News Nug
Spineless Traversal for Layout Invalidation

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

arXivLabs is a platform enabling collaboration to create and share new features for the arXiv website, emphasizing values such as openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. Those interested in contributing or suggesting projects that would benefit the arXiv community can learn more about arXivLabs. Additionally, users can receive operational status notifications via email or Slack.

Why I find diffusion models interesting?

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

A recent tweet highlighted the release of a new model called Diffusion LLM (dLLM) by Inception Labs. Unlike traditional autoregressive language models that generate text left to right, dLLMs generate words simultaneously for all parts of a sentence. This approach, which has been successful in image and video generation, is reportedly outperforming similar-sized LLMs in code generation. The author, who has spent two years in LLM evaluation, notes several advantages of dLLMs. Traditional L

How to distrust a CA without any certificate errors

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the concept of "distrust" regarding certification authorities (CAs) that issue HTTPS certificates. When a CA is removed from a root store due to a lack of trust, its certificates are invalidated, leading to potential browser errors for users. Distrust can arise from security issues, compliance failures, or general mistrust of the CA. Historically, the impact of distrust events varied based on the CA's size, but now, due to the requirement for public certificate transparency (CT

I made a cryptography tool that encodes secrets as cat and dog sounds

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

PurrCrypt is a playful yet secure encryption tool that encodes messages using real elliptic curve cryptography while disguising them as cat and dog sounds. It combines strong cryptographic techniques, similar to those used in Bitcoin, with an adorable presentation, appealing to pet lovers. PurrCrypt protects your secrets while ensuring that they appear as nonsensical pet sounds, making it both fun and secure. Users can generate key pairs, import friends' keys, and manage their keys while enjoying the lighthearted

Show HN: Rust Vector and Quaternion Lib

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback, stating that it is taken very seriously. It provides an overview of operations related to vectors, matrices, and quaternions, which utilize f32 or f64 data types. Key points include: - There are various features available, such as a no_std feature for embedded systems that excludes certain implementations, and a computer_graphics feature for specialized matrix constructors and serialization for GPU communication. - Bincode encoding and decoding is supported through the encode feature. - Users

50 Years in Filesystems

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

This content is part 2 of a series that discusses the evolution of Unix and Linux file systems, following an introductory overview in part 1. It highlights the challenges of recognizing progress in technology, particularly in educational materials and research. The original Unix filesystem had numerous issues, which prompted improvements by BSD Unix, documented in "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System." A key resource is the 1984 paper "A Fast File System for UNIX," authored by notable figures

Using GRPO to Beat o1, o3-mini and R1 at "Temporal Clue"

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

In the blog post by Brad Hilton and Kyle Corbitt, dated March 6, 2025, the authors discuss their use of Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) to improve performance in a reasoning-heavy game called “temporal clue.” They achieved results that surpassed several benchmarks (R1, o1, o3-mini) and came close to Sonnet 3.7, all while being over 100 times cheaper at inference time. The post highlights lessons learned in task design and

Lotus programming language

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback and invites users to review available qualifiers in the documentation. It introduces "Lotus," a lightweight and beginner-friendly programming language created by two developers as a practice project to explore language design, compilers, and interpreters. Currently in development, installation instructions will be provided soon. A simple "Hello, World!" program is included, and the developers are committed to enhancing Lotus with planned features.

A Holistic View on APIs as an Ecosystem

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

The article, authored by Haim Kastner and Yuval Pomerchik from Check Point Software Technologies, discusses the complexities involved in building RESTful APIs beyond their apparent simplicity. While initially they seem straightforward as a client-server interaction, real-world applications face various challenges, including managing multiple consumers from different domains, handling authentication and authorization, validating inputs, managing errors, and implementing rate limits. As a product evolves, a comprehensive approach is essential for developing APIs that can scale effectively. The authors highlight

Succinct Data Structures

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The author recounts their experience delving into computer science research to improve code performance, particularly encountering a 15-year-old paper on succinct data structures that introduced new concepts to them. Despite initial confusion, they sought additional papers for clarity, leading them to a source code website that was no longer available. The author reached out to the website's owner, a computer science professor named Gonzalo Navarro, who turned out to be a leading expert in succinct data structures. This interaction led the author to explore the

Mistral OCR

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The text discusses the historical evolution of information abstraction and retrieval, highlighting the importance of each advancement in making knowledge more accessible. It introduces Mistral OCR, an Optical Character Recognition API that significantly enhances document understanding by accurately interpreting various document elements like text, images, tables, and equations. This API is designed to work effectively with multimodal documents, such as slides and complex PDFs, making it suitable for integration with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems. Mistral OCR has become the

Lanet: A lightweight tool for secure and easy peer-to-peer communication on local area networks. Includes a CLI and Ruby API.

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/ruby

Lanet is a lightweight tool designed for secure peer-to-peer communication over local area networks. It features a command-line interface (CLI) and a Ruby API, providing capabilities for encrypted messaging, network discovery, and both targeted and broadcast messaging. Users can control network scanning performance, view detailed host information, and track scanning progress in real-time. The tool allows users to ping hosts with various options and can be integrated programmatically into Ruby applications. A common use case includes setting up a network monitoring system that

How to build a palace: Building in iterations is not the same as postponing quality

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

Michal Ganzarcik discusses the importance of maintaining quality standards in iterative development processes. He critiques the common practice of prioritizing quick implementations, often at the expense of thoroughness, by using a metaphor of a cow producing manure. While iterative methods can lead to progress, they can also result in poorly constructed outcomes if quality is neglected. Instead, he advocates for a focus on producing high-quality building blocks in each iteration, akin to constructing a palace. Consistent quality is necessary to create a robust and

Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

In March 2025, an article highlighted how a mathematical proof emerged from a query posed by fans of the cult anime series *The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya* on the controversial image board 4chan. The discussion revolved around determining the minimum number of episodes required to watch the 14-episode series in every possible order. This question relates to the mathematical concept of superpermutations, which continues to challenge mathematicians. The original post, despite being on a platform

DNS lookup from scratch with Ruby

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/ruby

On February 26, 2025, the author reflected on their experience implementing a DNS query without using any external libraries. They noted that DNS, often referred to as the "phone book of the internet," translates human-readable domain names into machine-friendly IP addresses. The author developed a toy project named "rbdig" in Ruby, along with utilizing official documentation (RFC1035) to construct and parse DNS requests. The DNS request is composed of two main parts, and the author used tools

Exploring Polymorphism in C: Lessons from Linux and FFmpeg's Code Design (2019)

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

The text discusses the extensibility and organizational principles behind the Linux and FFmpeg codebases, focusing on their approach to implementing “polymorphism” and the concept of treating everything as a file. It emphasizes the importance of design patterns and abstractions in creating maintainable software, especially in developing media frameworks for encoding and decoding audio and video. In creating such frameworks, common operations of various codecs (like AV1, H264, HEVC, and AAC) can be grouped into generic abstractions,

Portable MRI Scans Patients for Signs of Stroke

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: Hacker News

Axana is a portable MRI scanner developed by Wellumio, designed to improve stroke diagnosis and treatment. Strokes are a leading cause of death and disability globally, with timely medical imaging being crucial for effective treatment. Strokes can be ischemic (caused by blockages) or hemorrhagic (resulting from bleeding), making accurate diagnosis essential to prevent incorrect treatments. Many medical facilities lack adequate MRI equipment, causing delays that can harm patients during the critical first hour after a stroke, known as

A Quick Journey Into the Linux Kernel

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

The author reflects on revisiting their old operating systems coursework, which felt too abstract, leading them to read Robert Love's "Linux Kernel Development." While the book is based on the older 2.6 kernel, it provides valuable insights into Linux internals and core design principles that are still relevant today. The author seeks a practical understanding of how operating systems tackle everyday challenges, like process scheduling and memory management. They highlight that kernel development differs significantly from user space programming, as developers have to forgo

Bulk Migrations by Passing validate(_check)_constraint through change_table

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/ruby

The author is an experienced Ruby on Rails and React Native developer with over four years of experience in creating software solutions and enjoys team collaboration and challenging projects. In their free time, they enjoy chess and gaming. The content discusses enhancements in Rails 7.1 that allow for cleaner migrations by enabling the combination of column additions and constraint validations within a single change_table block, improving efficiency in managing database schemas. Additionally, the author invites readers who may need help with Ruby on Rails or React projects to engage further

Why you should never use page.waitForTimeout() in Playwright

Published: 2025-03-06 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses Playwright, an automation tool that goes beyond being a mere testing framework. It emphasizes that Playwright executes browser-based actions reliably, utilizing ARIA roles for element locators rather than visual or CSS classes, making it resistant to minor styling changes. However, it warns against using the page.waitForTimeout() function, highlighting it as an antipattern. This function introduces 'hard waits' that are inflexible and can lead to brittle and slow tests. The text argues that these waits create