News Nug
The (software) quality without a name

Published: 2025-10-07 | Origin: /r/programming

Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building," published in 1979, is a seminal work in architectural theory that explores the patterns that create emotionally resonant and harmonious spaces. It introduces the concept of "quality-without-a-name," which describes the intangible essence that makes certain buildings and places feel alive. Alexander emphasizes that this quality can be intentionally designed rather than left to chance, advocating for the use of timeless design patterns that have been effective throughout history and across cultures. The book's insights

Learning a foreign language–before you're born

Published: 2025-10-07 | Origin: Hacker News

A study led by researchers at the Université de Montréal has discovered that a fetus can begin to recognize a foreign language before birth. Prenatal exposure to a foreign language can rewire the language-processing networks in a newborn's brain, allowing them to process that language alongside their mother tongue. The research, published in *Communications Biology*, involved 60 native French-speaking pregnant women who played recordings of stories in French and either German or Hebrew to their babies in the womb. The choice of these specific languages

Pdoc – Generate API documentation for Python projects

Published: 2025-10-07 | Origin: Hacker News

Pdoc is an automatic API documentation generator for Python projects that mirrors the module hierarchy without needing configuration. It supports type annotations, allows for cross-linking between identifiers, includes a live-reloading web server, and recognizes both numpydoc and Google-style docstrings.

Fly.io Twitter got hacked

Published: 2025-10-07 | Origin: /r/programming

A Twitter account has been hacked and is posting about cryptocurrency scams. The attack seems targeted, with the fraudulent website closely resembling the official one, and it occurred during non-working hours. The team is investigating whether any other aspects of their platform, "fly," were compromised and is optimistic that the breach is limited. They confirmed that the incident was quickly identified, and no actual assets were at risk. Further details will be shared when the security team finalizes their investigation. Overall, they are relieved that the

The least amount of CSS for a decent looking site (2023)

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses the common issue of over-engineering CSS solutions, which can complicate web design and lead to problems. Kevin Powell emphasizes that a simple approach can yield a decent-looking responsive website with minimal CSS. Starting with basic HTML can result in a responsive layout, although images may cause overflow issues. To improve aesthetics, he suggests changing the default font to a system UI font for better universal appeal and increasing the font size and line-height for readability. Additionally, enabling a color scheme based on user

Buckle Up, There’s a New Gem Server in Town: gem.coop

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/ruby

In a recent post on Fullstack Ruby, Jared White discusses exciting developments in the Ruby community amidst ongoing drama. He highlights the introduction of a new community-driven gem server by The Gem Cooperative, which mirrors existing gems from rubygems.org. This new server allows Ruby developers to utilize multiple sources for gems, enhancing flexibility in their projects. The Gem Cooperative is composed of former contributors to RubyGems who were removed during a takeover. White encourages developers to update their Gemfiles to support this initiative, emphasizing

Apps SDK

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The framework for building apps for ChatGPT includes several key components: designing native conversational flows, ensuring quality and safety compliance, and prioritizing SDK use cases. It involves creating and configuring a Managed Cloud Platform (MCP) server and learning how to deploy it. Developers are encouraged to enhance app discovery with rich metadata, while also addressing security and privacy considerations. Additionally, it covers troubleshooting issues related to Apps SDK applications.

buffalo::buffalo::buffalo

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/programming

The post discusses a surprising realization that a famous grammatically correct sentence can be implemented in C++. This topic emerged during a conversation at CppCon 2025 about Clang’s -Wdtor-name error. The author is intrigued by the concept and seeks to understand how the Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) of different code snippets can be equivalent, as shown through tests using Clang, which produce the same AST for two different pieces of code. The author reflects on the idea of "injected class

Show HN: A Digital Twin of my coffee roaster that runs in the browser

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

This content describes a data-driven digital twin of a Kaleido M1 sample roaster that simulates roaster and bean dynamics. Users can interact with the virtual roaster, which defaults to Ethiopian Guji beans, specific ambient temperature, preheat settings, and drum speed. The demo allows for bean mass adjustments, charging the roaster, and modifications to heater power and fan speed during roasting, all while monitoring real-time temperature curves and rate of rise. The creator offers to make a Digital Twin for

OpenZL: An open source format-aware compression framework

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

OpenZL is a new data compression framework that provides lossless compression for structured data, achieving performance comparable to specialized compressors. It does this by utilizing a configurable sequence of transformations to reveal hidden order in the data, allowing for more effective compression. Despite employing different transformation methods for various file types, all OpenZL files can be decompressed using a single universal decompressor. The development of OpenZL is motivated by the limitations of existing frameworks like Zstandard, which, while improving over time,

Solution designs should only be a few pages

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/programming

The text discusses the criticisms architects face regarding the creation of extensive solution design documents that often become unwieldy and are seldom read. These documents can be excessively long, filled with sections that are either copied from other sources or marked as "not applicable," leading to disengagement from those tasked with completing them. The author advocates for more concise solution designs that prioritize essential information needed by the technical audience responsible for implementation. The key suggestion is to simplify these documents, keeping them lean while allowing for additional details as

Top 20 Most Famous Companies' Websites Built with Ruby on Rails

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content discusses the enduring popularity and benefits of Ruby on Rails (RoR) in web development. Created in 2004, RoR emphasizes elegant design and programming best practices, making it a favored framework for developing scalable and maintainable applications. As of September 2025, RoR continues to power significant websites, including e-commerce and social platforms, due to its development speed and reduced time-to-market compared to frameworks like Node.js and Django. RoR's strengths lie in its extensive ecosystem of

A beginner's guide to deploying LLMs with AMD on Windows using PyTorch

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

To deploy advanced AI models locally using an AMD GPU or APU, a capable Windows PC with PyTorch is sufficient. The AMD ROCm platform is now compatible with PyTorch, allowing for efficient AI inference on AMD Radeon RX 7000 and 9000 series GPUs, as well as certain AMD Ryzen AI APUs. Developers can set up and execute Large Language Models (LLMs) without prior experience in deep learning frameworks. For setup, users need Windows 11 and the appropriate PyTorch

Reflections on 2 Years Running Developer Relations

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

After two years at Dagster managing developer marketing, the author reflects on their insights regarding Developer Relations (DevRel). They note a recent surge in interest in DevRel roles, driven by the challenges of standing out in the competitive AI and LLM landscape. The author emphasizes that simply hiring DevRel isn't a comprehensive solution and suggests a deeper understanding of its purpose is necessary. When they first joined Dagster, the absence of a clear goal for the DevRel team led to confusion about its mission and effectiveness

Chess.com Regional Pricing: A Case Study

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/programming

Businesses aim to maximize profits by strategically pricing their products. Setting prices too low can result in lost profits, while high prices may exclude potential customers. Therefore, finding an optimal price that balances profitability and demand is essential. Global businesses, in particular, must consider regional pricing, adjusting prices according to each country's purchasing power, taxes, and tariffs to avoid mispricing that can lead to reduced profits. Many online services, including Netflix and Spotify, utilize regional pricing strategies. In the case of Chess.com,

Short Ruby Newsletter Edition 151

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/ruby

The content features several announcements related to developments in the Ruby programming community, including launches, discounts, and events. Highlights include: 1. **Launches**: - **Navigator**: A lightweight web server for multi-tenant applications by Sam Ruby, offering features such as on-demand process management and regional routing. - **DevvMe**: A platform to showcase and connect developers, prelaunched by Gustavo Valenzuela. - **Decoded Rails**: A newsletter launched by Omar

The little Random that could

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/ruby

The author discusses the often-overlooked `Random` module in the Ruby standard library, describing it as an invaluable tool for web application development, particularly when it comes to creating deterministic and testable environments. Unlike `SecureRandom`, which is tied to the operating system's entropy source and thus non-deterministic, `Random` uses the Mersenne twister algorithm to generate a sequence of pseudorandom numbers based on a seed. This makes `Random` particularly useful for applications that require repeat

ScribeOCR – Web interface for recognizing text, OCR, & creating digitized docs

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

Scribe OCR is a free web application designed for text recognition from images, proofreading OCR data, and creating fully-digitized documents. It operates entirely in the browser, ensuring user privacy as data isn’t sent to remote servers. Users can access the live site at scribeocr.com, and local instances can be run using npm commands. The application focuses on efficient proofreading, helping users enhance OCR accuracy from 98% to 100% by allowing easy error correction directly on the source images. Documentation for

Delimited continuations in lone lisp

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: /r/programming

The author discusses the recent implementation of a powerful control mechanism in their programming language, Lone. This development allows for future features such as exception handling and generators. The author reflects on their journey, detailing the complex growth of Lone with various data types and collections, and acknowledges a past avoidance of addressing iteration, despite having implemented some iteration primitives inspired by Ruby. The process involved leveraging the C compiler to handle iteration, but this approach highlighted a significant limitation in Lone's ability to control program flow, relying solely on

A terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad

Published: 2025-10-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The author developed a script called "usbi" to check USB connections on macOS after finding that some USB cables are slow and not suitable for charging or data transfer. The script uses macOS's `system_profiler SPUSBHostDataType` command to generate cleaner, more manageable output. Initially written in bash with the help of AI, the script was difficult to maintain, leading the author to rewrite it in Go for better structure and ease of modification. This process took only ten minutes thanks to