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Beating Bellard's Formula

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/programming

Robert Smith discusses Fabrice Bellard's formula for calculating the nth hexadecimal digit of \(\pi\) without needing the previous digits. This method, known as Bellard's formula, is a significant improvement over the earlier Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe (BBP) formula, which led to the classification of these methodologies as BBP-type formulas. Over the years, many such formulas have been developed, with Bailey providing a technique to discover new ones through integer-relation algorithms. Smith conducted

Galileo's handwritten notes found in ancient astronomy text

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

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From 40 Minutes to 4 With Tests Parallelization

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/ruby

Last month, a significant upgrade was completed for a client’s application, addressing two main issues: the outdated Rails 2.3 LTS and Ruby 2.5, and a lengthy test suite that took 40 minutes to run, hindering code merges and feedback loops. The upgrade upgraded the app to Rails 8.1.1 and Ruby 3.4.7, which led to an impressive reduction in test suite runtime from 40 minutes to about 4 minutes. The application

But How Does a Computer Actually Work? (from scratch, no prior knowledge...

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/programming

Of course! Please provide the content you would like me to summarize.

The Illusion of Building

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/programming

AI has significantly reduced the cost of producing superficial software that appears functional, leading to a common misconception that simply creating an app equates to comprehensive software engineering. Many viral posts showcase individuals claiming to have built apps without any coding experience, celebrating the creation moment while neglecting the complexities of operating and maintaining functioning systems. This phenomenon is likened to a viral video where creators make a model Bugatti out of clay; it looks like a Bugatti but lacks the engineering necessary for its performance. This illustrates

Every single board computer I tested in 2025

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

In 2025, there was significant activity in the single board computer (SBC) market, with 15 new boards released from 8 different manufacturers, including Rockchip, Broadcom, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Allwinner, StarFive, CIX, and Texas Instruments. Prices ranged from $42 to $590, offering a diverse selection such as RISC-V boards and Qualcomm's notable entry into this space, alongside new contributions from CIX and an Arduino SBC. Raspberry Pi also continued

Migrating from Heroku to Magic Containers

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/programming

The author, a long-time fan of Heroku, praises its pioneering role in platform as a service, particularly highlighting the ease of deployment through "git push heroku master." Heroku significantly shaped the deployment experience for many developers, allowing them to build production apps without the complexities of EC2 instances. However, on February 6, 2026, Heroku announced a shift to a sustaining engineering model, ceasing new features and enterprise contracts. For those looking to transition away from Heroku

Charting app

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/ruby

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Emacs internals: Deconstructing Lisp_Object in C (Part 2)

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

In this installment of the GNU Emacs series, the author shifts focus from the historical context of Emacs, which emphasizes its nature as a Lisp interpreter within a text editor, to a broader system-design perspective. The post begins by referencing the first installment and provides a brief overview of Lisp for those unfamiliar with it. The author discusses their approach to understanding source code by examining general computation principles, illustrating with a simple example (3 + 4 = 7). They highlight how computational processes can be

How to Think About Time in Programming

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/programming

The article discusses the complexities of time handling in software programming, a topic often met with apprehension by developers. While some suggest standard advice like "just use UTC," this can lead to bugs in programs requiring precise timekeeping or user-facing datetime interactions. It introduces two key concepts: "durations," which represent lengths of time (e.g., how long an event takes), and "instants," which mark specific points in time (e.g., the moment an event occurs). Absolute time refers to

Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

The author, not a legal expert, discusses recent challenges in open source licensing, particularly involving the project "chardet," a Python character encoding detector. Originally licensed under LGPL, the project encountered difficulties due to the requirement of unanimous consent for relicensing, which is hard for legacy projects. Recently, the maintainers rewrote the codebase and released version 7.0.0 under the MIT license. However, the original author raised concerns about a potential GPL violation, arguing that modifications must adhere

You Just Reveived

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

The writer reflects on their experience with Vodafone, expressing gratitude for a unique message received that offered "free unlimited data and 999999 minutes" for five days. The author shares that their family shares a mobile phone through two SIM cards and typically receives promotions tied to monetary top-ups. This unexpected message stood out due to its unprompted nature and the typo in the minute offer. Despite the oddity, the writer confirms they did indeed receive the minutes, although they found they were limited in usage.

Show HN: Poppy – a simple app to stay intentional with relationships

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

Poppy transforms your contact list into a dynamic, living garden that provides gentle reminders to stay connected with loved ones, eliminating guilt and pressure. Unlike traditional social media, it avoids scrolling and feeds, allowing users to simply log interactions and resume their daily lives. Poppy acknowledges the challenge of maintaining relationships, especially as life changes, by offering features that categorize contacts into a garden metaphor, where thriving connections are green and wilting ones need attention. Users can set personalized reminder frequencies—daily, weekly,

Maybe There's a Pattern Here?

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

Richard Gatling envisioned a machine gun in 1861 that could allow one soldier to perform the duties of a hundred, reducing the need for large armies and minimizing exposure to battle and disease. In 1923, Hermann Oberth advanced the concept of space travel in his works, proposing various rocket technologies and human space exploration initiatives. This inspired the formation of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR) in 1927 in Germany, which rapidly grew and contributed to popular culture,

What Python's asyncio primitives get wrong about shared state

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

The article discusses the challenges of coordinating concurrent tasks using Python's asyncio, particularly when managing shared state under real concurrency pressure. Aaron Harper describes the shortcomings of asyncio.Event and asyncio.Condition, which initially seem close to providing a solution but fail to handle every scenario effectively. He outlines the need for a mechanism to wait for specific states in an async Python application, like draining pending requests during a connection shutdown, and critiques existing methods. Using a loop to check status works but is inefficient. Instead, asyncio.Event provides

Google Workspace CLI

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses a CLI tool designed for Google Workspace, emphasizing its focus on user-friendly features and dynamic command integration via Google's Discovery Service. It highlights that the tool is not officially supported by Google, is still in active development, and may undergo breaking changes before version 1.0. Key features include structured JSON responses, tab-completion, and various authentication methods. The CLI also supports both human use and AI agents, integrating with existing workflows and storing credentials securely. The tool requires the installation of the

10% of Firefox crashes are estimated to be caused by bitflips

Published: 2026-03-05 | Origin: /r/programming

Of course! Please provide the content you would like me to summarize.

Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’

Published: 2026-03-04 | Origin: Hacker News

The Founder Summit 2026 in Boston offers ticket discounts of up to $300, while registration for the Disrupt 2026 pass can save attendees up to $680, with the offer expiring tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. In tech news, Anthropic's co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei criticized OpenAI's dealings with the Department of Defense (DoD) in a memo, referring to them as "safety theater." He contrasted Anthropic's refusal

Top K is a deceptively hard problem in relational databases

Published: 2026-03-04 | Origin: /r/programming

The concept of "Top K" in databases refers to retrieving the best K rows based on specific criteria, such as recent entries or highest scores. While it might seem straightforward for Postgres to handle with indexing, achieving efficient Top K queries can be complex in production environments. This discussion highlights the performance of Postgres' Top K optimization, revealing its advantages and limitations, particularly compared to specialized libraries like Lucene/Tantivy or databases such as ParadeDB. In an example with a table of 100

Tracing Discord's Elixir Systems (Without Melting Everything)

Published: 2026-03-04 | Origin: /r/programming

Discord aims to provide an instantaneous chat experience through the use of Elixir's concurrency features, which allow each server (or "guild") to operate independently. However, issues can arise when a guild struggles to handle user activity, leading to lag or outages. In such cases, on-call engineers must investigate the issue using observability tools, analyzing metrics and logs for insights into user actions and performance. These metrics help identify user activity patterns, but they don't fully reflect user experiences. To gather more detailed insights