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Why Git’s HEAD isn’t what most developers think it is Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming Stackademic is a learning platform aimed at programmers, developers, coders, and engineers, with the mission of providing free coding education globally. The content discusses the concept of "HEAD" in Git, clarifying the common confusion surrounding it. Specifically, "head branches" refer to the branches located under .git/refs/heads/ in a local repository. |
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Build Your Own Database Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming This guide outlines the process of building a key-value database from scratch. A key-value database allows users to store and retrieve data using keys, similar to JavaScript objects. The main function of a database is to persistently store data and facilitate efficient retrieval. To store data, key-value pairs are added to a file (e.g., db.txt). To look up a key, one must iterate through the pairs to find a match. Updates involve replacing the existing value for a key, and deletes |
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Packaging Ruby Apps with Warbler: Executable JAR Files Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/ruby Warbler is a tool in the JRuby ecosystem designed to package Ruby applications along with their dependencies into a single deployable file. This update explores how to use Warbler effectively. In the Java ecosystem, applications have long been distributed as JAR (Java ARchive) files, which are organized zip files that contain compiled Java bytecode, resources, and metadata. Deployable web applications use WAR (Web ARchive) files, while enterprise applications may use EAR (Enterprise ARchive |
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Ask HN: Our AWS account got compromised after their outage Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: Hacker News The content describes a security incident involving the potential compromise of AWS accounts, specifically related to a sudden surge of 600 instances created within three hours. AWS flagged this activity, raising a health event, and there were requests made to increase the SES (Simple Email Service) quota. The investigation points to older IAM accounts, which had not been active for years, suddenly logging in and changing passwords, raising suspicions about unauthorized access possibly through an API key or a lack of multi-factor authentication (MFA). |
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LLMs can get "brain rot" Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: Hacker News The LLM Brain Rot Hypothesis suggests that continuous exposure to low-quality web text, or "junk" text, can lead to cognitive decline in large language models (LLMs). A series of controlled experiments using Twitter/X data was conducted, categorizing data based on two criteria: engagement (M1) and semantic quality (M2). The results showed that LLMs pre-trained on junk datasets experienced significant declines in reasoning, contextual understanding, safety, and an increase in harmful traits such as psych |
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URLPattern is now Baseline Newly available Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming The URL Pattern API, now available in the URLPattern interface, simplifies URL matching by allowing developers to use a standardized syntax. This API helps avoid complex regular expressions or third-party routing libraries for handling URL changes. It streamlines tasks like URL parsing and data extraction through methods such as .exec() and .test(), resulting in cleaner and more readable code. Before the API's introduction, developers often had to combine the older URL interface with complex regular expressions, making URL pattern matching cumbersome. The new API |
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DragonRuby Game Toolkit - Wordle! Source code in the comments Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/ruby Failed to fetch content - HTTP Status - 403 |
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Pasta/80 is a simple Pascal cross compiler targeting the Z80 microprocessor Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming The content discusses a Turbo Pascal 3.0-compatible compiler called PASTA/80, designed to generate machine code for Z80 microprocessors used in classic and modern machines such as the ZX Spectrum and CP/M. It follows a single-pass recursive-descent parsing approach, resulting in fast compilation, though it may not produce the most efficient code compared to more advanced compilers like LLVM. The supported dialect closely resembles Turbo Pascal 3.0, with some enhancements from later versions. Limitations exist |
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Walrus: a high performance storage engine built from first principles Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming The content emphasizes the importance of user feedback and mentions that all inputs are taken seriously. It provides a brief overview of a high-performance storage engine, specifically focused on the Walrus tool. Users can run load tests from the repository using environment variables outlined in the Makefile and can adjust settings to explore different scenarios. They can add Walrus to their Cargo.toml and use specific functions for cursor management. Benchmarking can be performed with various flags, and there's a comparison of Walrus's performance against Rocks |
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AWS US-EAST-1 Outage (Oct 2025): What Happened and What We Can Learn Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming On October 20, 2025, Amazon Web Services (AWS) experienced a major outage lasting approximately 15 hours, primarily affecting its US-EAST-1 region. This incident resulted in widespread disruptions across thousands of websites and applications used by millions, including services like Snapchat, Fortnite, and even government tax websites. The outage triggered over 6.5 million reports on Downdetector, highlighting the vulnerability of the cloud-dependent digital ecosystem. Initial findings indicate the problem stemmed from an error |
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People with blindness can read again after retinal implant and special glasses Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: Hacker News A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that 38 European patients suffering from advanced dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) were able to regain reading ability due to a tiny wireless chip implanted in the back of the eye, paired with specialized augmented reality glasses. AMD affects the macula part of the retina, leading to loss of central vision, and currently has no cure. In this trial, the average age of participants was 79, and they were fitted with a system |
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X86-64 playground Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming The x86-64 Playground is a web application designed for learning and experimenting with x86-64 assembly language. It features an online code editor that supports various assemblers like GNU As, Fasm, and Nasm, allowing users to write, compile, and share assembly code. The app uniquely enables step-by-step program execution, offering insights into memory and registers through a GDB-like interface. Users can also drag and drop their own x86-64 Linux static executables for debugging within a |
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Are Jump Tables Always Fastest? Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming The author reflects on a past job interview where they advocated for using a straightforward `switch` statement for implementing protocol handler dispatch, rather than complex structures like jump tables or binary searches. They believe in starting with the simplest solution and evaluating performance through compiler output. The interviewer preferred a more intricate approach, highlighting a disconnect in their expectations. This experience sparked the author’s curiosity about the performance differences between table-based and comparison-based dispatch methods. They attempted to conduct an experiment to explore these differences, fueled by insights |
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AI bro introduces regressions in the LTS Linux kernel Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming Failed to fetch content - HTTP Status - 403 |
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60k kids have avoided peanut allergies due to 2015 advice, study finds Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: Hacker News New research highlights the significant impact of updated guidelines from 2015, which recommended introducing peanut products to infants as early as 4 months to prevent peanut allergies. Approximately 60,000 children have avoided developing these allergies due to this change in practice. A study by Dr. David Hill and colleagues analyzed pediatric health records and found that peanut allergies in children aged 0 to 3 declined by over 27% after the initial guidelines and by more than 40% following expanded recommendations in 2017 |
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LogMod: What if C had a logging framework with modern semantics? Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/programming LogMod is a lightweight, modular logging library for C applications that supports various severity levels, custom labels, thread-safety, and colored output. It has a single-header implementation that allows easy integration without dynamic memory allocation and is compatible with C89 and C99 standards. Features include additional macros for advanced usage, a global fallback logger for immediate logging, and customization options during setup. To initialize logging, the `logmod_init` function is used, requiring pre-allocated space for logger instances. Logging |
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Searching Ruby's documentation Published: 2025-10-21 | Origin: /r/ruby The Ruby documentation can now be searched using a query parameter, allowing users to easily find relevant information. This feature is available for documentation built with RDoc 6.15.0 or later. The author implemented this feature to avoid outdated third-party documentation that often appears in Google searches. Users can search Ruby methods using the Kagi Search “bangs” feature or set up custom search shortcuts in their browsers (Firefox and Chrome) for direct access to Ruby documentation. Stan Lo is also working on enhancing |
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How a fake AI recruiter delivers five staged malware disguised as a dream job Published: 2025-10-20 | Origin: /r/programming The content discusses a malicious campaign known as BeaverTail targeting developers through deceptive LinkedIn messages. It highlights how a recruiter, posing as Tim Morenc from an "AI-driven innovation lab" called DLMind, offers lucrative remote engineering positions. The potential victims are asked to clone a GitHub repository for a supposed coding assessment. When they execute the code, a multi-staged malware attack is triggered, compromising their digital security. This campaign exemplifies the dangers of social engineering and the blurred lines between legitimate |
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The future of Python web services looks GIL-free Published: 2025-10-20 | Origin: /r/programming Python 3.14 was released this month, featuring improvements in the free-threaded variant of the interpreter compared to Python 3.13. Miguel Grinberg wrote an article highlighting performance enhancements in Python 3.14t, showcasing better results for CPU-bound tasks like calculating Fibonacci sequences and bubble sort. Given the author's focus on web development, they aim to evaluate the performance differences between free-threaded and GIL Python interpreters in web applications. Despite the predominance of I/O-bound operations |
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Fil-C is a fanatically compatible memory-safe implementation of C and C++ Published: 2025-10-20 | Origin: /r/programming Fil-C is a memory-safe programming language that maintains compatibility with C and C++. It allows many existing C and C++ software applications to compile and run with minimal changes. Fil-C addresses memory safety issues by utilizing concurrent garbage collection and invisible capabilities (InvisiCaps), thus catching all memory safety errors as panics. The language does not permit unsafe statements and restricts foreign function interfaces (FFI) to unsafe code. The compiler is licensed under Apache 2, and the runtime under BSD 2 |