Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Beyond Boring MFA: Hilariously Absurd Authentication Ideas

2025-07-30

Tired of tedious multi-factor authentication? This author shares a series of wildly creative alternatives, ranging from poker hand comparisons to Rubik's Cube puzzles, even chess matches and karaoke performances! Each idea has its quirks, some boasting high security, others prioritizing ease of use, while others are simply hilariously absurd. The author ultimately cautions that finding the balance between security and user experience is key, warning against reinventing the wheel.

(tesseral.com)

Development

Linux Kernel 6.16: Subtle Changes, Significant Improvements

2025-07-30

The Linux 6.16 kernel release, while seemingly minor, packs significant improvements. Rust integration deepens with new bindings for the driver core and PCI subsystem, simplifying the addition of Rust-based hardware drivers. The Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) gains new Rust abstractions, boosting graphics performance and reducing vulnerabilities. XFS and Ext4 filesystems receive enhancements resulting in performance boosts up to 37%. Security is enhanced with support for Intel TXT and TDX, and improvements are made for Intel APX and Nvidia Blackwell GPUs. Network performance is also boosted with changes to how TCP/IP interacts with DMABUF.

(www.zdnet.com)

Development

JavaScript Date Object UTC Trap: Missing Data in Japan

2025-07-30

A seemingly simple JavaScript date filter caused the loss of backend data for Japanese users before 9 AM. The reason? `new Date('YYYY-MM-DD')` creates a date object at midnight UTC, which is 9 AM in Japan (UTC+9). Therefore, 'greater than January 1st' actually meant 'greater than 9 AM on January 1st'. The fix involved explicitly setting the time to midnight to avoid the UTC default.

(senhongo.com)

Development Date

Observable Notebooks: The Next-Gen Notebook with AI Power

2025-07-30

Observable has launched a new notebook hosted on GitHub, allowing authors to write in their preferred text editor and preview/build using Notebook Kit. The goal is a best-in-class editor supercharging productivity with AI, instant collaboration and sharing in Observable workspaces, and Observable Canvases for rapid visual data exploration and presentation. Open-source and commercial use are both welcome.

(observablehq.com)

Development

Yakread Rewrite: Building a More Maintainable Reader with Clojure and Biff

2025-07-30

The author is rewriting the Yakread reading app and open-sourcing it, while experimenting with new features for Biff, their Clojure web framework. To address maintainability issues in the original 10k line codebase, three main architectural approaches were adopted: 1. Implementing materialized views using XTDB and RocksDB for faster queries; 2. Separating application logic from side effects to create purer code and easier testing; 3. Using Pathom to build a reusable data access layer, improving maintainability and readability. These methods improve testability, observability, and maintainability, and bring new improvements to the Biff framework.

(biffweb.com)

Development

Elements of System Design: A Periodic Table of Principles

2025-07-30

This paper proposes a preliminary taxonomy of system design principles distilled from several domains in computer systems. The goal is a shared, concise vocabulary to help understand structure and trade-offs, compare designs across domains, and communicate choices more clearly. It presents a curated set of 40+ general-purpose design principles, organized into thematic groups mirroring familiar axes of system design. Each principle is tagged with a short symbol for quick reference, emphasizing design intent over specific mechanisms. The aim is to provide a more coherent mental map of system design for students, researchers, and practitioners.

(github.com)

Development

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaborators

2025-07-30

arXivLabs is a framework that lets collaborators develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Individuals and organizations working with arXivLabs embrace 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 arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Grammar Specification for a Novel Programming Language

2025-07-30

This document meticulously defines the grammar rules for a new programming language, covering various aspects such as types, expressions, patterns, function definitions, and type definitions. A series of context-free grammar rules (BNF notation) precisely describe the language's structure, providing a solid foundation for compiler and interpreter implementation. This powerful language supports advanced features like functional programming, pattern matching, and type inference.

(alasdair.github.io)

Development grammar specification

FreeBSD's PKGBASE Under Fire: Base System Components Accidentally Deleted

2025-07-30

FreeBSD's package management system, PKGBASE, is facing controversy. Users discovered that executing the command `pkg delete -af` removes only third-party packages on non-PKGBASE FreeBSD systems, but on PKGBASE systems, it removes nearly all base system components, including crucial tools like the vi editor. This raises concerns about system stability and POLA (The Principle Of Least Astonishment), as the same command behaves drastically differently, potentially rendering the system unusable.

(lists.freebsd.org)

Development

Bookmarkable by Design: URL-Driven State in HTMX

2025-07-30

This article showcases an elegant approach to state management in HTMX using URL parameters as the single source of truth. By leveraging the URL, developers can handle filtering, sorting, pagination, and search without complex client-side state management libraries. This results in bookmarkable, shareable application state, seamless browser history navigation, and simplified debugging. The article details three key steps: the server reading URL parameters, forms and hidden fields coordinating state, and automatic URL syncing with `hx-push-url`. Production considerations such as URL length limits and parameter validation are also discussed.

(www.lorenstew.art)

Development URL state management

Say Goodbye to Rounding Errors: Detached Point Arithmetic (DPA)

2025-07-29

Patrick Bryant's Detached Point Arithmetic (DPA) revolutionizes numerical computation. By separating integer mantissas from their point positions, DPA performs all operations using integer arithmetic, delaying rounding until final output. This eliminates the ubiquitous rounding errors inherent in floating-point arithmetic. With broad applications in finance, science, and AI, DPA promises significantly improved accuracy and efficiency. The simple and efficient implementation, freely available on GitHub, invites collaboration and improvement.

(github.com)

Development rounding errors integer arithmetic

Claude's Bait-and-Switch: Weekly Limits on Pro and Max

2025-07-29

Anthropic's Claude Pro and Max AI coding assistants now have weekly usage limits, upsetting paying users. This highlights the industry's problematic trend of initially offering "unlimited" access before imposing restrictions on power users. The author argues this breaches developer trust and advocates for transparent pricing. In contrast, Kilo Code offers pay-per-use with upfront pricing and a 300% bonus credit promotion this week as an alternative.

(blog.kilocode.ai)

Development

Training Long-Horizon Terminal Agents with Reinforcement Learning: Terminal-Bench-RL

2025-07-29

This project details the creation of a stable RL training infrastructure scaling to 32x H100 GPUs across 4 nodes for training long-horizon terminal-based coding agents. The author developed Terminal-Agent-Qwen3-32b, achieving the highest score on terminal-bench for Qwen3 agents *without* training! Built upon the rLLM framework, it includes custom environments and infrastructure. Using ~$1M in compute, the agent achieved 19th place on the terminal-bench leaderboard, outperforming several top agents from Stanford and OpenAI. A sophisticated system prompt and custom tools guide the agent's behavior. While a full training run was cost-prohibitive, the code and dataset are provided, inviting further research with increased compute resources.

(github.com)

Development Terminal Agent

Hologram v0.5.0: Major Performance Boost and New Features

2025-07-29

Hologram 0.5.0 is a major release featuring significant performance improvements and new features. Core client-side operations have been sped up from milliseconds to microseconds, enabling real-time interactions. This release includes comprehensive session and cookie management, a new HTTP-based transport layer, live reload functionality, and incremental compilation. It also introduces a high-performance bitstring implementation, foundational CRDT support, and more, laying the groundwork for future distributed features. Over 950 commits have improved both developer experience and runtime performance.

(hologram.page)

Development Framework Update

CopyParty: Turn Any Device Into a File Server with Resumable Uploads/Downloads

2025-07-29

CopyParty is an amazing project that transforms almost any device into a fully-featured file server accessible from any web browser, supporting resumable uploads and downloads. It boasts a user-friendly interface, handles various file types, and offers rich features like file indexing, media previews, audio transcoding, and granular permission control. Simply run `copyparty-sfx.py` to get started, or visit the read-only demo server running on a NUC in my basement. CopyParty aims for simplicity, power, and cross-platform compatibility, making it an ideal emergency solution for transferring files between devices.

(github.com)

Development file server resumable uploads

Samsung Locks Down Bootloaders in One UI 8, Stifling Customization

2025-07-29

The Android modding community is up in arms after discovering Samsung's One UI 8 update removes the bootloader unlock option on many devices. Previously available outside the US, this feature allowed users to install custom ROMs and kernels. Evidence shows this option is gone in One UI 8 beta builds for the Galaxy S25 and stable builds for the Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7, affecting global users. While Samsung now offers seven years of OS updates, this move prevents users from extending device life or enhancing performance through custom ROMs, a significant blow to those who appreciate deep Android customization.

(www.sammobile.com)

Development

Anthropic Implements Weekly Rate Limits for Claude AI Coding Tool

2025-07-29

Anthropic, an AI company, announced new weekly usage limits for its Claude Pro and Max subscribers, effective August 28th. This move addresses issues with users running its Claude Code AI coding tool continuously and violating usage policies through account sharing and resale. While affecting less than 5% of users, the limits highlight the constraints AI model providers face regarding computational resources and the search for sustainable service models. Other AI coding tool providers have also made similar pricing adjustments.

(techcrunch.com)

Development rate limits

Building Reliable AI Agents: Six Hard-Won Lessons

2025-07-29

This article shares six crucial lessons learned in building AI agents. The author emphasizes the importance of clear instructions, lean context management, robust tool interfaces, and automated validation loops. It highlights that modern LLMs need direct, detailed context, avoiding manipulative prompting. Powerful AI agents are built by combining LLMs with tools and basic control flow operators. A two-phase algorithm—one for generation, one for validation—is recommended, with iterative improvement and error analysis crucial for reliability and recoverability.

(www.app.build)

Development

433: A Font That Replaces Text with Dots

2025-07-29

To mask text in Ensō's Coffeeshop Mode, the author created a font called 433 that replaces all non-whitespace characters with dots. This post details the creation process, covering font design principles, Unicode encoding, and WOFF2 compression. The author shares challenges and solutions encountered, along with insights into fonts, Unicode, and multilingual support. The project stemmed from a need to handle diverse writing systems among the app's rapidly growing user base.

(untested.sonnet.io)

Development Coffeeshop Mode

Designing Delightful Apps for Kids: Lessons from Kidz Fun Art

2025-07-29

This article details the lessons learned over four years developing Kidz Fun Art, a tablet-optimized drawing app for children. The author highlights unique challenges and solutions for designing child-friendly apps, including minimizing text, co-locating tools with objects, simplifying interactions, easy error correction, knowing when to involve adults, reducing the need for fine motor skills, addressing palm rejection, and incorporating delightful design elements. The author also stresses ethical monetization strategies, privacy concerns, and preventing children from directly spending money.

(shaneosullivan.wordpress.com)

Development Child App Design

SQLx: An Async, Pure Rust SQL Toolkit with Compile-Time Query Checks

2025-07-29

SQLx is an asynchronous, pure Rust† SQL crate offering compile-time checked queries without a DSL. It supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and SQLite, boasting runtime agnosticism (working with async-std, tokio, and actix), built-in connection pooling, row streaming, TLS support, and asynchronous notifications. SQLx leverages macros for compile-time SQL verification and provides both high-level and low-level query APIs for developer convenience.

(github.com)

Development

Stunning JavaScript Clock Visualizations

2025-07-29

This project features stunning clock visualizations rendered in JavaScript. It displays time in multiple creative ways: binary representation of Unix timestamps, polygons showing year, month, week, day, hour, minute, and second, dynamic blobs with waves representing different time scales, a solar system model showing Earth, Moon, and Sun, and peaks and waves illustrating the passage of time. The source code is open and modifiable.

(ianto-cannon.github.io)

Development Clock

Sub-Millisecond Game Streaming: A New Codec Emerges

2025-07-29

A developer has created PyroWave, an ultra-low-latency game streaming video codec, building upon their master's thesis. Rejecting traditional motion prediction and entropy coding, it uses Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and block-based encoding to achieve sub-millisecond latency (encoding under 100µs, decoding under 1ms). While the bitrate is high (100+ Mbit/s), it excels in local network environments and boasts excellent error resilience. Benchmarks against NVENC show PyroWave achieving superior visual quality in some scenarios, highlighting its potential for low-latency game streaming.

(themaister.net)

Development low-latency encoding wavelet transform

Pony: A High-Performance, Secure Actor-Model Language

2025-07-29

Pony is an open-source, object-oriented, actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language. Its unique actor model ensures safe and efficient concurrent programming. Ready to dive in? Try the Pony Playground in your browser! Learn more about Pony's design and advantages by reading its early history.

(www.ponylang.io)

Development

Overusing useCallback and useMemo in React

2025-07-28

This article discusses the overuse of `useCallback` and `useMemo` in React development. The author argues that in many cases, these hooks are used to achieve referential stability, but this is not always necessary and can even lead to performance overhead and code complexity. The article presents several scenarios, such as when components aren't memoized and when props are used as dependencies in effects, where using `useCallback` and `useMemo` provides no performance benefit and adds unnecessary complexity. The author suggests avoiding overuse of these hooks unless there's a clear performance bottleneck and recommends using refs or the upcoming `useEffectEvent` to handle referential stability issues.

(tkdodo.eu)

Development

Chrome's One-Tap Sign-in Dialog: Google Favoring its Browser?

2025-07-28

Many websites show annoying "Sign in with Google" banners. My browser extension, StopTheMadness Pro, hides these banners, but Chrome behaves differently. While Chrome avoids the banners, it displays a similar One-Tap dialog, which is part of the Chrome app itself and can't be hidden by extensions. Fortunately, this dialog can be disabled in Chrome's settings. This highlights yet another instance of Google seemingly favoring its own browser.

(underpassapp.com)

Development Google Sign-in

Fighting Back Against Windows 11's Built-in Malware: An Open Source Counter-Offensive

2025-07-28

Windows 11 is riddled with distracting ads and tracking features, akin to built-in malware. This article calls for the development of an automated Windows cleanup tool to counter Microsoft's tactics. The tool should be open-source, user-friendly, configurable, and integrate existing excellent tools. The ultimate goal is to force Microsoft to change course and improve user experience through community pressure; a prime example of FOSS fighting back against Microsoft's dominance.

(www.theregister.com)

Development

arXivLabs: Experimental Projects with Community Collaboration

2025-07-28

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

(arxiv.org)

Development

Android's Linux Terminal Now Runs Graphical Apps

2025-07-28

Google's Android Linux Terminal app, a hidden gem allowing users to run full Linux apps within Android, now supports graphical applications in the latest Canary build. A new 'Display' button launches a graphical environment, enabling users to run desktop applications unavailable on Android. Hardware acceleration is also supported, boosting performance. This significant step opens the door for more powerful Linux software and even PC games, though compatibility remains a challenge. It showcases Google's ongoing efforts to merge Chrome OS and Android.

(www.androidauthority.com)

Development

Debian 13 to sidestep the Y2038 bug

2025-07-28

To avoid the potential Y2038 time-related bug, Debian 13 "Trixie" will default to 64-bit timestamps, except for very old hardware still using 32-bit processors. This mirrors the Y2K bug, but developers are proactively addressing it this time. Debian maintainers have modified over 6400 packages to ensure a smooth transition. While a substantial undertaking, Debian is confident that most hardware will seamlessly upgrade after Debian 13's release.

(www.theregister.com)

Development Unix timestamp

Category: Development