Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: /r/programming

Firmware encryption is increasingly common in modern devices, primarily driven by new regulations like the EU's Radio Equipment Directive and manufacturers' efforts to protect their devices from competitors and attackers. While encryption enhances security, it complicates the tasks of reverse engineers and security testers, as dumping firmware becomes more challenging. Cryptography is complex, and it’s advised against creating custom encryption algorithms. Fortunately, there are reliable libraries available for implementing cryptographic algorithms, but correct usage of these tools is crucial. In practice, when

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: /r/programming

The blog post by Benjamin Dicken, dated March 13, 2025, explores the significance of non-volatile storage in modern computing, discussing its role in preserving essential data, such as photos and medical records. Non-volatile storage retains data without needing continuous power, unlike volatile storage types like CPU registers and RAM. The article celebrates the launch of PlanetScale Metal, a product that utilizes locally attached NVMe drives for enhanced database performance, offering faster queries, lower latency, and unlimited IOPS compared

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

Hyperion is the tallest known living tree in the world, a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) located in California, measuring 116.07 meters (380.8 feet) tall as of 2019. Discovered on August 25, 2006, by naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor, its height was first recorded at 115.55 meters (379.1 feet) by Stephen Sillett later that year. Hyperion is situated in a remote

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: /r/programming

The discussion focuses on the concepts of authentication (AuthN) and authorization (AuthZ), along with protocols like OpenID Connect (OIDC) and OAuth. Authentication is presented as the process of verifying identity, illustrated by showing a school ID to enter a school. Examples include logging in with a username/password or using biometrics. Authorization, on the other hand, is about determining what actions a user can perform, such as accessing specific areas like a science lab based on user roles (e.g.,

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

The Athena spacecraft attempted a lunar landing but faced significant challenges due to a failed altimeter, which resulted in it not knowing its altitude. While it could identify nearby craters, the lander struck the lunar surface, toppled over, and slid into a shadowed crater. According to Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the landing was akin to "sliding into second base." This was the company's second lunar landing attempt, following their previous success with the Odysseus vehicle

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

The content provided is a snippet from a PDF document. It references a page related to "Image Processing" from a "Second Edition" text, authored by "Dwayne Phillips." The document contains metadata about the layout and image data, including an embedded image represented in a JPEG format. The specific words displayed appear to discuss the topic of image processing, but no substantive context or details regarding the content itself are present in this snippet. Overall, it is primarily a technical representation of a PDF structure rather than

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: /r/programming

On December 30th, the US Treasury notified lawmakers that their systems had been compromised by a China state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor. The breach was reportedly executed through a SQL injection vulnerability linked to a Privileged Access Management (PAM) tool from Beyond Trust. The vulnerability stemmed from the use of PostgreSQL, a widely-used relational database, and required specific conditions involving internal string escaping methods to exploit. This zero-day vulnerability had remained unaddressed for at least nine years,

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

Enhance your text's style with our fancy text generator, which offers a wide range of font styles for easy copy and paste. The generator includes various categories such as: - **Rounded, Symbolic, Vintage,** and **Cursive Fonts** - **Bold** and **Bold Cursive** - **Double Struck, Gothic,** and **Fraktur Fonts** - **Emphasis Styles** like Bold, Italic, and Underline - **Playful Variants** like Bubble

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

The content introduces several key components of Varnish technology, specifically Varnish Enterprise, Controller, Traffic Router, and Cache. It also discusses the development of TinyKVM, a KVM-based single-process sandbox designed for executing Linux programs efficiently. TinyKVM aims to provide high performance by utilizing hardware virtualization and running static Linux ELF programs with results comparable to native execution. It supports extension through user-defined APIs and is currently available for AMD64, with plans for AArch64 support in the future

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

John Scalzi recently addressed common questions regarding his family's purchase of a church building in Bradford, Ohio. The church, formerly a Methodist congregation, has a history dating back to at least 1919 and was no longer in use after the congregation merged with another local church. Scalzi clarified that they do not live in the church, as they prefer their actual home designed for residential living. Additionally, he emphasized that they do not intend to use the building for religious purposes or start a cult, as the

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

Nash is a standalone note-taking tool that functions as an HTML document, requiring no additional software or services. Users can save and edit their notes offline and create static blogs or single-page content. When shared via messenger, notes can be previewed, making it easy to share lengthy content with others. The creator initially developed it to explore using a single HTML file and discovered its versatility, leading to the idea of a service-free document tool. Users can access an empty page at the provided link and are

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

The content highlights a high-performance Rust stream processing engine called ArkFlow, designed for robust data stream processing with support for various input/output sources and processors. It employs YAML format for configuration and offers multiple examples for input sources, data processors, and output targets. The engine is not production-ready and should not be used in a production environment. ArkFlow is licensed under the Apache License 2.0, and all feedback is taken seriously. For additional details, users are encouraged to refer to the documentation.

Published: 2025-03-14 | Origin: Hacker News

The content explores themes of Southern identity through various elements, including a Vietnamese Mardi Gras krewe, Black longshoremen at the Banana Docks in Mobile, and a contemplation on rice's significance in relation to belonging. It emphasizes that the Food Issue goes beyond cuisine to reflect on who Southerners are, their history, and future directions. Additionally, an excerpt from "Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe" recounts the

Published: 2025-03-13 | Origin: Hacker News

Y Combinator (YC), a prominent startup accelerator, has urged the Trump administration to support Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to limit the market power of major tech companies like Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft. The DMA, implemented in May 2023, prohibits these firms from engaging in anticompetitive practices, promoting interoperability instead. In a letter to the White House, YC emphasized that the DMA aligns with values that foster American innovation,

Published: 2025-03-13 | Origin: /r/programming

Mini Editor, a terminal-based text editor (formerly NotVim), is a cross-platform application currently available for Windows and Linux, designed to have no dependencies. It features standard text editor functionalities, except for find/replace, and aims to be bug-free. Users can try experimental features by building from the development branch or can use the stable releases found in the releases tab, though some bugs may still be present. The editor currently supports syntax highlighting for C++ files through a customizable config.json file

Published: 2025-03-13 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the concept of the "10x engineer," a term referring to engineers perceived as ten times more productive than their peers. Charity Majors, cofounder and CTO at Honeycomb.io, critiques this notion, highlighting its dubious origins and the flawed reasoning that supports it. While she acknowledges that some engineers display exceptional skills, she raises concerns about how productivity is measured and challenges the idea that there is a single, objective metric to evaluate engineering effectiveness. She emphasizes the complexity of skills and experiences

Published: 2025-03-13 | Origin: /r/programming

The Include Security team frequently analyzes applications written in "unsafe" languages like C and C++, focusing on vulnerabilities related to memory safety, such as bounds-checking and pointer handling. Despite the NSA classifying Delphi/Object Pascal as a "memory safe" language in a 2023 paper, they acknowledge that it can still involve unsafe memory management. The team aims to showcase how memory management can lead to vulnerabilities in Delphi and provides tips for avoiding such issues. The blog post presents proof-of-concept examples to

Published: 2025-03-13 | Origin: /r/ruby

Caching is a crucial concept in computer science, particularly for improving web application performance by speeding up data retrieval. It leverages the faster memory access compared to database queries, enabling repeated database query results to be stored in a cache for quicker execution. Rails applications often utilize memory-based caches, such as Redis, to enhance performance. Interestingly, using a slower database-backed cache like Solid Cache in Rails, introduced in version 7.1, can increase efficiency by allowing more data to be cached for longer periods

Published: 2025-03-13 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the author's experience in developing web pages using Visual Studio Code on a Microsoft Surface Pro 9 running Windows 11. The author notes that while some paragraphs are coherent, others are just phrases or personal notes, and the work has not been professionally edited. Testing has been done across different browsers and devices, including Chrome on various machines and Safari on a Mac Mini. However, the author has encountered several issues with the web pages on an iPad Mini running iOS 12.5.

Published: 2025-03-13 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a research article published in *Nature Communications* that focuses on artificial photosynthesis, particularly its application in synthesizing high-value organic compounds. This process is inspired by natural photosynthesis, where plants convert solar energy into chemical energy. The article highlights a novel strategy for using artificial photosynthesis directed toward organic synthesis (APOS) to achieve the carbohydroxylation of C=C double bonds through a three-component reaction involving hydrogen evolution. This approach utilizes dual-function semiconductor photocatalysts, specifically