News Nug
Quartz crystals

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses the historical and ongoing relevance of quartz crystals in radio technology, beginning with their use in the 1920s and their mass production during World War II, initially sourced from natural Brazilian quartz. Today, over 2 billion quartz crystals are produced annually, predominantly serving as clocking mechanisms for microprocessors. The text emphasizes the critical role of quartz crystals in ensuring stability in oscillators, noting a significant incident in 1972 where a train crash was attributed to a faulty crystal oscillator. Quartz

Deep dive into Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: /r/programming

The document discusses the Hierarchical Navigable Small Worlds (HNSW) algorithm, a popular method for approximate nearest neighbor search. The goal of this algorithm is to efficiently find the nearest vector to a given query vector within a large dataset of vectors. A brute-force approach is impractical due to the potential size of the dataset, which can contain billions of vectors and high dimensionality (up to 4096 dimensions). To optimize the search, HNSW leverages a data structure that represents "

How Google Finds Websites (It’s Not Magic)

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: /r/programming

In the second episode of the series "Behind The Screen," the focus is on web crawlers, essential software that significantly enhances tech by enabling search engines to display results. The episode discusses the core concept of web crawlers, which systematically browse the internet to download and index content from websites, creating databases for search engines. Instead of delving into specific implementations by companies like Google or Yahoo, the episode outlines the general workings of web crawlers. The process begins with a Crawl Manager, which receives a

The silent death of Good Code

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: /r/programming

Amit Prasad expresses his long-standing passion for writing “Good Code™”, which he defines as code that is easy to read, maintain, and serves a specific purpose. He emphasizes that good code arises from a mix of talent, experience, passion, and time investment, yet notes that it is quite rare. As a software engineer, Prasad clarifies that his role is not strictly about writing good code but creating software that effectively solves problems. He shares an anecdote about a colleague at Modal

Vouch

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a community trust management system based on explicit vouches to facilitate interactions within a project. Participants must be vouched for to access certain project areas, and they can also be denounced to restrict participation. The system is designed to be generic and easily applicable to any project, with built-in integration for GitHub. Trust can be expanded through interconnected vouch lists across projects, allowing users deemed trustworthy in one project to be trusted in others. This system is currently experimental, implemented by Ghostty

Haskell for all: Beyond agentic coding

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The author expresses a generally positive view of AI but critiques "agentic coding," stating it often does not enhance productivity and can reduce user comfort with codebases. This conclusion is based on personal experiences, interviews with job candidates who performed poorly when using such tools, and research studies that show users of agentic coding do not achieve better outcomes. While the author sees potential for improvement in agentic coding, they assert it currently harms software development. Instead, the author advocates for exploring alternative AI solutions in software

Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a local AI assistant called LocalGPT, which is built in Rust and features persistent memory and autonomous tasks, with a compact binary size of approximately 27MB. It is inspired by and compatible with OpenClaw. Users can install it via Cargo. LocalGPT utilizes plain markdown files for memory storage, indexed with SQLite for efficient keyword and semantic searches. Configuration settings are found in the `~/.localgpt/config.toml` file. The author shares the experience of building LocalGPT

FOSDEM 2026 - Hacking the last Z80 computer ever made

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: /r/programming

The Z80 CPU was widely used in home computers during the 1980s, but its usage declined with the rise of 16-bit and 32-bit processors, primarily continuing in legacy systems like the Amstrad PCW. However, in 1999, Cidco introduced the MailStation, a new computer featuring a Z80 CPU running at 12 MHz and equipped with 128 kB of RAM. This device was designed specifically for sending and receiving emails, targeting users who found

Font Rendering from First Principles

Published: 2026-02-08 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses the complexities of font rendering technology, specifically focusing on the author's personal implementation of font rendering using the TrueType Font (TTF) file format, as opposed to using established libraries like FreeType. The author notes that FreeType consists of over 200,000 lines of code, highlighting the challenges involved in rendering text. By creating their own TTF parser, the author aims to simplify the process, especially since TTF is widely used for Latin alphanumeric glyphs, which meet their

Netflix Engineering: Creating a Source of Truth for Impression Events

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: /r/programming

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Microsoft appointed a quality czar. He has no direct reports and no budget.

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: /r/programming

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One API to Rule Them All: Migrating from zod-openapi to ConnectRPC

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the challenges faced by the author’s team when maintaining two separate APIs: tRPC for internal use due to its type safety, and a REST API for public use. This "Split Stack" problem led to increased complexity and bugs. To resolve this, they are creating ConnectRPC, a schema-first API that combines the benefits of both tRPC and REST. ConnectRPC offers type safety while being accessible, using the Buf ecosystem for effective client generation and execution of constraints. The author emphasizes the

Let's compile Quake like it's 1997!

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: /r/programming

The early development of Quake began with executables like quake.exe and vquake.exe, which were created on an HP 712-60 running NeXT and cross-compiled using DJGPP on a DEC Alpha server. In June 1996, id Software transitioned to using Windows NT for subsequent versions like winquake.exe, glquake.exe, and QuakeWorld, which were developed with Visual C++ 4.X. The article outlines how to recreate the process of building the win32 binaries

Brookhaven Lab's RHIC concludes 25-year run with final collisions

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: Hacker News

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Speed up responses with fast mode

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: Hacker News

You can achieve quicker Opus 4.6 responses in Claude Code by enabling fast mode. The page also includes sections on company information, help and security, learning resources, and terms and policies.

SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes (2023)

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: Hacker News

SectorC is an incredibly compact C compiler designed to fit within the 512-byte boot sector of an x86 machine, likely making it the smallest C compiler ever created. Although it only supports a subset of C, it is capable enough to write interesting programs using features like global variables, functions, control flow statements, and inline machine code. The project was inspired by previous work and ideas related to code deobfuscation and other minimalist programming languages, with the creator initially doubting the feasibility of fitting

Running Clojure inside SwiftUI

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: /r/programming

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The Machine Learned Our Language

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: /r/ruby

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Japan's Dododo Land, the most irritating place on Earth

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: Hacker News

Dododo Land is a temporary interactive exhibit located at the Seibu department store in Tokyo's Shibuya neighborhood, designed to explore and celebrate the various aspects of annoyance and anger in a fun way. The exhibit reflects the common feelings of irritation many people experience in their daily lives. Visitors can purchase tickets for entry and play mini-games within the space, which features two main sections themed around mascots Punda the angry panda and Ussa the angry rabbit. The experience includes humorous displays, such as walls

Software factories and the agentic moment

Published: 2026-02-07 | Origin: Hacker News

The text outlines the establishment of a Software Factory by Justin McCarthy (co-founder and CTO) and his team, Jay Taylor and Navan Chauhan, at StrongDM. The focus is on a non-interactive development process where specifications and scenarios guide agents to autonomously write and execute code, minimizing human intervention. This initiative was inspired by advancements in AI, particularly the release of Claude 3.5 in late 2024, which improved long-horizon coding workflows and reduced error accumulation that plagued