

The blog post discusses the potential shift away from tokenization in large language models (LLMs) towards more efficient methods that better utilize computational resources and data. It critiques the tokenization process, specifically Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE), which creates a compressed vocabulary by merging frequent token pairs. The authors argue that while tokenization is a common practice in the transformer architecture, it is not a strict necessity and may hinder overall model performance. They advocate for exploring alternatives, such as the Byte Latent Transformer

Finding a 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3 ROM

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: /r/programming

The author discovers an undocumented easter egg in the original Power Macintosh G3's ROM while exploring its resources using Hex Fiend and a Mac ROM template. This ROM was used in various G3 models from 1997 to 1999. Among the findings, they noted a JPEG image of people who likely worked on the models, previously mentioned by Pierre Dandumont in 2014 but without a method to display it. The author also found a notable clue, a resource named “Native

Forbidden secrets of ancient X11 scaling technology revealed

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: /r/programming

The author addresses common misconceptions about X11's limitations regarding DPI scaling, fractional scaling, and multiple monitors. To explore these issues, they embark on a project to draw a circle on various screens that maintains a physical size of two inches, regardless of the monitor's size or resolution. They collect multiple screens to test this challenge and employ OpenGL for rendering, though they humorously note that their initial attempt resulted in a color wheel instead of a simple circle. The process involves handling window events and retrieving necessary

Fun with uv and PEP 723

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: Hacker News

The author expresses frustration with using Python for one-off scripts due to dependency management issues, but this has changed with the introduction of the `uv` package manager, written in Rust. `uv` includes a tool called `uvx`, which functions similarly to `npx` for JavaScript, allowing users to run Python tools within a package while automatically handling virtual environments and dependencies. The author references PEP 723, which outlines a metadata format for single-file Python scripts to aid external tools. By

Infrastructure as Code is a MUST have

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: /r/programming

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is an important concept that allows infrastructure to be defined as code, such as JSON files. This shift from traditional manual server management to code-based infrastructure management significantly enhances efficiency. In the past, adding resources like servers took weeks or months, but with cloud services like AWS, Azure, and GCP, resources can be provisioned almost instantaneously at the click of a button. IaC promotes better organization by storing configurations in a modular and reusable format, enabling easier roll

Another Programmer yelling at the clouds about vibe coding

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: /r/programming

The author discusses the trend of "vibe coding," which involves writing computer code carelessly with AI assistance. While acknowledging the popularity of this approach, particularly in the context of AI's role in coding at major companies like Google, the author expresses skepticism about the effectiveness of AI in truly complex coding situations. Despite using AI for simple tasks, such as generating prototypes or completing boilerplate code, the author finds that AI struggles with more challenging problems, often yielding results no better than those found on forums

ChatGPT's enterprise success against Copilot fuels OpenAI/Microsoft rivalry

Published: 2025-06-24 | Origin: Hacker News

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