Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: /r/programming

The text discusses the historical challenge of proving identity to strangers at a distance, emphasizing that networks have digitized rather than created this problem. It traces the evolution of identity verification from ancient times, starting with Nehemiah in 450 BC, who was provided letters from King Artaxerxes I for safe passage. It highlights similar systems across various civilizations, such as China's guosuo, Roman letters of introduction, and medieval tax receipts, illustrating the concept of transitive trust—where trust is built

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

The author reflects on their 14 years at Google, realizing that success as an engineer goes beyond technical skills. While coding is important, the most effective engineers excel at navigating the complexities around their work, including interpersonal dynamics and organizational challenges. They stress the importance of understanding user problems deeply instead of fixating on specific technologies or solutions. By focusing on user needs—through interactions, support tickets, and inquiry—engineers can uncover simpler, more effective solutions. The author warns against being overly certain in discussions

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

The essay discusses the paradox of sitting alone in a café, which are traditionally designed as social spaces for gatherings. The author reflects on their choice of a staycation instead of traveling like friends did, opting for leisurely activities and deepening their relationship with their dog through long walks. Feeling the passage of time slow down, the author decided to leave their phone at home during walks, leading to initial anxiety but ultimately providing a liberating experience. They found joy in the freedom from digital distractions and the opportunity to

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses an anecdote from the development of *Street Fighter II*, specifically related to a last-minute issue discovered before the game's release. The CPS-1 arcade hardware, which operates by drawing pre-set tiles from the GFX ROM without the ability to modify them, posed a challenge when a typo was found. Akiman, a developer, realized he could not alter the GFX ROM but had control over the instructions ROM. He creatively resolved the typo in the logo by replacing specific tiles, which

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: /r/programming

The guide by Alexey Makhotkin takes a unique approach to explaining SQL JOINs, focusing first on LEFT JOIN followed by INNER JOIN. It emphasizes using ID equality comparisons in the ON condition and distinguishes between N:1, 1:N, and M:N JOIN types, advocating for N:1 as the preferred method. The guide avoids confusing terminology and provides a detailed analysis of how to avoid overcounting in GROUP BY queries. Key objectives of the guide include teaching readers to write accurate and

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: /r/programming

The new version enhances build support for Android native applications by allowing more configurable parameters in the android.native_app rule, such as android_sdk_version and android_manifest. It also enables the disabling of the default android_native_app_glue library for custom integrations. The introduction of the utils.bin2obj rule improves build speed by generating object files directly, bypassing C code generation. The tool supports multiple architectures and formats, including x86, ARM, and others, and automates the generation of symbol names for embedded

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on the misconception that solving problems requires isolation and intense focus on code. Instead, they argue for a systematic approach to problem-solving, emphasizing that innovation is a process influenced by environmental factors rather than a sudden "eureka" moment. The insights from Steven Johnson's book "Where Good Ideas Come From" highlight the importance of collaboration, shared networks, and building upon existing tools and ideas rather than seeking to invent something entirely new. The author encourages tinkering with current technologies and leveraging platforms to

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: /r/programming

Norman is a co-founder of Genode Labs and oversees the Genode project, focusing on framework architecture, tooling, and graphics. He recently expressed surprise at learning about Seed7, a strongly typed programming language that offers memory safety and performance comparable to C, while being both interpreted and compiled. As memory safety has gained attention with the rise of Rust, it is noted that other managed languages like Java and C# also provide memory safety, but often through garbage collection, which can limit their use in

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

The article, dated January 3, 2026, discusses training a neural network to play Tic-Tac-Toe using reinforcement learning in Jax. It aims for a pedagogical approach, resulting in code that is not highly optimized but can train a model to achieve perfect play in about 15 seconds on a standard laptop. The code is accessible on GitHub and in a Colab notebook, although the latter runs slower. The article begins by explaining how Tic-Tac-Toe is represented in

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

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Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

Morten Høi Jensen's study on Thomas Mann's novel *The Magic Mountain* explores the complexities of Mann as a writer and individual. In a 1924 letter, Mann expressed doubts about the novel’s appeal, describing it as “problematic” and overly lengthy for European audiences. Despite his reservations, the novel gained significant acclaim in Europe and the U.S., being heralded as a significant work of literary modernism alongside classics like *In Search of Lost Time* and *Uly

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback and outlines the features of an automatic differentiation library, referred to as "mytorch," implemented in Python with inspiration from PyTorch. It highlights its extensibility, use of NumPy for computations, and similarities to PyTorch's graph-based reverse-mode autodiff. Mytorch can compute high derivatives for both scalar and non-scalar inputs, supporting functionalities like `torch.autograd.backward` and `torch.autograd.grad`. The text also suggests that extending mytorch to

Published: 2026-01-04 | Origin: Hacker News

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Published: 2026-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

During a catchup call, the speaker recounted sharing with their friend Nick Wignall about an AI model that was trained to write blog posts in the speaker's style. The creator's goal was to see if the AI could generate complete articles based on the speaker’s previous work by providing headlines and opening paragraphs. However, upon comparing a few AI-generated posts with the originals, the speaker noted that the writing suffered from an "uncanny valley" effect, where it appeared fine initially but felt off

Published: 2026-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

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Published: 2026-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

Carquet is a high-performance library written in pure C for reading and writing Apache Parquet files, filling the gap for a production-ready C implementation in contrast to existing libraries in C++, Rust, Java, and Python. It is designed for C-only environments with minimal dependencies, especially beneficial for embedded or constrained systems. While Carquet provides functionality for handling Parquet files, Apache Arrow remains the industry standard for comprehensive feature support and reliability. Carquet supports various platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows

Published: 2026-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

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Published: 2026-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback, stating that all feedback is taken seriously. It describes a CLI tool designed to validate business logic specified in YAML files, which can be integrated into continuous integration (CI) systems to prevent pull requests (PRs) that contain invalid or risky logic changes. The tool helps separate business logic from application code, allowing the definition of rules in version-controlled YAML and facilitating testing and review of changes. The output of the tool indicates whether all tests pass or if there are

Published: 2026-01-03 | Origin: /r/programming

Bold is a fast text editor expected to enter public beta around May. The author has worked just over two weeks this month due to taking time off, illness, and holidays. They spent time auditing key classes and utility code, fixing bugs, and working on insert and delete logic for proper highlighting of semantic tokens, which required extensive coding to maintain delta updates without overwriting token information. Additionally, they began implementing a keymap configuration file that supports multiple actions for one shortcut, although it's still a work in

Published: 2026-01-03 | Origin: Hacker News

In his article published on January 2, 2026, Michael Lynch analyzes the most popular Hacker News bloggers from 2025, with Simon Willison retaining his top position for the third consecutive year. Lynch defines a blogger as someone who runs a personal blog rather than a corporate or team platform. Simon stands out due to his genuine approach to blogging about artificial intelligence (AI) — he shares his experiences as a power user without any commercial bias. In a year dominated by AI discussions, Simon