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Rust, reflection and access rules Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming The Rust programming language is often noted for its lack of reflection, which many users find limiting for tasks like serialization, garbage collection, and interoperability. Despite its absence, there are ongoing discussions about how reflection could work in Rust, considering its unique safety features. These features impose specific rules on any potential reflection API that differ from other languages, where reflection commonly allows access to private fields without restrictions. In languages like C#, Java, Python, and Lua, reflection can manipulate private fields more freely, but this |
Static search trees: 40x faster than binary search Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming This post discusses the implementation of a static search tree (S+ tree) for efficient searching in sorted data, initially based on ideas from a paper in Algorithmica. The author aims to optimize the existing code and improve throughput, particularly through batching. The search tree will support queries to find the smallest element in a sorted list of 32-bit unsigned integers that is at least a given value, with the option to return the index of that element. The primary focus is on increasing throughput, measured as the |
Arnis: Generate cities in Minecraft from OpenStreetMap Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News The content discusses an open-source project called Arnis, developed in Rust, which allows users to generate detailed Minecraft worlds based on real-world locations using geospatial data from OpenStreetMap. Arnis can create complex environments that replicate cities, landmarks, and natural features, making it suitable for users who wish to explore or recreate real-life places in Minecraft. To use Arnis, users can select an area with a rectangle tool, specify their Minecraft world, and start the generation process with the required bounding box |
DCA3 - GTA 3 Dreamcast port first release (source available + interview with the dev team) Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming DCA3 brings the excitement of Liberty City to the Dreamcast by leveraging the RE3 reverse engineering project of GTA 3. This initiative seeks to optimize the game for the Dreamcast, a less powerful platform, while maintaining the technical complexity that made GTA 3 noteworthy. Originally intended for the Dreamcast but ultimately canceled, this project aims to demonstrate the console's ability to run such a sophisticated game. DCA3 offers improved visuals and gameplay, featuring community-driven development with decent performance and compatibility for |
Things we learned out about LLMs in 2024 Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming As of December 31, 2024, significant advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) have been observed over the past year. In contrast to last year, when OpenAI's GPT-4 was unrivaled, 2024 saw 18 organizations developing models that outperformed GPT-4, leading to a total of 70 models on the Chatbot Arena Leaderboard. A notable breakthrough was Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, released in February, which not only matched GPT- |
I updated my old Vim Cheat Sheet for Programmers to v2.5 (and moved to a new home on GitHub) Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming The feedback from users is valued and taken seriously. A comprehensive documentation for available qualifiers is provided. Additionally, the author has updated their Vim cheat sheet, which includes a color-coded legend to assist users based on their experience level. |
Zildjian, a 400-year-old cymbal-making company in Massachusetts Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News Zildjian cymbals, renowned in various music genres, have been crafted by the Zildjian family for over 400 years with a secret manufacturing process. The Avedis Zildjian Co. operates in Norwell, Massachusetts, and produces at least a million cymbals annually. Many locals are unaware of this historic factory, which employs a unique method dating back to the Ottoman Empire. Joe Mitchell, the company's director of operations, highlighted the factory's mystique and history as he |
The GTA III port for the Dreamcast has been released Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News The content discusses a port of librw and re3 for the Dreamcast, available at the website https://dca3.net. It notes that this port allows these libraries, which are used for rendering and game development, to be utilized on the Dreamcast platform. |
LevelDB Explained: My series of technical blogs related to LevelDB source Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming The content suggests that understanding both the nature of knowledge and the reasoning behind it is essential, emphasizing that having a wide range of knowledge comes from deeply understanding specific areas. Additionally, there are statistics related to site visits and unique visitors, although the specific numbers are not provided. |
An Unreasonable Amount of Time Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News The content discusses a magic trick performed by Teller, which involves a card being seemingly buried in a park and later retrieved from a hidden box. To create this illusion, Teller had to prepare extensively by burying multiple boxes corresponding to possible card choices months in advance. This level of preparation illustrates the principle that achieving seemingly magical feats often requires more time and effort than one might expect. It highlights that those who excel in their craft—such as pianists, presenters, and artists—similarly invest considerable time |
BYD is automaker with the most R&D staff in the world Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News BYD, China's leading automaker, has achieved the largest R&D workforce globally, boasting over 900,000 employees following a significant hiring spree. In the second quarter of 2024, BYD sold 980,000 vehicles, marking a 40% increase year-over-year and surpassing Honda and Nissan in sales, making it the seventh-largest automaker worldwide. The company, which has added nearly 200,000 positions this year, is the largest employer among China's publicly traded firms and |
T2x – a CLI tool for AI-first text operations Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News The author is developing a new open-source command-line interface tool called t2x, which stands for "text to whatever." This tool leverages language models for various text operations. It is still in the early stages of development and hasn't been released on GitHub yet, with plans to share it around the holidays. The author also invites readers to sign up for a weekly newsletter on artificial intelligence, where they can receive updates and curated content. |
My 2025 JavaScript Wishlist Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming The text discusses the evolution of JavaScript, highlighting its transition from a simple scripting language for web applets to a versatile language used across various platforms, including server-side applications. While this transformation has been debated, it has necessitated significant changes, particularly with the introduction of ES6 and later versions. The author argues that JavaScript can still improve by adopting ideas from functional programming, which emphasizes the use of small, composable functions that focus on data transformation and minimize side effects. The piece critiques the |
Orbit. Mozilla's AI Assistant for Firefox Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News Orbit is a privacy-focused Firefox add-on that utilizes AI to summarize web content such as emails, documents, articles, and videos without requiring account creation or saving user session data. Users can quickly obtain summaries and find specific information, with options to choose the summary length and format. Orbit processes content from various websites, including Gmail and YouTube, and leverages the Mistral 7B language model hosted by Mozilla. It operates by temporarily caching query data to generate outputs but does not store personal information |
Coconut by Meta AI – Better LLM Reasoning with Chain of Continuous Thought? Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News Large language models (LLMs) have shown impressive reasoning capabilities across various domains, primarily achieved by pretraining on extensive human language data. A common technique to enhance their effectiveness is called Chain-of-Thought (CoT), which prompts models to articulate their reasoning step-by-step to arrive at answers. However, generating reasoning in words presents a significant limitation for these models. Neuroimaging research indicates that the human brain's language centers are not heavily involved in reasoning tasks, implying that verbal communication isn't ideal for |
Wvlet: Redesigning 50-Year-Old SQL for Modern Data Analytics Published: 2024-12-30 | Origin: /r/programming Wvlet has released version 2024.9, an open-source query language aimed at improving SQL query efficiency. Users can access Wvlet via Wvlet Playground in their web browsers, and its source code is available on GitHub. At Treasure Data, they manage over 3 million SQL queries daily, facing challenges with SQL's complex syntax and limited capabilities rooted in its 1970s origins. Wvlet seeks to modernize SQL by enhancing its intuitiveness and incorporating software engineering |
Cook: Colliding with the SHA prefix of Linux's initial Git commit Published: 2024-12-30 | Origin: Hacker News The discussion revolves around a past event involving an individual named Case, who reportedly connected a personal WiFi router at a conference in San Diego to manipulate tracking databases. The original poster, mricon, mentions that this behavior aligns perfectly with Case's character. There's a humorous follow-up where mricon corrects a previous misstatement, mistakenly referring to someone named Kees as Case. Another commenter, Cyberax, humorously refers to the situation as an example of "namespace collision." The conversation highlights |
I Wrote a Game Boy Advance Game in Zig Published: 2024-12-30 | Origin: Hacker News The Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a unique gaming console featuring a modern 32-bit ARM CPU while sticking to an old-fashioned tile-based rendering system reminiscent of the NES. It's a notable example of Nintendo's continued use of tile-based graphics, utilizing advanced features like affine transformations and sprite effects. The author, having a preference for simpler programming, decided to create their project for the GBA instead of the more complex Nintendo DS. Drawing from their extensive experience with puzzle games, they chose to develop |
"A Course of Pure Mathematics" – G. H. Hardy (1921) [pdf] Published: 2024-12-30 | Origin: Hacker News The content is a portion of a PDF document structured with various objects corresponding to sections and chapters. It includes references to the front matter, boilerplate, transcriber’s notes, contents, and multiple chapters (I to X). Each section and chapter is identified using GoTo commands that allow navigation within the document, indicated by their respective object numbers. However, the specific details or text of these chapters and sections are not included in the provided content, as it appears to be a metadata representation rather than the |
Dissecting Puma: Anatomy of a Ruby Web Server Published: 2024-12-30 | Origin: /r/ruby Puma is the leading web server for Ruby applications, particularly as the default server for Ruby on Rails. With over 15 years of history and compatibility across three major Ruby versions, it showcases robust design choices. It operates as a preforking, multi-threaded HTTP 1.1 server for Rack-compatible Ruby programs. This article aims to explore Puma’s internals, trade-offs, and interesting aspects for those interested in how HTTP servers function, socket programming, or Ruby web server design. A |