News Nug
PicoIDE – An open IDE/ATAPI drive emulator

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

PicoIDE is set to launch soon, and interested users can sign up to receive notifications about the release.

Neuroscientists track the neural activity underlying an “aha”

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

An editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation offers a reading list feature and news updates. A recent article discusses the nature of insight, illustrated by a puzzle involving the words pine, crab, and sauce, which prompts a sudden realization or "Aha!" moment. Cognitive neuroscientist Maxi Becker from Duke University explores how the brain generates such insights, inspired by Thomas Kuhn's ideas on pivotal scientific breakthroughs. Historical examples, like Archimedes' "Eureka" moment and Sir Isaac

Write Ruby extensions in Zig

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content expresses a commitment to thoroughly reviewing feedback and valuing user input. It introduces `zig.rb`, a library that enables the creation of Ruby native extensions using Zig, offering benefits like type safety, automatic memory management, and performance optimizations. The Ruby C API is still accessible through raw bindings. Users are encouraged to add `zig.rb` to their projects and explore the provided build utilities and example gem project. Contributions are welcomed, with a reminder to ensure tests pass before submitting pull requests. The

Verity v1.0.0: A data layer that enforces server-as-truth and eliminates optimistic updates

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses a data management concept called Verity, which emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between two types of state in modern front-end applications: server-owned (truth-state) and client-owned (view-state). Verity serves as a middleware layer that ensures reliable data handling between the server and UI by managing caching, freshness, and directive processing. The goal is to prevent confusion and bugs that arise from mixing authoritative server data with ephemeral UI concerns. Verity establishes clear boundaries between the server, data layer,

Open-source Zig book

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The content emphasizes a transformative approach to software thinking, presenting a philosophy rather than just focusing on syntax. It consists of 61 chapters, is project-based, and does not rely on AI, with the author being @zigbook.

The fate of "small" open source

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Nolan Lawson's blog post discusses the popularity and legacy of his npm package, blob-util, which has consistently received over 5 million downloads weekly despite being nearly ten years old. The package was created to simplify working with Blobs in JavaScript, addressing confusion among PouchDB users. With the rise of AI usage among developers, Lawson notes that many would likely opt for AI-generated solutions instead of traditional libraries like blob-util, citing Claude, an AI model, as able to generate similar utility functions

His Legal Name Is One Letter—A reminder that bad validation rules hurt people

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

A passenger with the legal first name "A" faces difficulties booking flights because airline systems typically reject one-letter names. The airline suggested he use "AA" instead, causing potential issues with passport and security due to name mismatches. Cathay Pacific also has similar policies, requiring names on tickets to match passports while rejecting one-letter first names. The passenger is concerned about transferring points from credit card programs to an airline account due to potential mismatches affecting his travel benefits and overall travel experience. The situation could

New JavaScript engine written in Rust

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses Brimstone, a new JavaScript engine developed from scratch in Rust. It aims to support nearly all aspects of the JavaScript language, boasting over 97% compliance with the ECMAScript specification according to the test262 suite. Although still a work in progress and not yet ready for production use, Brimstone is designed with minimal dependencies and takes inspiration from V8 and LibJS from SerenityOS. Key features include standard cargo commands for building and running the engine, the ability

Running Java on iOS

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content provides a monthly overview for architects and aspiring architects, highlighting key developments in professional software development. It emphasizes the protection of privacy and invites users to log in for a comprehensive experience with exclusive resources. Jinsong Yu discusses architectural insights from the Orion AR glasses, including the use of custom microcontrollers for thermal management, SLAM/VIO for rendering, and input fusion techniques. He offers valuable lessons for technical leaders on direction-setting, complexity management through testing, and hardware-software co-design.

Heretic: Automatic censorship removal for language models

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Heretic is a tool designed to remove censorship, or "safety alignment," from transformer-based language models without the need for extensive post-training. It utilizes an advanced technique called directional ablation, or "abliteration," in conjunction with a TPE-based parameter optimizer from Optuna. This allows Heretic to function automatically, finding optimal parameters to minimize refusals while maintaining fidelity to the original model. Users can run Heretic without deep knowledge of transformer internals – just basic command-line skills are sufficient

ELI5 explanation of the CAP Theorem

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The CAP Theorem, applicable only to distributed systems, posits that you must choose between consistency and availability during faults, as you cannot have both simultaneously. Consistency means all users see the same data, while availability ensures users can always access data. Partition tolerance, the system's ability to function despite network failures, is mandatory in distributed systems. In a typical scenario, users can read and write data consistently. However, when a network partition occurs, systems must choose to prioritize either consistency (CP)

Bloom filters: the niche trick behind a 16× faster API

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The post discusses how an API endpoint's latency was significantly improved from 5 seconds to 0.3 seconds using a bloom filter, a specialized computer science technique. It explains the reasons behind the endpoint's initial slowness, the various solutions considered, and the decision-making process for choosing the best one. A key aspect of the On-call product is managing Alerts received from monitoring systems like Alertmanager and Datadog, which notify the team of potential issues in clients' products. All alerts

Anthropic’s paper smells like bullshit

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

A recent report from Anthropic, an AI-research company known for creating the coding assistant Claude, highlights a sophisticated cyber espionage operation identified as GTG-1002, attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored group. This operation signifies a shift in how advanced threat actors leverage AI, involving coordinated attacks on approximately 30 entities, with confirmed successful intrusions. The report's executive summary captures significant interest, prompting readers to seek detailed information on the tactics and techniques used. However, the content of the report

Google releases CodeWiki for AI-based code documentation

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

Of course! Please provide the content you'd like summarized.

Speedrunning a CPU: RISC-V in a Week

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The author created a RISC-V Emulator capable of executing 550 million instructions per second in just one week, inspired by a desire for a new challenge after completing a previous project. They aimed to build an entire ecosystem that included an operating system, a compiler, a browser, a clone of Neovim, and even a complex game like GTA 6, within a year. To embark on this ambitious project, they decided to start with developing their own CPU and operating system. Initially lacking experience,

How to decide a technology change

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on the tendency to prioritize perceived improvements in efficiency, illustrating this with an experience of contemplating a rewrite of a Go service in Java. Initially appearing beneficial, deeper analysis revealed that such a move would yield minimal results at a significant cost, likening it to unnecessary busywork. The key to productive engineering lies in translating improvements into tangible metrics, such as financial gains, reduced headcount, or fewer incidents, rather than simply chasing performance percentages. To make informed decisions and avoid distractions, the author

VotingWorks open source election system

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes that feedback is valued and taken seriously. It outlines the components of the VotingWorks paper-ballot voting system, which includes: - **Central System**: VxAdmin and VxCentralScan - **Precinct System**: VxMark, VxMarkScan, and VxScan - **VxPollBook**: Certified and acquired separately, used in precincts - **VxDesign**: Managed by VotingWorks, separate from hardware deployment For

IDEmacs: A Visual Studio Code clone for Emacs

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

IDEmacs is a set of Emacs configurations designed to offer a user experience similar to popular GUI IDEs and editors, particularly tailored for beginner Common Lisp and Scheme programmers. It provides essential Emacs functionalities like Sly/Geiser and structural editing, without the need for extensive setup or complex keybindings. Key features include: - Support for GUI and mouse interaction alongside a keyboard-driven interface. - Configurable via a custom GUI, not limited to Elisp. - Keybindings that align with popular

So how's Apple's PKL nowadays?

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback and mentions that all input is taken seriously. It outlines a configuration-as-code language that features robust validation and tooling, providing various resources including installation tips, language references, examples, and release notes. Users are encouraged to create issues or ask questions on GitHub Discussions. Additionally, the document lists several tools and resources related to the language, including bindings for different programming languages (Go, Swift), plugins for various editors (Neovim, VS Code, IntelliJ

AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem

Published: 2025-11-16 | Origin: Hacker News

The text discusses LibrePods, a project that allows users to unlock exclusive AirPods features on non-Apple devices, such as noise control modes and battery status. Users need a rooted Android device with Xposed due to issues with the Android Bluetooth stack. The Linux version operates as a system tray app, supporting functionality like simultaneous connections to two devices. The project is still in development, and users are encouraged to check the documentation for details and the installation process. Feedback from users is valued, and there is