Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses various features of a digital news service offering global news, long reads, podcasts, and events. It highlights the success of Brazil's Pix digital payment system, launched in November 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pix allows users to make transactions quickly and easily using national ID numbers, phone numbers, or QR codes, becoming an essential payment method in Brazil by 2024 with a dramatic increase in transactions. The article also touches on broader social issues, such as political corruption,

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: /r/programming

The author shares their experience with Go programming and expresses the belief that Go may not be a pragmatic language by modern standards. Despite their criticisms, they aim to explore the reasoning behind Go's zero values. In Go, when a variable is defined but not initialized, it receives a "zero value," which applies to structs, interfaces, and reflection, and poses challenges during deserialization as well. The author contrasts Go's approach with that of other languages. In C/C++, uninitialized variables can hold arbitrary

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: Hacker News

Tailscale has secured $160 million USD in a Series C funding round, led by Accel, with participation from various investors including CRV, Insight Partners, Heavybit, and Uncork Capital. Notable angel investors include George Kurtz of CrowdStrike and Anthony Casalena of Squarespace. Founded in 2019, Tailscale aims to simplify networking by minimizing the complexities of NAT traversal and VPN configurations. Over the past six years, its services have gained widespread use, enabling

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: /r/programming

Trevor I. Lasn, a Staff Software Engineer and Engineering Manager, advocates for the implementation of "firebreak sprints" as a solution for the common issue of neglected maintenance work in engineering teams. Firebreak sprints are one-week periods interspersed between regular development cycles during which engineers have the freedom to address issues that they believe will add the most value, without needing product manager approval or stakeholder involvement. Lasn has successfully introduced these sprints at multiple companies, scheduling them three to

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: /r/programming

John Horton Conway, a renowned mathematician, developed symptoms of COVID-19 on April 8, 2020, and passed away on April 11, 2020. His death is mourned, yet his life and accomplishments are celebrated, particularly his ability to make complex mathematical concepts engaging. Conway is well-known for inventing the programming language FRACTRAN and for his creation of the Game of Life, which has significantly impacted the author’s understanding of mathematics. The author reflects on their personal

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The author expresses deep appreciation for their close friends, emphasizing the joy and growth they bring through shared experiences, support, and emotional connections. Reflecting on their past, the author notes that until about four years ago, they struggled to form meaningful friendships and did not realize it was something they could intentionally pursue. They discuss the importance of being proactive in building relationships, arguing against the passive mindset that friendships should happen naturally. The author plans to share their journey of intentionally forming close friendships and the lessons learned,

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: /r/programming

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stated that his aim is to enhance the productivity of software engineers using artificial intelligence, rather than replacing them entirely. As generative AI advances, job security concerns have risen, with some reports indicating that many jobs, including half of banking roles, could be fully automated. There are speculations that coding may be among the first professions affected, as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang suggested. However, Altman emphasizes a focus on making coders significantly more efficient—up to ten times

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: Hacker News

On February 24, 2020, Naval Ravikant discussed the relationship between pleasure and pain, suggesting that in today's age of abundance, pursuing pleasure for its own sake can lead to addiction. He referenced the historical perspective of Miyamoto Musashi, a Japanese swordsman, highlighting that the nature of pleasure during his time was vastly different from the easily accessible pleasures of modern life, such as processed food, pornography, and drugs. Ravikant argues that these modern addictions, which include alcohol,

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The study published in Frontiers in Psychology investigated music listening habits among 434 young adults aged 17 to 30, focusing on differences between neurotypical individuals and those screened for ADHD. The research found that adults listen to an average of 20.7 hours of music weekly and that music can enhance cognitive performance and emotional well-being. The results indicate that individuals with ADHD tend to listen to more background music during less cognitive activities (e.g., cleaning, sports) and while studying compared to their

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: Hacker News

In GitHub Actions, the `shell` keyword allows you to specify the shell for executing a `run:` block. While it is optional for workflows, it is required for action definitions. The default shell is typically appropriate for the runner's operating system (e.g., bash for Linux/macOS and pwsh for Windows). Although one might assume that valid shell values are limited and predefined by GitHub, you can actually use any executable found in the `$PATH`. In this case, a special argument

Published: 2025-04-08 | Origin: /r/programming

Twenty years ago, Linus Torvalds made the first commit to Git, which has since evolved from a personal project to the world's most dominant version control system. The author, who began using Git shortly after its inception and later co-founded GitHub, reflects on Git's significant impact on software development and their personal journey with it. The project emerged from frustrations within the Linux kernel development community regarding existing version control and collaboration methods, which relied heavily on mailing lists. Git was designed to address these challenges

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: Hacker News

The narrative reflects on the rise and fall of the digital media organization Quartz, emphasizing the challenges faced under the ownership of Jim Spanfeller and G/O Media. Spanfeller, who claimed that "it's impossible to kill a media brand," oversaw the decline of various media properties, leading to the eventual dismantling of Quartz. Originally launched in 2012 with a focus on quality journalism and a fresh approach to media, Quartz thrived with a strong editorial vision and innovative practices. However, by

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: /r/programming

Dr. Diane Hamilton discusses the concept and benefits of self-managed teams in the workplace, emphasizing their growing relevance in the post-pandemic environment. These teams operate without traditional managers, relying on collective accountability for decision-making and goal-setting. The success stories of companies like Gore-Tex and the Dutch healthcare provider Buurtzorg illustrate the effectiveness of this model, where empowered employees achieve better outcomes, increased innovation, and higher satisfaction. Buurtzorg's approach, which allows nurses to autonomously manage their workflows and

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: Hacker News

In Kawara, Fukuoka Prefecture, children are engaging with a unique trading card game (TCG) featuring local middle-aged men, known as "ojisan," rather than the typical fantasy themes commonly found in card games like Pokémon. This community-centric TCG includes 47 cards, highlighting local figures with stats and abilities. Notable cards feature Mr. Honda, a former fire chief, and Mr. Takeshita, a renowned soba noodle master, while the most sought-after card

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: Hacker News

Ratta Software's SuperNote A6 X2 Nomad, a 7.8-inch Android 11 tablet, was acquired by productivity enthusiasts in July 2024 for note-taking and academic reading. However, within a day, the focus shifted to exploring its vulnerabilities. The blog post details discovering a security flaw that led to the creation of a remotely installable, 0-click rootkit, allowing attackers on the same network to fully compromise the device without user interaction. This vulnerability is documented as

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content discusses the implementation and usage of pattern matching in Ruby, particularly since its introduction in Ruby 2.7 and improvements in later versions. It highlights how Ruby's pattern matching can be applied not only to basic data types like arrays and hashes but also to custom objects, emphasizing the influence of functional programming concepts from languages like Haskell and Elixir. Key points include: - Pattern matching can raise errors when there’s no match. - Custom objects need to define a `#deconstruct` method

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: /r/programming

The post highlights a common pitfall when using `std::optional<T>`. It discusses the issue of needing to return a value from an `std::optional<T>`, where accessing the value directly with `*opt` requires a copy. The author warns against moving the value itself, as it can leave the optional in a potentially undesirable intermediate state. Instead, the recommended approach is to move the entire optional variable, which ensures that it becomes empty and avoids the risk of accessing an invalid or garbage

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: Hacker News

Lux is a new package manager for Lua aimed at improving the ecosystem for Lua development. It offers a user-friendly command-line interface inspired by other package managers like Cargo. Unlike Luarocks, which has a long history and complexity that complicates modern development, Lux seeks to provide a fresh start. It integrates well with Neovim, supporting features like the `rocks.nvim` plugin manager and the lazy.nvim tool, allowing for effective plugin distribution. Lux promises improved performance, as it addresses Luarocks

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: /r/programming

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a new standard that enhances how Large Language Models (LLMs) interact with data and tools, likened to "USB-C for AI agents." While MCP offers significant integration benefits, it also poses serious security risks. Research by Equixly highlights alarming vulnerabilities, such as Remote Code Execution (RCE) through command injection, with over 43% of tested MCP server implementations having unsafe shell calls. Malicious actors can embed harmful instructions within tool descriptions that

Published: 2025-04-07 | Origin: Hacker News

Browser MCP is a tool that connects AI applications to web browsers, enabling automation of tasks such as form filling and data collection, which typical AI apps can't do due to their lack of browser access. This solution helps accelerate workflows by allowing AI editors to perform end-to-end testing of code and validating user interfaces across different scenarios. Automation occurs locally on your device, leading to improved performance and enhanced privacy, as no data is sent to remote servers. Additionally, it maintains your logged-in status across services and effectively