News Nug
Algorithmically Generated Crosswords: Finding 'good enough' for an NP-Complete problem

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/programming

Generating crossword puzzles is an NP-Complete problem due to the constraints that intersecting words create across the grid. As a result, there is no efficient algorithm that guarantees a solution, but effective heuristics can produce satisfactory outcomes. In late 2021, the author, inspired by a passion for the New York Times Crossword during lockdown, embarked on a project to create a crossword app. This led to the development of "Crosswarped," an iOS and Android game utilizing an algorithm for generating cross

Functional Equality (rewrite)

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/programming

The essay "When 2 + 2 Does Not Equal 4.0" explores the concept of equality in programming languages, highlighting the distinction between functional equality and semantic equality. It begins by discussing how incorrect assumptions about equality can lead to unexpected behaviors, as illustrated by JavaScript's treatment of different values like "" and [0], which are equal to 0 but not to each other. The essay references Leibniz’s Law, which posits that two things are identical if they share

Ways to do Continuous Incremental Delivery - Part 2: A core database change

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes the importance of agreeing to LinkedIn's User Agreement and Privacy Policies for joining or signing in. It discusses the author's experience in full stack development, noting a focus on backend work while trying to provide comprehensive support for changes. The author intends to offer detailed, step-by-step descriptions of real-world examples, highlighting the value of each incremental change and risk reduction strategies. The core premise is that achieving complete quality assurance before production is often unrealistic, and therefore, safe implementations using feature toggles and

Reducing OpenTelemetry Bundle Size in Browser Frontend

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/programming

Elizabeth from SigNoz introduces a newsletter focused on observability, OpenTelemetry, open-source, and related engineering topics. The team at SigNoz, passionate about these areas, aims to share their knowledge with readers and encourages subscriptions. In this final edition of the year, she includes Easter eggs for "Stranger Things" fans and wishes everyone a happy holiday season. She reflects on the challenges of maintaining observability in frontend applications, noting that relying on browser DevTools for logs limits visibility when troubleshooting

Programming Books I'll be reading in 2026.

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on a fulfilling year in 2025, during which they worked with various technologies such as Golang, Java, Spring Boot, and more. They express a concern about the lack of deep understanding of computer operations among professionals who work at a high abstraction level. As a result, the author has begun exploring foundational computer science topics. They emphasize the importance of understanding operating systems (OS) for software engineers, particularly backend engineers, as OS is the core layer underpinning software functionality. The

The Joy & Sorrow of Hardware Management in the Cloud with Holly Cummins

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/programming

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

GitHub - le0pard/json_mend: JsonMend - repair broken JSON

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/ruby

JsonMend is a Ruby gem designed to repair broken or malformed JSON strings, particularly those generated by Large Language Models (LLMs). It corrects common issues like missing quotes, trailing commas, unescaped characters, and stray comments. Users can add JsonMend to their application by including it in the Gemfile and executing specified commands. The main method, `JsonMend.repair`, returns valid JSON by default, but can return data in Hash or Array format if configured. It offers setup

Terraform: Best Practices and Cheat Sheet for the Basics

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: /r/programming

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CSRF protection without tokens or hidden form fields

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: Hacker News

A couple of months ago, the author received a request to add CSRF protection to their web framework, Microdot. Initially, they planned to incorporate traditional methods like anti-CSRF tokens and double-submit cookies. However, they discovered a simpler approach to mitigate CSRF attacks. Despite the common advice against implementing security features independently—favoring established solutions—the author, as the sole maintainer of Microdot, felt compelled to create a CSRF protection mechanism themselves due to the lack of existing options. They

Build Android apps using Rust and Iced

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: Hacker News

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback and acknowledges its receipt. It directs users to the documentation for available qualifiers and provides an example of building the "iced" GUI framework for Android. It mentions that users can run examples from iced, excluding certain rendering parts, and outlines some functionality issues with text input, such as copy/paste and keyboard visibility, which require Java calls. The document references the "android-activity" crate for detailed guidance and explains that although iced does not natively support Android,

ONNX Runtime and CoreML May Silently Convert Your Model to FP16

Published: 2025-12-22 | Origin: Hacker News

Yusuf Mohammad discusses the implications of running an ONNX model with ONNX Runtime (ORT) using the CoreMLExecutionProvider, which can affect model predictions due to default behavior that casts models to FP16. To ensure the model remains in FP32 on a Mac GPU, a specific setup for the InferenceSession is recommended. After training the EyesOff model, evaluations showed discrepancies in outputs when comparing model performance between ONNX on MPS, ONNX on CPU, and PyTorch on both platforms

Disney Imagineering Debuts Next-Generation Robotic Character, Olaf

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: Hacker News

On November 24, 2025, Disneyland Paris unveiled a cutting-edge robotic character representing Olaf from Disney's Frozen, introduced by Bruce Vaughn and Natacha Rafalski. This innovation showcases Disney's commitment to blending technology with storytelling, creating a lifelike experience that captures Olaf's essence through meticulous design and movement. The character features iridescent fibers to mimic the shimmer of snow and was developed in collaboration with the original animators to ensure authenticity. This debut marks a significant advancement in Disney

Show HN: Rust/WASM lighting data toolkit – parses legacy formats, generates SVGs

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: Hacker News

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

A guide to local coding models

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: Hacker News

The article initially discussed the viability of local coding models, suggesting they could potentially replace higher-cost coding subscription services. However, after community feedback, the author acknowledged a mistake in their hypothesis, correcting it from a tentative endorsement to a clear recommendation against dropping existing coding subscriptions for local models. The author emphasizes that while local models can perform approximately 90% of software development tasks, the final 10%—crucial for professional environments—is where these models fall short. They clarify that their perspective was

Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: Hacker News

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

Crunch: A Message Definition and Serialization Protocol for Getting Things Right

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: /r/programming

Crunch is a C++ message definition and serialization framework designed for mission-critical and resource-constrained systems. It emphasizes the importance of message semantics alongside structure and includes features such as built-in field and message validation. Crunch is header-only, requires C++23, and does not use STL libraries for dynamic memory allocation. Users can integrate it by copying the include directory into their project and configuring their build system accordingly. Validation occurs during the serialization and deserialization processes, but it can be bypassed if needed.

A Fair, Cancelable Semaphore in Go

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: /r/programming

The author invites technically inclined readers to attempt building a semaphore from scratch in their preferred programming language, sharing their own challenging experience with Go, which was more difficult than expected due to concurrency and locking bugs. Semaphores are used in programming to manage access to shared resources and limit concurrent task execution. The author illustrates a problem that can arise from not using semaphores when exceeding file descriptor limits in an operating system. In Go, channels facilitate communication between goroutines but lack a first-in-first-out (

Is MCP Overhyped?

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: /r/programming

Of course! Please provide the content you'd like me to summarize, and I'll be happy to help.

Constvector: Log-structured std:vector alternative – 30-40% faster push/pop

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback, indicating that all input is seriously considered. It includes instructions on accessing documentation for available qualifiers, options to block users from interacting with repositories, and guidance on reporting abusive behavior to GitHub support. Additionally, it mentions a Jupyter Notebook and an assembly related to the Apache Flink project, along with statistics on programming languages used (Java and Python). It concludes with a notification about a loading error and a prompt to reload the page.

Show HN: Gaming Couch – a local multiplayer party game platform for 8 players

Published: 2025-12-21 | Origin: Hacker News

Engage in exciting party games for up to 8 players, using your smartphone as the controller—no need for consoles or downloads! Perfect for creating fun and competitive experiences with friends.