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

In an article by Li Haoyi, the author addresses the pervasive issue of flaky tests in software projects, which are tests that pass or fail in a non-deterministic manner. This problem can lead to confusion, slowed development cycles, and disputes among team members. Drawing from experience in creating flaky test management systems at Dropbox and Databricks, the author explores various causes of flaky tests, including issues like race conditions in multi-threaded environments and interference from tests that mutate shared global variables or files.

Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News

The content consists of various New Year wishes and reflections. One user expresses hope that AI singularity is delayed beyond 2025. Another comments on the new year being a "perfect square year" (2025), referencing past and future such years. Someone shares their New Year greetings in Italian, while another reflects on a recent power outage that sparked their interest in fusion energy development. Others express gratitude for the online community and its informative nature, wishing everyone a happy New Year and a smooth transition into

Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a security vulnerability discovered in Ghostty, a new terminal emulator released by Mitchell Hashimoto in December 2024. This vulnerability is linked to a long-standing issue in terminal emulators initially highlighted by HD Moore in a 2003 paper, specifically regarding the use of in-band signaling and escape sequences. The problem arises when terminal emulators process these escape sequences, particularly those that control window titles, which can lead to unexpected behavior if the terminal application does not anticipate a response. As a

Published: 2024-12-31 | Origin: /r/programming

The author discusses various tools and methods used to identify and address discrepancies in code. They employ AI to highlight issues, particularly with complex screens that contain a lot of text. For catching minor differences, they suggest using Kaleidoscope or the free tool diffchecker.com. Before submitting pull requests (PRs), the author runs a tool called commitmsg to check for differences, which then feeds output to a language model, helping to identify minor problems before a human review. They maintain a personal .gitignore

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

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

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

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

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-

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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