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How git cherry-pick and revert use 3-way merge Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming In this post, the author reflects on their misunderstanding of how the `git cherry-pick` command operates. Initially, they believed it simply applied a patch, but found this approach problematic when faced with merge conflicts. They note that this view, while mostly correct, is incomplete because it doesn't account for the underlying mechanics of the command. Upon investigating the Git source code, the author discovered that `git cherry-pick` actually performs a "3-way merge" rather than merely applying a patch. This |
Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len() Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming In Python, you can check if a list is empty using two methods: `if not mylist` and `if len(mylist) == 0`. The first method is generally preferred as it is considered more "Pythonic" and is around twice as fast as the second method. The performance difference arises from the underlying implementation in CPython, where `if not mylist` translates to fewer virtual machine (VM) instructions compared to `if len(mylist) == 0`. Specifically, |
Why Pascal is Not My Favourite Language (1981) Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming The provided content appears to be a fragment of a PDF file encoded in binary format, which includes various object definitions and stream data. It does not contain coherent textual information or a clear narrative but rather raw, encoded data associated with a PDF document. Consequently, I cannot summarize it meaningfully, as it lacks accessible, understandable content within the provided excerpt. |
Why is there a "small house" in IBM's Code page 437? Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming This post serves as a supplementary piece to the article "The Origins of DEL (0x7F) and its Legacy in Amiga ASCII Art." While the main article discusses the DEL character and its specific representation in AmigaOS's Topaz font, this bonus article examines how IBM's PC represents DEL as a "small house" (⌂) in its Code Page 437 character set. The author acknowledges contributions from Michael Walden and VileR and invites reader feedback via email. |
Why Fennel? (a programming language that runs on the Lua runtime) Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming Fennel is a programming language that operates on the Lua runtime, which is recognized for its powerful yet lightweight nature. Lua's simplicity and minimalistic design make it fast and ideal for embedding in other applications, allowing users to reprogram software easily. Despite its strengths, Lua has some shortcomings that can lead to errors or confusion. Fennel addresses these issues by providing an alternative notation for writing Lua programs while maintaining compatibility with Lua libraries and tools. One key distinction of Fennel is its par |
A hackable AI assistant using a single SQLite table and a handful of cron jobs Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News The article discusses the creation of a simple AI assistant named Stevens, designed for family use. The author emphasizes that while there is much hype around complex AI technologies, building useful personal tools can be achieved with straightforward methods. Stevens operates on a basic architecture consisting of a single SQLite table to store memories and uses cron jobs for gathering information and sending updates, all hosted on Val.town. Stevens provides daily updates via Telegram, including calendar schedules, weather forecasts, reminders, and details about incoming mail. Users |
A protein folding mystery solved: Study explains core packing fractions Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News Failed to fetch content - HTTP Status - 400 |
Meta antitrust trial kicks off in federal court Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News Failed to fetch content - HTTP Status - 403 |
Engineers who won’t commit Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming The text discusses the need for engineers, especially those with more experience and knowledge, to take clear positions during technical discussions rather than remaining non-committal. While some may believe that keeping an open mind is a virtue, this can lead to confusion and poor decision-making, as less knowledgeable team members may make uninformed guesses. Strong engineers have a responsibility to provide guidance, even if they are not completely confident in their decisions. The author acknowledges that fear of being wrong can hinder one's ability to commit |
Short Ruby Newsletter - edition 131a Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/ruby The content is a newsletter recap by Vladut Cosmin and Lucian Ghinda, dated April 14, 2025, focusing on various updates and announcements in the Ruby development community. Key highlights include: - **Judoscale Launch**: A new tool that autoscales web and worker deployments on platforms like Heroku and AWS, along with guides for configuring Rails and scaling Sidekiq. - **New App Release**: Donn Felker launched "Gramifier," a utility app |
Concurrency in Haskell: Fast, Simple, Correct Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News The author, after nearly a decade of experience in embedded systems programming using languages like C, C++, and Rust, finds themselves working with Haskell. They previously viewed functional programming as unpractical but became intrigued by its applications in real-time systems, where performance and correctness are crucial. The piece emphasizes the importance of concurrency, drawing parallels with the issues arising from using regular expressions and threads. It advocates for breaking down work into independent tasks to leverage multi-core processors and to optimize for slow external operations like |
Hako: an embeddable, lightweight, secure, high-performance JavaScript engine. Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming As a birthday gift, the author is releasing Hako1, an early-access version of a JavaScript engine called Hako. Hako is a fork of PrimJS, designed for portability, security, and performance, and can be easily embedded in programs while allowing scalability. Unlike traditional C/C++ engines like PrimJS and QuickJS, Hako compiles to WebAssembly, which offers a memory-safe and sandboxed environment, reducing the risk of memory-related security vulnerabilities. Hako includes features to |
JSLinux Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News The content is a list of available emulated systems. However, further details about the specific systems are not provided in the excerpt. |
Show HN: Resurrecting Infocom's Unix Z-Machine with Cosmopolitan Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News The author has successfully created standalone executables of the Zork trilogy, originally from Infocom's UNIX source, and ported them using Cosmopolitan, allowing them to run natively on Windows, Mac, Linux, and BSD systems for both ARM and x86 architectures without requiring additional installations or files. The author also provides instructions for downloading Zork and running arbitrary .z3 text adventure files. Additionally, v3.0 of the project "Status Line," which enables Zork to run on |
Demolishing the Fry's Electronics in Burbank Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News Rebecca Castillo is a video creator and special projects lead at the Los Angeles Times, working with High School Insider and various Public Affairs programs. She is originally from Southern California and holds degrees from Swarthmore College and USC. |
Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News The blog discusses the NissanConnect® EV & Services iPhone app, which allows Nissan LEAF owners to manage features such as battery charging and climate control. The author expresses dissatisfaction with the app, particularly its lack of a home screen widget for quickly checking battery status, unlike competitors' apps. Additionally, third-party apps that previously enhanced the LEAF experience are no longer available in North America due to Nissan's changes to their API, which have frustrated developers. One developer noted that ongoing issues with Nissan's |
how actually JavaScript works behind the scenes Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: /r/programming The article explains how JavaScript, despite running on a single thread, can handle multiple tasks without freezing. JavaScript is an interpreted language, meaning it is not compiled directly to machine code but requires a runtime environment, like the V8 Engine used in Google Chrome and Node.js, to interpret and execute it. The main components involved are the Heap, which stores objects and variables, and the Call Stack, which manages the execution. The single-threaded nature of JavaScript means that only one operation can |
Why-everything-in-the-universe-turns-more-complex Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News An editorially independent publication supported by the Simons Foundation features an article by Irene Pérez discussing Fermi's paradox, which questions why, if intelligent alien life exists, we have not yet encountered any evidence of it. Various explanations have been proposed, including the idea that civilizations might self-destruct before achieving interstellar travel. Alternatively, it might be that intelligent life is exceedingly rare. A new research proposal suggests a more optimistic perspective, introducing a potential "law of nature" indicating that complexity in the universe |
NoProp: Training neural networks without back-propagation or forward-propagation Published: 2025-04-14 | Origin: Hacker News arXivLabs is a collaborative framework for developing and sharing new features on the arXiv website. Participants, including individuals and organizations, must agree to arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is open to new project ideas that enhance its community. Users can receive operational status updates via email or Slack. |
Everything wrong with MCP Published: 2025-04-13 | Origin: Hacker News The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has emerged as a key standard for integrating third-party data and tools with LLM-powered chats and agents. While it offers exciting possibilities for enhancing chat assistants (like ChatGPT and Claude) by allowing users to bring their own tools (BYOT), there are also significant vulnerabilities and limitations to consider. The MCP enables a streamlined way to provide context and increase agent autonomy, allowing for more efficient operations rather than manual processes. The author highlights that while other platforms, like |