Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Blazing Fast Cuckoo Filter Lookups in C# with Bit Twiddling

2025-07-28

While implementing a Cuckoo Filter in C#, the author significantly optimized lookup speed by cleverly replacing a 4-byte bucket with a 32-bit integer and employing bit manipulation tricks. Initially, a byte array required looping through four bytes per bucket. Switching to a uint array and using bit shifting improved performance by roughly 35%. However, the author's final optimization, a branchless bit manipulation technique to directly check for a target byte, resulted in over 60% faster positive lookups and more than double the speed for negative lookups. While readability decreased slightly, the performance gains are substantial, making this a worthwhile optimization strategy.

(maltsev.space)

Development

Claude Code Router: Unleash the Power of Multi-Model AI Access

2025-07-28

A powerful tool to route Claude Code requests to different models and customize any request. It supports multiple model providers like OpenRouter, DeepSeek, Ollama, Gemini, and more, allowing customization of requests and responses via transformers. Users configure models flexibly through a config file, enabling dynamic model switching, GitHub Actions integration, and a plugin system. This significantly enhances Claude Code's flexibility and efficiency, especially for scenarios needing model switching or request/response customization.

(github.com)

Development

How to Make PostgreSQL Ridiculously Slow?

2025-07-28

This article challenges the reader to make PostgreSQL as slow as possible by tweaking parameters in the `postgresql.conf` file, without resorting to CPU throttling or index deletion. Through a series of carefully chosen adjustments, including drastically reducing the buffer cache size (`shared_buffers`), aggressively triggering autovacuum and analyze (`autovacuum_*` parameters), and configuring WAL (`wal_*` parameters) for maximal write frequency and I/O contention, the author manages to reduce PostgreSQL's TPS by over 7000 times, from 7000+ to below single digits, even under 0.1 TPS. The author details the rationale and impact of each parameter change and provides a reproducible configuration. This is a fascinating experiment showcasing the profound impact of database parameter tuning.

(byteofdev.com)

Development Parameter Tuning

Rescuing My Blog's Performance with jekyll-skyhook

2025-07-28

My blog's Google indexing failed, and PageSpeed Insights gave a dismal 43/100. The culprits? Google Fonts, YouTube embeds, and poorly optimized images. I built a Jekyll plugin, jekyll-skyhook, to fix this. It self-hosts fonts, uses a lightweight YouTube library, and implements image transformations, responsive images, and caching. The result? A soaring PageSpeed score of 99/100! jekyll-skyhook supports image format conversion (WebP, AVIF), automatic srcset generation for responsive images, and caching to avoid redundant processing, significantly boosting blog performance.

(arclight.run)

Development

Coding at 800 WPM: A Blind Developer's Journey

2025-07-28

This article details the experiences of a blind software developer who uses a screen reader to code at an astonishing 800 words per minute. The author navigates the challenges of screen reader usage, explaining his choices of Windows and VS Code, and offering insights into handling images, diagrams, and team collaboration. He shares techniques like using IaC, LLMs, and custom userscripts, highlighting the crucial importance of accessible developer tools. The article underscores the developer's remarkable adaptation and the need for better accessibility in the software industry.

(neurrone.com)

Development accessible development screen reader

Multiplex: Command-Line Parallel Process Manager

2025-07-28

Multiplex is a command-line tool with a simple Python API to run multiple processes in parallel and stop them all at once, or based on a condition. It gracefully shuts down child processes, multiplexing their output and error streams to stdout and stderr for easy parsing with standard command-line tools. Multiplex is useful for running multiple programs concurrently and combining their output, such as a web server, work queue, and database. It supports named processes, delayed starts, process- or time-based dependencies, and actions like silent mode and terminating other processes on completion. With its concise syntax, Multiplex simplifies complex orchestration, including CI/CD pipelines and development environment setup.

(github.com)

Development process management

Hacking My Washing Machine: A Discord Notification Odyssey

2025-07-28

A group of university students, for fun and practicality, hacked a cheap smart washing machine. Using network sniffing, they discovered the machine communicated with its app via simple HTTP, using a basic XOR encryption. Through reverse engineering and brute-forcing the encryption key, they accessed the machine's status and created a script to update it to their Discord server. The process was challenging and fun, showcasing their skills. They plan to apply this to other appliances for a fully automated smart home.

(nexy.blog)

Development

Blender on Tablets: 3D Modeling Goes Mobile

2025-07-28

Blender is expanding to tablets! The team is bringing the power of Blender to iPad Pro (initially), adapting the UI for touch and stylus input. The focus will be on core features like object manipulation and sculpting, later expanding to more advanced tools. While targeting tablets, improvements will also benefit desktop users. The project is open for contributions, and demos are planned for SIGGRAPH 2025 and the Blender Conference 2025.

(code.blender.org)

Development tablets

DumbPipe: A Configuration-Free Inter-Computer Pipe

2025-07-28

DumbPipe establishes a secure data pipe between two computers with a single command, requiring no accounts or configuration. The receiver runs `./dumbpipe listen` to obtain a key. The sender uses this key with `./dumbpipe connect` to transmit data, e.g., `echo "hello" | ./dumbpipe connect `. DumbPipe finds a way to connect regardless of machine location, enabling easy data transfer.

(www.dumbpipe.dev)

Development network transfer data pipe

ByteDance's Trae IDE: A Performance Hog with a Privacy Problem

2025-07-27

A recent performance and privacy analysis of ByteDance's Trae IDE, a Visual Studio Code fork, revealed alarming results. Trae consumes excessive resources, running 3.7 times more processes and using 6.3 times more memory than VSCode. Despite disabling telemetry settings, it persistently transmits detailed usage data to ByteDance servers, including system information, usage patterns, and unique identifiers. Furthermore, Trae's community management suppresses critical feedback regarding privacy and security concerns. Users should exercise caution when using Trae IDE due to its significant performance and privacy issues.

(github.com)

Development

Base58 vs. Base85 Encoding: A Tale of Two Encodings

2025-07-27

Base58 and Base85 encodings represent binary data in human-readable formats. Base58, using a smaller character set, is more conservative; Base85, with a larger set, is more efficient. A key difference lies in how 'base' is defined. Base58 is crucial to Bitcoin, part of the Base58Check protocol for addresses and keys. Base85 offers a more compact alternative to Base64, found in PDFs and Git patch encoding. It works by breaking bits into 32-bit words, encoding each in base 85. Variations in Base85 alphabets lead to different outputs. Base85 boasts superior efficiency, using fewer symbols and offering better computational performance.

(www.johndcook.com)

Development Encoding

StackSafe: Conquering Stack Overflow in Recursive Rust

2025-07-27

Recursive functions in Rust are prone to stack overflows, crashing your program. StackSafe solves this by automatically growing the stack in recursive functions and data structures. Simply add the `#[stacksafe]` attribute, and your code works without crashes. Used in production by ScopeDB for petabyte-scale data, StackSafe provides complete protection for both recursive functions and their derived traits (like `Debug`, `Clone`, `Drop`), offering comprehensive stack safety and debug-time checks to catch potential overflows early.

(fast.github.io)

Development stack overflow

BlueOS: A Lightweight, Secure, and General-Purpose Rust Kernel

2025-07-27

BlueOS is a lightweight, secure, and general-purpose operating system kernel written in Rust. It's POSIX-compliant, supports the Rust standard library, and currently supports ARM32, ARM64, RISCV32, and RISCV64 architectures with QEMU emulation. Hardware board support is under development. The project includes the core kernel, a custom libc implementation, example applications, and comprehensive documentation, providing a complete environment for developers.

(github.com)

Development

The Optimization Challenges of Low-Level Languages and the Future of Polyglot Programming

2025-07-27

A recurring problem in modern “low-level” languages is the difficulty in optimization due to their disconnect from hardware. The author uses Haskell and Futhark as examples, highlighting the advantages of functional languages in optimization. Their restrictive design and referential transparency allow compilers more freedom to optimize. However, some scenarios still require low-level operations, such as Rust's `unsafe` blocks. The article ultimately advocates for a polyglot programming paradigm, building meta-languages to let developers easily choose the right tool for the job, such as inline Futhark or Datalog, ultimately improving overall performance and addressing optimization challenges.

(jyn.dev)

Development

Debugging Bash Scripts: Gracefully Handling `set -e` Errors

2025-07-27

This article presents a neat trick for gracefully handling errors triggered by `set -e` in Bash scripts. By using `trap 'echo "Exit status $? at line $LINENO from: $BASH_COMMAND"' ERR`, you can print information like the error line number, failing command, and exit status when the script encounters an error, making debugging easier. This leverages Bash-specific features: `$LINENO`, `$BASH_COMMAND` environment variables, and the `ERR` trap condition. Other shells like sh may behave differently and might not fully support this functionality.

(utcc.utoronto.ca)

Development script debugging

Implementing Dynamic Scoping in Fennel: A Clever Approach

2025-07-27

The author tackles the challenge of implementing dynamic scoping in Fennel, a Lua dialect where it's not natively supported. The article explores several approaches, including manipulating function environments using Lua's debug library and cleverly cloning functions to set their environments. While the author ultimately decides against integrating this feature into the fennel-cljlib library for now, the in-depth exploration of Lua function environments and dynamic scoping, along with the comparison of different implementation strategies, provides valuable insights into functional and metaprogramming concepts.

(andreyor.st)

Development Dynamic Scoping

arXivLabs: Building New arXiv Features with Community Collaboration

2025-07-27

arXivLabs is a framework enabling developers to build and share new arXiv features directly on the arXiv website. Participants must embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. Have an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

(arxiv.org)

Development

Asyncio's Pitfalls: Traps in Python Asynchronous Programming and Trio's Redemption

2025-07-27

Python's asyncio library, while introducing the possibility of asynchronous programming, is riddled with design flaws. These include easily overlooked cancellation mechanisms, tasks being unexpectedly destroyed, traps in I/O operations, and a difficult-to-use queue. The article details these problems and contrasts them with Trio's elegant solutions. Trio addresses many of asyncio's headaches with level-triggered cancellation, strong task references, a more intuitive I/O API, and efficient channels. It provides a more reliable and user-friendly option for Python asynchronous programming. AnyIO offers a compromise, implementing Trio-like semantics on top of asyncio, balancing compatibility and ease of use.

(sailor.li)

Development

Janet: A Lightweight and High-Performance Systems Scripting Language

2025-07-27

Janet is a lightweight systems scripting language written mostly in standard C99, running on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It boasts minimal setup, built-in support for threads, networking, and an event loop, and features first-class closures, garbage collection, and green threads. Furthermore, Janet supports macros, tail-call optimization, and direct interoperability with C, along with a REPL and interactive debugger. A rich core library of functions and macros, coupled with the jpm build tool, makes development efficient and convenient.

(janet-lang.org)

Development embedded language

tinyio: A Minimalist Event Loop for Python

2025-07-27

Tired of asyncio's complex error handling? tinyio is a dead-simple (~200 lines) event loop for Python, designed for ease of use and robust error handling. It uses `yield` instead of `await`, providing a straightforward API. Upon an error in any coroutine, tinyio cancels all coroutines and provides detailed tracebacks for easy debugging. It supports nested loops and thread operations, making it ideal for simple tasks, especially when straightforward error semantics are desired.

(github.com)

Development

It Takes 10 Years to Become a Programming Expert: Forget Those Crash Courses

2025-07-27

This article debunks the myth of quick programming tutorials promising expertise in hours or days. The author argues that true programming mastery requires at least ten years and 10,000 hours of deliberate practice, mirroring learning curves in other fields. Examples like Mozart and the Beatles illustrate that even prodigies need years of dedicated work. The author advises aspiring programmers to choose suitable languages, prioritize hands-on experience, collaborate with others, and delve into diverse languages and low-level computer knowledge. Ultimately, consistent effort and deliberate practice, not shortcuts, are key to programming excellence.

(norvig.com)

Development

arXivLabs: Building New arXiv Features with Community Collaboration

2025-07-27

arXivLabs is a framework enabling developers to collaborate and share new arXiv features directly on the arXiv website. Participants embrace arXiv's values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. Got an idea to enhance the arXiv community? Learn more about arXivLabs!

(arxiv.org)

Development

QuickTunes: A Simple and Fast Apple Music Client for macOS

2025-07-27

QuickTunes is a minimalist and fast Apple Music client for macOS, aiming to recapture the simplicity of early 2000s music players like the iPod. It features smooth scrolling, keyboard navigation, and multi-touch gestures for easy library navigation. A customizable floating player and adaptable layout cater to various screen sizes, while a powerful search function helps quickly locate songs. QuickTunes is compatible with macOS 15 "Sequoia" on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

(furnacecreek.org)

Development

Runtime Resizable Structs in Zig

2025-07-27

This post proposes the concept of a "runtime resizable struct" in the Zig programming language. Existing methods for handling structs with runtime-determined field lengths are cumbersome, requiring manual size calculations, memory allocation, and alignment considerations. The author presents a solution leveraging Zig's compile-time metaprogramming capabilities. Using `ResizableArray` and `ResizableStruct`, a runtime-resizable struct is implemented, simplifying operations and avoiding potential errors. The core is compile-time offset and size calculations, providing `init`, `get`, `resize`, and `deinit` methods for memory management. A minimal implementation is available on GitHub, with community feedback encouraged.

(tristanpemble.com)

Development

Building a High-Performance, Reliable Storage Solution with LVM Cache and RAID 1

2025-07-27

This article details how to build a fast and reliable storage solution using Linux Logical Volume Manager (LVM) caching for a RAID 1 array. The author faced a challenge needing massive storage where only a small portion of the data is frequently accessed, making traditional SSD+HDD setups inefficient. The article walks through creating an LVM cache volume, setting up RAID 1 on HDDs for redundancy, and compares alternative caching solutions like bcache and EnhanceIO. The author successfully implemented an SSD-cached RAID 1 HDD array, dramatically improving access speeds while ensuring data safety.

(quantum5.ca)

Development Storage Caching

Building a Highly Efficient Inverted Index in Scala: Parallel Processing with Multiple Threads

2025-07-26

This article demonstrates how to build a highly efficient inverted index in Scala for fast document lookup. The author begins by explaining the working principle of an inverted index, then progressively implements an `InvertedIndex` class capable of adding words and retrieving documents containing specific words. To boost efficiency, multi-threaded parallel processing is employed, dividing files into groups for parallel index generation, followed by merging the results. The article also touches upon text processing details, such as stop word removal and stemming.

(www.chashnikov.dev)

Development inverted index

The Misunderstood Usefulness of `font-size-adjust`

2025-07-26

This article challenges the common misconception surrounding the CSS property `font-size-adjust`. The author argues that `font-size` specifies the size of the box around a glyph, not the glyph itself, leading to inconsistencies across different fonts. Instead of solely focusing on font fallback, `font-size-adjust` can be used to ensure more consistent sizing across various fonts on a page. The author recommends setting it to `ex-height 0.53` in a CSS reset for improved typographic consistency.

(matklad.github.io)

Development

Stop Using AI to Cut Corners: Your Boss Knows

2025-07-26

A seasoned professional expresses concern about employees' over-reliance on AI for writing. With extensive reading and writing experience and years of working with LLMs, he can easily detect AI-generated text. He argues that over-reliance on AI reduces efficiency and deprives employees of the learning and critical thinking involved in writing, ultimately resulting in lower quality work. He encourages employees to invest time in crafting their work, expressing their thoughts in their own words, and showcasing their personal value.

(christopherkrapu.com)

Development workplace efficiency

The Book of PF, 4th Edition: Now Available for Preorder

2025-07-26

After eight years, the highly anticipated fourth edition of "The Book of PF" is now available for preorder! Author Peter Hansteen explains the update: to sync with the modern internet, particularly OpenBSD 7.8 and FreeBSD 14-STABLE. The new edition updates content while maintaining a similar structure and chapter titles, with a stronger FreeBSD focus. The update involved collaboration with Max Stucchi and Tom Smyth, refined through numerous conferences and tutorials. The fourth edition focuses on OpenBSD and FreeBSD's PF implementations and will be released in the second half of 2025, with a related tutorial at EuroBSDcon 2025.

(bsdly.blogspot.com)

Development

Single Rust Codebase Conquers Major GPU Platforms: A Milestone in Cross-Platform GPU Compute

2025-07-26

An exciting project has achieved the feat of running compute logic on all major GPU platforms (NVIDIA CUDA, AMD/Intel/NVIDIA Vulkan, Apple Metal, Windows DirectX 12, WebGPU for browsers, and a CPU fallback) from a single Rust codebase. Leveraging Rust's features like `#![no_std]`, conditional compilation, newtypes, enums, and traits, the project achieves impressive cross-platform generality. The `cargo` build system and testing framework streamline the development process. While challenges remain, such as compiler backend integration and debugging experience, this marks a significant step forward for Rust in cross-platform GPU computing.

(rust-gpu.github.io)

Development

Category: Development