News Nug
Tilck: A Tiny Linux-Compatible Kernel

Published: 2025-07-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Tilck is a monolithic kernel designed for educational purposes, compatible with Linux at the binary level, and currently supports i686 and RISCV64 architectures. Its simplicity and small-scale design make it an ideal platform for experimenting with kernel operations while enabling users to replicate the execution of Linux user programs, such as the BusyBox suite, without requiring custom applications. This feature distinguishes it from other educational kernels. While its Linux compatibility might appear limiting from an OS research perspective, it facilitates real-world applications more

Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 Incident on July 14, 2025

Published: 2025-07-16 | Origin: Hacker News

On July 14, 2025, Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 Resolver service experienced a significant outage, affecting most users globally for about an hour (from 21:52 to 22:54 UTC). This disruption rendered many Internet services inaccessible due to a misconfiguration in legacy systems managing the infrastructure that advertises Cloudflare's IP addresses. Cloudflare confirmed that the issue stemmed from an internal error, and was not caused by an attack or BGP hijack

Six Years of Gemini

Published: 2025-07-16 | Origin: Hacker News

Today marks the sixth anniversary of the public announcement of Project Gemini. The year has been relatively quiet, with no updates during two significant "Apollo days." The author expresses disappointment in not providing updates but reassures that there are plans to finalize minor specification issues. While previous announcements included growth statistics for Geminispace, this will no longer continue as growth was never the main goal of the project. Despite the author's inactivity, the community remains active, contributing valuable patches and translations for the documentation. The author expresses

GPUHammer: Rowhammer attacks on GPU memories are practical

Published: 2025-07-16 | Origin: Hacker News

GPUHammer is a groundbreaking attack developed by researchers from the University of Toronto, capable of demonstrating Rowhammer bit flips in GPU memory, specifically within GDDR6 on an NVIDIA A6000 GPU. This attack can manipulate data across all tested DRAM banks, bypassing existing in-DRAM defenses like Timing Row Refresh (TRR), through user-level CUDA code. A proof-of-concept example shows that by inducing a single bit flip, malicious users can severely degrade the performance of deep neural network (

Transition to using 16 KB page sizes for Android apps and games

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/programming

As of Android 15, the operating system supports both 4 KB and 16 KB memory page sizes, with a transition to 16 KB pages mandated for new apps and updates using native C/C++ code targeting Android 15+ starting November 1, 2025. This shift aims to enhance performance, potentially improving app launch speeds by up to 30%, reducing power consumption by 4.56%, and speeding up system boot times. While there will be a slight increase in memory usage

Initial implementation of the experimental C++ Lifetime Safety Analysis (-Wexperimental-lifetime-safety) has just landed in Clang

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/programming

A new breakout group focused on Lifetime Safety in Clang is being established following a recent LLVM Memory Safety Working Group meeting. This group aims to facilitate coordination of ongoing projects, discuss future plans, and engage more contributors in the development of a new lifetime analysis for Clang. The analysis is designed to identify issues such as use-after-scope and returning pointers to stack memory, utilizing an alias-based approach inspired by Rust’s borrow checker. The initial focus is on intra-procedural analysis for C++ raw

To be a better programmer, write little proofs in your head

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/programming

The author shares a useful technique for improving coding efficiency and accuracy, which involves mentally verifying that the code will perform as intended while writing it. Although this approach, referred to as "sketching a proof," may seem simple, it requires practice to execute without disrupting one’s workflow. Mastering this skill can lead to more successful code execution on the first or second attempt, creating a sense of accomplishment. The article briefly introduces the concept of monotonicity, derived from mathematics, but applied to coding

Where's Firefox going next?

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

Firefox is engaging its community by launching a series of quick surveys to gather user feedback on desired features and improvements for the browser. The initiative, which includes planning an Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Firefox product managers, aims to directly connect with users and shape future developments based on their input. Users are encouraged to submit questions and suggest topics for the AMA, along with a fun question about which animal represents their browsing style. In response, a user shared their experience as a "Dolphin," expressing

How I Doubled My Lookup Performance with a Bitwise Trick

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/programming

The text discusses an optimization made during the implementation of a Cuckoo Filter in C#. The author initially created a straightforward hash table using an array-like structure with 8-bit fingerprints stored in 4-byte buckets, yielding a false-positive rate of around 3%. However, they realized these 4 bytes could be treated as a single 32-bit integer, prompting an experiment to improve lookup performance. Although not pursuing ultra-low latency, the author refactored the code to use a 32-bit

The FIPS 140-3 Go Cryptographic Module

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the use of the Go programming language, highlighting various resources and benefits it offers, including: 1. **Common Problems Addressed**: Go is utilized by companies to tackle specific challenges. 2. **User Stories**: It features narratives on how companies incorporate Go into their operations. 3. **Security Features**: Go promotes security by default and offers support for FIPS 140 compliance, which is critical in regulated industries. 4. **Official Documentation**: Resources include the official Go

Death by a thousand slops

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/programming

The author discusses an ongoing issue within the curl Bug Bounty program, highlighting a troubling increase in low-quality vulnerability reports, termed "AI slop," which accounts for about 20% of submissions in 2025. While the program has historically been successful—yielding 81 genuine vulnerabilities and over $90,000 in rewards—the validity rate of reports has significantly declined, with only about 5% of submissions deemed genuine in recent months. The author contemplates potential changes to the program, including

Backstage Is at the Peak of Its Hype

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/programming

The content discusses Spotify's journey in managing its microservices architecture, which began in 2014 when rapid growth led to challenges such as service sprawl and poor visibility. To address these issues, a platform team created an internal catalog called System Z for registering services and managing metadata. By 2017, with increasing complexities, System Z underwent a significant rewrite to become Backstage, which notably reduced new engineer onboarding time by 55% and improved productivity by allowing over 280 engineering teams to manage thousands

Reflections on OpenAI

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

The author recently left OpenAI after joining in May 2024 and shares reflections on the company's culture amid much external speculation. They emphasize that their decision to leave wasn't due to personal conflicts, but rather a desire for a fresh start after transitioning from being a founder to working in a large organization. They acknowledge the impressive growth of OpenAI, expanding from about 1,000 to over 3,000 employees in just one year, which has led to challenges like communication and management structuring. The

A 1960s schools experiment that created a new alphabet

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

The content discusses the author's experience growing up with a mother who was an avid reader but had significant spelling difficulties. Despite her extensive reading habits and participation in book clubs, the mother, Judith Loffhagen, struggled with basic spelling, leading her to ask her child for help on proofreading emails. She later revealed that she had been taught using the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA), a controversial educational system introduced in the 1960s and 70s aimed at improving children's reading skills. The author reflects

NIST ion clock sets new record for most accurate clock

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new atomic clock based on trapped aluminum ions that sets a record for the most accurate clock in the world, achieving accuracy with 19 decimal places. This optical atomic clock surpasses the previous record by 41% and is 2.6 times more stable than any other ion clock. These advancements are the result of 20 years of continuous improvements to various components of the clock, including the laser, trap, and vacuum

Show HN: Shoggoth Mini – A soft tentacle robot powered by GPT-4o and RL

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

In the past year, advancements in robotics have progressed alongside the era of large language models (LLMs). Notable examples include Pi’s π0.5, capable of cleaning unfamiliar homes, and Tesla's Optimus, which can follow cooking instructions given in natural language. Despite their impressive capabilities, these robots exhibit a functional and utilitarian approach, lacking expressiveness, which is essential for meaningful human-robot interaction. Expressiveness conveys internal states such as intent and confidence, making interactions feel more natural and

Announcing TestBench Gen 3

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/ruby

The Eventide Project has announced the release of TestBench Generation 3, the primary test framework for the Eventide stack and community. This major update introduces new features, minor breaking changes, and restores two previously removed features. Users are encouraged to test their current projects with the prerelease, though significant changes are typically unnecessary unless they relied on internal or undocumented features. The focus of this generation was on refining TestBench through incremental improvements from years of practical use. Users can report issues in the #test

Compute 10000 digits of Pi on Intel 8080 by using own 8-bit big number library

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: /r/programming

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Inside the box: Everything I did with an Arduino starter kit

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

The author describes their journey into electronics inspired by a Tech Ingredients episode featuring a laser gimbal that tracks and shoots down drones using advanced motion control. They decided to explore these concepts by purchasing the Elegoo Arduino Uno R3 Starter Kit, which includes over 200 components and a tutorial. Although the author has a background in electronics, they had not yet performed the basic task of lighting an LED, which sparked their curiosity about RGB LEDs and pulse width modulation (PWM). This technique allows control of LED brightness

Martin (YC S23) Is Hiring Founding Engineers to Build a Better Siri

Published: 2025-07-15 | Origin: Hacker News

Martin is an advanced AI personal assistant similar to JARVIS, enabling users to manage their inbox, calendar, to-dos, reminders, and more through text, calls, or emails. Since its launch five months ago, Martin has completed over 500,000 tasks for 30,000 users, with a user base growing by 10% weekly. Backed by Y-Combinator, Pioneer Fund, and notable investors, Martin operates with a lean, efficient team focused on rapid development and