Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Blind Spots in LLMs for AI Coding

2025-03-19

This article highlights several blind spots the author encountered while using Large Language Models (LLMs) for AI coding. Issues include insufficient black-box testing, stateless tools, over-reliance on automation, and neglecting documentation. Solutions suggested include preparatory refactoring, using static types, keeping files small, and adhering to specifications. The author hints at future Cursor rule suggestions to address these problems.

(ezyang.github.io)

Development

Generic Programming in C: A Comparison of Four Approaches

2025-03-19

C's lack of support for generic types (parametric polymorphism) is a common frustration. This article explores four methods for emulating generics in C: template macros, template headers, type erasure, and inlining macros. Template macros are simple but suffer from readability and error-proneness; template headers improve readability but still have naming challenges; type erasure sacrifices type safety but is useful for FFI or dynamic linking; inlining macros are user-friendly but lead to code bloat. Ultimately, the author suggests choosing between template headers (easier to develop) and inlining macros (easier to use) based on project needs.

(btmc.substack.com)

Development

Fauna Database Shutting Down, Core Tech Going Open Source

2025-03-19

Fauna, a document-relational database service, announced it will be sunsetting its service in the coming months. Unable to secure the funding needed for global expansion in the current market, the company made the difficult decision to cease operations. However, Fauna is committing to open-sourcing its core database technology, drivers, and CLI tooling, making its unique transactional features, document-relational data model, and FQL language available to the wider developer community. Existing customers will receive migration support to ensure a smooth transition.

(fauna.com)

Development

Chrome Ditches FreeType for Rust-Based Skrifa: A Security and Performance Win

2025-03-19

Chrome has replaced its aging FreeType font rendering engine with Skrifa, a new Rust-based library. FreeType's C-based codebase was plagued by security vulnerabilities, demanding significant maintenance resources. Skrifa leverages Rust's memory safety to dramatically reduce vulnerabilities and improve developer productivity. Rigorous testing and comparisons ensure Skrifa matches FreeType's performance and rendering quality. Chrome plans to extend Skrifa's use to more operating systems in the future.

(developer.chrome.com)

Development

AGX: A Modern ClickHouse Desktop Client Built with Tauri and SvelteKit

2025-03-19

AGX is a desktop application built with Tauri and SvelteKit, providing a modern interface for exploring and querying data using ClickHouse's embedded database engine (chdb). It boasts native desktop application performance, an interactive SQL query editor with syntax highlighting, a schema browser, tabular result display, drag-and-drop file support, and cross-platform compatibility (macOS, Linux, Windows). The frontend uses SvelteKit for a reactive and efficient UI, while the backend leverages Tauri and Rust for native performance and security. Communication between frontend and backend is handled via Tauri's IPC bridge, with data querying powered by the embedded ClickHouse engine, chdb. Contributions are welcome!

(github.com)

Development

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-03-19

arXivLabs is a framework for collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the website. Individuals and organizations working with arXivLabs uphold arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only partners with those who share them. Have an idea to improve the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Zest: A Programming Language Balancing Malleability and Legibility

2025-03-19

Zest is a work-in-progress programming language designed to create systems that are both malleable and legible. It aims to combine the interactivity and liveness of systems like emacs with features like static typing, early binding, and jump-to-definition. Currently, Zest supports basic control flow, arithmetic, and functions, but still needs improvements in error handling, memory management, and recursive functions. Code can be interpreted or compiled, but mixed mode is not yet supported. The documentation includes embedded tests to verify the output of different dialects (lax and strict).

(github.com)

Development

fd: Blazing Fast File Finder (23x Faster than find)

2025-03-19

fd is a faster and more user-friendly alternative to the find command. It boasts intuitive syntax, parallelized directory traversal, and smart case matching, defaulting to ignoring hidden files and .gitignore entries. Supporting both regular expressions and glob patterns, fd offers extensive options to customize searches, including specifying root directories, file types, sizes, modification times, and more. It integrates seamlessly with other commands such as `ls`, `rm`, `rg`, and `fzf`. Benchmark tests demonstrate fd's significant speed advantage over find in large filesystems, achieving up to 23 times faster performance.

(github.com)

Development file finding

MVVM in SwiftUI: Best Practices and Pitfalls

2025-03-19

This article delves into the best practices and challenges of using the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) architectural pattern in SwiftUI. The author argues that while MVVM aligns well with SwiftUI's data flow, its perceived rigidity can introduce problems. The article explains how MVVM works, how to leverage its advantages in SwiftUI, and how to navigate its challenges, including avoiding overusing view models and implementing MVVM in a SwiftUI app. It also compares MVVM to alternative architectural patterns like MVC, the Model-View pattern, and Clean Architecture, analyzing their pros and cons.

(matteomanferdini.com)

Development Architectural Patterns

1GB Boot Partition? Not Enough! My Debian Upgrade Nightmare

2025-03-19

I confidently allocated a 1GB ESP partition and a 1GB boot partition, only to be quickly proven wrong. During a routine system update, apt complained about insufficient boot partition space. The culprit? New NVIDIA driver modules from my recently installed graphics card. A temporary fix was cleaning up old kernel versions, but this was only a band-aid solution. The final solution involved using GParted to shrink the root partition, expand the boot partition, and migrate data using rsync. I also updated fstab and grub. Crucially, I learned to run `grub install` before cleaning the old partition, otherwise the system wouldn't boot. Finally, I repurposed the old boot partition as an unencrypted temporary backup partition.

(blog.fernvenue.com)

Development Partition Management

Mozilla's Thrilling Rewrite of Firefox's Crash Reporting Backend in Rust

2025-03-19

Mozilla replaced its C++-based google-breakpad with a pure-Rust implementation, rust-minidump, for Firefox's crash processing backend. After rigorous unit testing, integration testing, and production deployment, rust-minidump launched, boasting double the speed and improved reliability. The author details the challenges faced and the extensive testing methods employed to ensure robustness, culminating in a successful launch. The article is split into two parts: part one covers the background and testing process, while part two will detail the subsequent fuzzing results.

(hacks.mozilla.org)

Development Crash Reporting

PostgreSQL's Synchronous Commit: A Performance vs. Durability Trade-off

2025-03-19

This post explores the performance implications of PostgreSQL's `synchronous_commit` setting. Turning it off significantly boosts transaction throughput, reducing I/O and CPU load, but introduces a small risk window for data loss. The author demonstrates a 30% increase in TPS on I/O-constrained systems. The article advocates for a nuanced approach, suggesting adjusting `synchronous_commit` per session, transaction, or operation, with a Ruby on Rails example provided. The author also notes that on Aurora PostgreSQL, setting `synchronous_commit` to `off` yields the greatest performance gains.

(www.shayon.dev)

Development synchronous commit

New Kernel Exploit: Bypassing the modprobe_path Patch with AF_ALG

2025-03-19

This security research blog post details a novel method for exploiting the modprobe_path technique, circumventing a patch merged into the Upstream kernel last year. This patch rendered the previous method of triggering modprobe_path by executing dummy files ineffective. The new method leverages AF_ALG sockets. By calling bind(), it triggers request_module(), allowing execution of the file pointed to by modprobe_path, achieving privilege escalation. Combined with lau's memfd_create() technique, this results in a completely fileless exploit, reducing the chance of detection. The patch hasn't yet reached stable kernel releases, so the older method still works; however, the AF_ALG method will be crucial in the future.

(blog.theori.io)

Development

Loki's Structured Metadata: A Logistical Nightmare

2025-03-19

Grafana Loki, often touted as 'Prometheus for logs,' initially adopted a data model similar to Prometheus. However, this proved disastrous for system logs (syslog or systemd journal). Unlike Prometheus, Loki stores each label value set separately and lacks log compaction, leading to cardinality explosions. To address this, Loki introduced 'structured metadata,' but as of version 3.0.0, it remains underdeveloped. Structured metadata labels aren't treated as regular Loki labels, requiring different query syntax. Migration from existing labels is complex and potentially catastrophic, with the risk of unintentionally creating high-cardinality labels. Upgrading requires caution, migrating existing data is incredibly expensive, and careful consideration is crucial before using it in new projects.

(utcc.utoronto.ca)

Development system logs

VisuAlgo: A Decade-Long Visualization Project at NUS

2025-03-19

VisuAlgo, a project spearheaded by Associate Professor Steven Halim at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has been developed over a decade with contributions from numerous undergraduate researchers and final-year project students. The project focuses on creating and maintaining a visualization tool for teaching algorithms, supported by grants from NUS CDTL and a generous donation from Optiver. The team continuously updates and improves VisuAlgo, providing high-quality algorithm visualization resources to a global audience.

(visualgo.net)

Development

Make Ubuntu Packages 90% Faster: A Tale of Recompilation and Allocators

2025-03-19

This post details how recompiling the jq source package used by Ubuntu resulted in a staggering 90% performance improvement. The author benchmarked against a 500MB GeoJSON file. Simply rebuilding the package yielded a small but noticeable speedup. Further optimizations included using clang with better flags (-O3, -flto, -DNDEBUG), which provided a 20% boost. Switching to the TCMalloc allocator improved performance by another 40%. Finally, using mimalloc, either dynamically loaded or integrated during the rebuild, resulted in the remarkable 90% speed increase. The recompiled jq with mimalloc is nearly twice as fast as the default Ubuntu package in various tests.

(gist.github.com)

Development compilation optimization memory allocation

arXivLabs: Experimenting with Community Collaboration

2025-03-18

arXivLabs is a framework enabling collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on the arXiv website. Individuals and organizations involved in arXivLabs uphold our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners who share them. Have an idea for a project that will benefit the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Git-Who: Track Down Code Ownership Like a Boss

2025-03-18

Tired of hunting down the authors of specific code sections? Git-Who, a command-line tool, is your solution! Unlike `git blame`, which focuses on individual lines, Git-Who identifies the key contributors to entire code components or subsystems. Using three subcommands—`table`, `tree`, and `hist`—it presents authorship information in tables, tree structures, and timelines, showing contribution counts, last edit times, lines modified, and more. Filter results by path, branch, tag, or revision range, and use flags for sorting and filtering. Git-Who even respects Git mailmaps, consolidating contributions under varying names or emails. Try Git-Who to get a clear picture of code ownership!

(github.com)

Development code authorship

Qodo Gen 1.0: Agentic AI Coding with LangGraph and MCP

2025-03-18

Qodo Gen 1.0 introduces agentic workflows in its AI coding and testing IDE plugin, enabling AI to dynamically decide how to navigate complex coding tasks. This was achieved by restructuring the infrastructure using LangGraph for structured workflows and Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) for standardized external tool integration. The architecture supports asynchronous communication, on-demand context retrieval, and enhanced error handling and reliability, allowing the AI to operate autonomously, retrieve real-time data, and adapt strategies based on tool execution results. LangGraph provides flexibility and control, while MCP simplifies external tool integration. The result is more intelligent automation, an extensible system, and a structured approach to AI autonomy.

(www.qodo.ai)

Development

Practical Process Control: Mastering PID Control

2025-03-18

This comprehensive guide delves into the practical aspects of process control, focusing on PID controller design, tuning, and advanced control architectures. Starting with process dynamic modeling (including case studies on heat exchangers, gravity-drained tanks, and jacketed stirred reactors), it systematically explains proportional, integral, and derivative control, along with the role of various filters. The guide also covers handling integrating processes, cascade control, feedforward control, and advanced control strategies in real-world applications like distillation columns, providing a complete practical handbook for engineers.

(controlguru.com)

Development process control PID control

PeerTube 7.1 Released: Enhanced Discoverability and Stability

2025-03-18

PeerTube version 7.1 is out, boasting significant improvements. Updates include a redesigned "About" page for clearer platform information; enhanced platform identification to easily understand video origins; improved Podcast 2.0 support for podcast app subscriptions; a default-enabled new view protocol for increased concurrent viewers; Mastodon account verification for enhanced trust; and a revamped P2P media loader for improved live stream stability.

(joinpeertube.org)

Development Video Platform

Verification-First Development: Beyond Test-Driven Development

2025-03-18

This article explores Verification-First Development (VFD), a paradigm that emphasizes establishing verification mechanisms before writing code. This could involve writing tests, defining type invariants, adding contracts, or other methods. VFD differs from Test-Driven Development (TDD), which is a specific case of VFD and focuses on using tests to drive code design. VFD's advantages include reducing the likelihood of skipping verification, early error detection, and improved code quality. However, VFD also has drawbacks: it can slow development, hinder exploratory coding, and verification methods might influence code design. The author argues that VFD, as a technique rather than a paradigm, is more flexible and easily integrates with other approaches.

(buttondown.com)

Development test-driven development verification-first

HTTrack 3.49-2 Released: Engine Fixes and Improvements

2025-03-18

HTTrack version 3.49-2 is out, featuring engine improvements such as keep-alive, redirect handling, new hashtables, and unit tests. This free and open-source offline browser lets you download entire websites locally, preserving the site's link structure and all files (HTML, images, etc.), allowing offline browsing. Versions are available for Windows and Linux/Unix/BSD.

(www.httrack.com)

Development offline browser website downloader

Fedora 42 Beta: A Fresh Install Experience and Numerous New Features

2025-03-18

Fedora 42 Beta is here! This update brings exciting improvements, including a brand-new Wayland-based Anaconda installer with more consistent keyboard control and an improved web UI for partitioning, making the installation process smoother and more intuitive. Fedora Workstation now defaults to the new web UI installer, offering features like a progress indicator, built-in help, and configuration review. KDE Plasma is now a full-fledged edition, with Power system support. Additionally, there's a new Rust-based COSMIC desktop environment, EROFS for live media, and many other enhancements for improved performance and stability. Several older features are being deprecated or removed, including Python 3.8 and python-pytest-runner.

(www.redhat.com)

Development

DuckDB Preview: Seamlessly Connect to Amazon S3 Tables and SageMaker Lakehouse

2025-03-18

DuckDB announces a preview feature adding support for Apache Iceberg REST Catalogs, enabling easy connection to Amazon S3 Tables and Amazon SageMaker Lakehouse. This collaboration between AWS and DuckDB Labs allows users to query Iceberg tables directly. By installing the latest DuckDB and necessary extensions, configuring AWS credentials, and using simple commands, users can access and query data, even with schema evolution. This preview release paves the way for a stable release later this year.

(duckdb.org)

Development

The Underrated Soft Skill: Charisma for Engineers

2025-03-18

Engineers often prioritize technical skills, neglecting crucial soft skills. This article argues that charisma, a frequently overlooked skill, is paramount for success. The author, through years of mentoring, emphasizes that charisma isn't innate but a learnable set of behaviors: building meaningful connections, cultivating empathy, and radiating warmth. The author encourages engineers to focus on human development, enhancing their charisma to become more impactful team members and professionals, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling career and life.

(utopianengineeringsociety.substack.com)

Development soft skills engineers charisma

Spaceium Hiring: Software Engineer for Spacecraft Development

2025-03-18

Spaceium is seeking a Software Engineer to design and build the software powering its spacecraft. Responsibilities include developing critical systems for flight software, data processing, control algorithms, and automation tools. The ideal candidate possesses strong software development skills, understands aerospace standards, and is passionate about pushing technological boundaries. Experience is a plus but not mandatory; enthusiasm for learning and a willingness to work hard are key. Compensation is $90k-$110k USD annually, plus equity.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development Space Software

RePebble's iOS App: A Herculean Task

2025-03-18

The developers behind the rebooted Pebble smartwatch project are facing a familiar challenge: Apple's restrictive policies for third-party watch developers. The article details the struggles of developing for iOS during the original Pebble, highlighting limitations imposed by Apple that prevent core functionalities like sending text messages or interacting with notifications. While an iOS app is being developed, the team acknowledges significant limitations compared to the Android version, urging users to pressure Apple to improve its policies and foster greater competition in the smartwatch market.

(ericmigi.com)

Development

TruffleRuby Regexps: 200x Faster Than C and SIMD

2025-03-18

This blog post explores performance optimization for JSON string escaping in Ruby. Benchmarks compare three approaches: a pure Ruby version, a C extension with SIMD instructions, and a pure Ruby version on TruffleRuby. Surprisingly, TruffleRuby's pure Ruby version, leveraging its advanced JIT compiler and TRegex engine, is 20 times faster than the C extension and SIMD, and over 200 times faster than the baseline C code in some cases. This stems from TruffleRuby's TRegex engine, which compiles regexps into deterministic finite automata, avoiding backtracking and utilizing SIMD instructions for optimization. Similar comparisons are shown for `Time.new(String)` and `StringScanner#scan_integer`, where TruffleRuby's regexp implementations significantly outperform CRuby's C implementations. This demonstrates that in some cases, concise pure Ruby code, combined with an advanced JIT compiler, can surpass the performance of lower-level languages.

(eregon.me)

Development Regexps

Hacker News: A Decade of Tech Growth

2025-03-18

Starting in 2011, the author began using Hacker News, initially understanding very little of the technical jargon and companies mentioned. However, through daily reading and deep dives into unfamiliar concepts, the author transformed from a data analyst into an engineer confidently deploying code to millions of users. Hacker News provided not only learning resources but also a supportive community, helping the author improve technical skills and writing, ultimately leading to a significant career leap.

(vickiboykis.com)

Development technical learning

Category: Development