Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Snow: A Hardware-Level Macintosh Emulator in Rust

2025-06-26

Snow is an open-source Macintosh emulator written in Rust, aiming for hardware-level accuracy in emulating classic Motorola 680x0-based Macintosh computers. Unlike emulators that patch the ROM or intercept system calls, Snow focuses on low-level hardware emulation. Currently, it supports the Macintosh 128K, 512K, Plus, SE, Classic, and II. While under development, bleeding-edge builds and a limited online demo (emulated machine only) are available.

(snowemu.com)

Development Macintosh emulator

Beyond the Ticket: Reclaiming Thought in Software Development

2025-06-26

This article critiques the 'ticket-driven development' model where developers are overwhelmed with tasks, stifling thought and innovation. This leads to declining code quality, accumulating technical debt, and low team morale. The author advocates for developers to take ownership, think proactively, and strive for excellence, not just speed, ultimately focusing on building systems that work rather than simply closing tickets.

(thecynical.dev)

Development

The Truth About Mixed-DPI Support in X11

2025-06-26

This article clears up the misconceptions surrounding mixed-DPI configuration support in the X11 windowing system. The author delves into the history of X11, from its origins with single X screens, through the Xinerama extension, to the modern XRANDR extension. The article reveals that X11 has always had the capability to support mixed DPI, but the key lies in client applications correctly utilizing the DPI information provided by the XRANDR extension. Different approaches are examined, along with solutions for various scenarios, including using the Qt toolkit for automatic mixed-DPI support and workarounds for toolkits lacking support, such as GTK+. Ultimately, the author calls on developers to improve toolkits and applications to fully leverage X11's mixed-DPI capabilities.

(wok.oblomov.eu)

Development mixed DPI multi-monitor

Snipping Tool Update: GIF Export Now Available on Windows 11

2025-06-26

Windows 11's Snipping Tool just got a major upgrade! Version 11.2505.21.0 now lets you export screen recordings as GIFs, making sharing quick captures super easy. Record a video using Win + Shift + R or the app's screen recording mode. After recording, click the 'Export GIF' button, choose low or high quality, and save to your files or copy to your clipboard. Note: GIF export is limited to videos 30 seconds or shorter.

(blogs.windows.com)

Development Snipping Tool GIF Export

Generating Structured JSON Output with Local Llamafile

2025-06-26

This article demonstrates how to generate structured JSON outputs from Llamafile, a locally runnable LLM. By leveraging LangChain's JsonOutputParser and PromptTemplate, and defining a custom Answer class to specify the desired JSON structure, the author chains together prompt, LLM, and parser components. This cleverly bypasses Llamafile's lack of built-in structured output functionality. A practical example using Llama-3.2-1B-Instruct-Q8_0.llamafile is provided, along with a link to the complete source code.

(blog.brakmic.com)

Development JSON output

Graphics Programmer Xor Creates Stunning Shaders in Under 280 Characters

2025-06-26

Xor, a graphics programmer, is passionate about crafting compact GLSL shader programs and sharing them on Twitter. He uses 'code golfing' techniques to squeeze complex visual effects, like simulated galaxies and voxel raytracers, into under 280 characters. This not only challenges his coding skills but has also connected him with a vibrant community of artists and programmers. Xor details his creative process and code golfing tips, encouraging others to experiment.

(tympanus.net)

Development Code Golfing

Lines of Code: A Flawed Metric - A Lisa Team Anecdote

2025-06-26

In early 1982, Apple's Lisa team tracked engineer productivity by lines of code. Bill Atkinson, QuickDraw's creator, found this metric absurd, prioritizing concise, efficient code. He optimized QuickDraw's region calculation, achieving a six-fold speed increase while reducing code by 2000 lines. On the productivity form, he famously reported '-2000'. Management wisely stopped using this flawed metric.

(www.folklore.org)

Development Code Efficiency

Fedora's 32-bit Sunset Threatens Popular Handheld Gaming Distro Bazzite

2025-06-26

Fedora Linux's proposal to drop 32-bit support has sparked controversy, particularly threatening the popular handheld gaming distribution Bazzite. Bazzite's creator, Kyle Gospodnetich, strongly opposes the change, arguing it would kill projects like Bazzite and damage Fedora's public image. He points out that even with built Steam packages, basic use cases would break, and Flatpak wouldn't solve issues with Bazzite's reliance on 32-bit architecture for Steam Big Picture Mode. Currently, the proposal is unlikely to pass for Fedora 44, but ideally, Valve would port the Steam client to 64-bit, resolving many problems. The issue also impacts OBS Studio game capturing and FEX.

(www.gamingonlinux.com)

Development 32-bit support

CUDA Ray Tracer Outperforms Vulkan/RTX by 3x

2025-06-26

This article details the author's journey building a CUDA-based ray tracer that surpasses a Vulkan/RTX implementation—sometimes by over 3x—on identical hardware. Starting with a naive CUDA port, the author systematically optimized the renderer, tackling recursion, register pressure, memory layouts, and branching inefficiencies. Techniques like explicit stacks, structure of arrays, early ray termination, and Russian roulette were employed, resulting in a frame time reduction from 2.5 seconds to 9 milliseconds. The article dives deep into CUDA performance bottlenecks and offers practical optimization strategies. Benchmarks showcase the significant performance gains achieved on an RTX 3080.

(karimsayedre.github.io)

Development GPU Optimization

Build a Text-to-Speech Reader with Sentence Highlighting in JavaScript

2025-06-26

This article guides you through building a simple web tool that leverages JavaScript's SpeechSynthesis API for text-to-speech (TTS) functionality and dynamic sentence highlighting. It explains how to control speech playback, set voice parameters, and track speech events. The article also details implementing sentence-level highlighting using CSS and JavaScript, culminating in a fully functional interactive reader with play, pause, resume, stop buttons, and voice selection. The complete HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code is provided.

(jsdev.space)

Development Sentence Highlighting

Iroh: Revolutionizing Network Communication for Faster, Simpler Connections

2025-06-26

Iroh is a novel network communication framework built on QUIC, enabling public key dialing and automatic discovery and maintenance of the fastest connection. Iroh attempts direct connections, falling back to public relay servers if necessary, with continuous monitoring for optimal speed. It offers pre-built protocols like iroh-blobs for large file transfers and iroh-gossip for building scalable publish-subscribe networks, simplifying development. Primarily written in Rust, Iroh also provides FFI bindings for other languages.

(github.com)

Development network communication

LM Studio 0.3.17: MCP Support and Multilingual Enhancements

2025-06-26

LM Studio 0.3.17 introduces Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, enabling users to connect various MCP servers and utilize them with local models. This release also adds support for 11 new languages, fixes numerous bugs, and improves the UI with a new 'Solarized Dark' theme. MCP allows large language models access to tools and resources; users should exercise caution when installing MCP servers from untrusted sources.

(lmstudio.ai)

Development

Howdy: Windows Hello-style Facial Login for Linux

2025-06-26

Howdy brings Windows Hello-like facial recognition login to Linux. Using your built-in IR emitters and camera, it provides convenient authentication. Integrating with PAM, it works everywhere you'd normally use a password: login, lock screen, sudo, su, etc. Howdy supports Debian/Ubuntu, Arch Linux, Fedora, and openSUSE, with detailed installation instructions covering .deb packages, AUR, Fedora COPR, and building from source. Important: Howdy's security is not absolute and should not be used as your sole authentication method.

(github.com)

Development

Build Interactive AI Apps Directly in the Claude App

2025-06-26

Anthropic has launched the ability to build, host, and share interactive AI-powered apps directly within the Claude app. Developers can now iterate faster on their AI apps without worrying about scaling complexities and costs. Claude creates artifacts that interact via its API, turning them into shareable AI apps where usage is billed against the user's Claude subscription, not the developer's. Claude automatically writes code, handling prompt engineering, error handling, and orchestration logic. Features include using a Claude API within artifacts, processing files, creating rich React UIs, and forking/customizing artifacts. Current limitations include no external API calls, no persistent storage, and a text-based completion API. This beta feature is available to Free, Pro, and Max plan users.

(www.anthropic.com)

Development AI app development

Reverse Engineering a Linux Driver for the Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock

2025-06-26

The author bought a Nanoleaf Pegboard Desk Dock, a USB hub with RGB LEDs and gadget hooks, and decided to write a Linux driver for it since it only supports Windows and macOS. After obtaining protocol documentation from the vendor, the author used Rust and the libusb library to create a user-space driver. The article details the process, including using lsusb to get device information, handling USB interfaces, and using udev rules for user permissions. The author successfully created a simple driver to control the Desk Dock's RGB LEDs and handle device interrupts. Challenges like kernel driver occupancy and interrupt handling were overcome, leading to a deeper understanding of writing simple USB device drivers. While a simple proof of concept, it highlights that writing basic device drivers isn't as hard as it seems.

(crescentro.se)

Development

Ethiopian Solo Founder Builds Viral Auth Tool, Secures $5M Seed Round

2025-06-26

Bereket Engida, a self-taught programmer from Ethiopia, has quietly built Better Auth, an open-source authentication framework lauded by developers as the best they've ever used. This solo founder's startup recently raised $5 million in seed funding. Better Auth addresses limitations in existing tools, offering flexibility and on-premise data storage, appealing to AI startups and others concerned about data security. Boasting 150,000+ weekly downloads and 15,000+ GitHub stars, Better Auth is a testament to Engida's skill and a source of inspiration for aspiring African founders.

(techcrunch.com)

Development African founder

Open Source Maintainer Revolt: The Libxml2 Case Study

2025-06-26

Libxml2, a widely used XML parser, highlights the successes and failures of the open-source model. After years of being relied upon by major corporations like Apple, Google, and Microsoft without adequate support, its maintainer, Nick Wellnhofer, is rejecting security embargoes and treating security vulnerabilities like regular bugs. This decision, driven by burnout and insufficient funding, sparked a debate about corporate responsibility in open source and the need for sustainable maintenance models. Wellnhofer's actions suggest a growing frustration within the open-source community and could signal a shift in how maintainers engage with large companies.

(lwn.net)

Development corporate responsibility

QEMU Rejects AI-Generated Code Contributions

2025-06-26

The QEMU project has announced a ban on submitting code patches generated by AI. Due to the uncertainties surrounding the copyright and licensing of AI model training data, and the potential legal risks involved, QEMU finds it difficult to ensure compliance for AI-generated code. This policy covers various AI tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot, but does not prohibit the use of AI for other purposes like research, static analysis, or debugging.

(github.com)

Development

AccessOwl Hiring: Senior Elixir Engineer (Remote, AI-Driven SaaS)

2025-06-26

AccessOwl, a profitable, Y Combinator-backed SaaS startup, is seeking a Senior Software Engineer specializing in Elixir. This fully remote role requires a location within ±3 hours of Berlin. You'll collaborate with a small, close-knit team to revolutionize how companies manage their SaaS tools using AI. The ideal candidate has 5+ years of web software development experience, is proficient in Elixir, and thrives on solving real-world problems. Competitive salary, stock options, and flexible hours are offered.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development

Let's Encrypt's Imminent Support for IP Address SAN Certificates

2025-06-25

Let's Encrypt is nearing the release of certificates supporting IP address Subject Alternative Names (SANs), initially limited to a short-lived (6-day) profile and an allowlist-only approach. The feature is still under development, with no public launch timeline yet. A sample certificate and a website utilizing it are provided, along with discussions about discovered bugs in Firefox and Discourse related to IP address SANs. The post also sparks debate on the validity of using IP addresses as DNS names within SANs and whether the DNS-01 challenge is applicable to IP address certificates.

(community.letsencrypt.org)

Development IP Address SAN

Crafting Compelling Software Release Announcements

2025-06-25

This article unveils the secrets to writing engaging software release announcements. The author stresses focusing on improved user experience, not just a laundry list of features. Examples show how to translate technical details into user-perceived benefits – framing bug fixes as improvements to the user experience, not merely bug eliminations. The article advocates for clear screenshots, concise animated demos, and planning the announcement early in development to ensure it directly relates to user value, avoiding vague phrases like "various improvements and bug fixes."

(refactoringenglish.com)

Development

Hacking OpenAI Transcription: Speed Up Your Audio, Slash Your Costs

2025-06-25

Want cheaper, faster OpenAI transcriptions? Speed up your audio! This surprisingly effective hack involves using ffmpeg to double or triple the speed of your audio before transcription. The author shares a script combining yt-dlp, ffmpeg, and an LLM, showcasing how speeding up a 40-minute talk significantly reduced both processing time and cost, with minimal impact on transcription accuracy. While exploring alternatives to YouTube's auto-captioning, this unexpected discovery revealed cost savings of up to 67%, making it a worthwhile optimization for anyone working with long-form audio transcriptions.

(george.mand.is)

Development Transcription

Stop Thinking About Parallel Programming: Just Do It (Transparently)!

2025-06-25

Guy L. Steele Jr. argues that programmers shouldn't need to worry about the specifics of parallel programming. Languages should provide transparent ways to run tasks in parallel. This requires a new approach to language design, supporting algorithms based on independence and divide-and-conquer principles, rather than linear problem decomposition. His presentation was given at the Strange Loop conference.

(www.infoq.com)

Development parallel programming

Gemini CLI: Your AI-Powered Code Workflow Companion

2025-06-25

The Google Gemini CLI is a command-line AI tool that connects to your tools, understands your code, and accelerates your workflows. It allows you to query and edit large codebases, generate new apps from PDFs or sketches, automate operational tasks, and integrate with tools and MCP servers for functionalities like media generation (Imagen, Veo, Lyria). It also features Google Search integration and offers multiple authentication methods. Simply use command-line prompts to leverage Gemini's capabilities for coding, summarizing changes, generating documentation, and more, dramatically boosting productivity.

(github.com)

Development

Qodo Gen CLI: Automate Your SDLC with AI Agents

2025-06-25

Qodo Gen CLI is a powerful command-line interface for building, managing, and running AI agents. Developers can create custom agents to automate workflows across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC), integrating AI capabilities into any IDE. Supporting leading LLMs and flexible deployment options, Qodo Gen CLI offers both terminal and browser-based interfaces. Automate tasks like code review, documentation generation, and test coverage, boosting efficiency and allowing developers to focus on building features.

(www.qodo.ai)

Development SDLC automation

AI Revolutionizes Video Creation: Yarn is Hiring Top Engineers

2025-06-25

Yarn, a startup, is revolutionizing video creation with AI. Their innovative technology combines AI with video production, making compelling videos 100x faster. Backed by investors like Y Combinator and collaborating with companies like Clay and Shopify, Yarn is hiring experienced engineers in NYC. They're looking for individuals to build core agent workflows, develop AI-powered collaborative editing tools, and prototype cutting-edge AI models.

(www.ycombinator.com)

Development Video Production

Reading Passport NFC Chip Data with Python

2025-06-25

The author attempts to read the NFC chip data from their cancelled passport using the Python library pypassport. Due to the passport being cancelled, a portion of the MRZ (Machine Readable Zone) is missing. The author reconstructs the MRZ from other information on the passport and successfully reads the passport information, including biometric data. The article details the composition of the MRZ, checksum calculation methods, and the reading process, and discusses the possibility and practical value of brute-forcing the MRZ. Ultimately, the author demonstrates that while theoretically possible, brute-forcing is very difficult in practice, and reading the information directly from the passport is much more convenient and efficient.

(shkspr.mobi)

Development Passport

Chrome for Android Finally Gets a Bottom Address Bar

2025-06-25

Google has finally added a much-requested feature to Chrome for Android: a bottom address bar. Users can now move the address bar, tab switcher, and other shortcuts to the bottom of the screen, making one-handed use much easier. The update is optional, allowing users to choose between top and bottom placement in settings. The rollout begins today and will reach all users in the coming weeks. iOS users gained this feature in 2023.

(9to5google.com)

Development Bottom Address Bar

Microsoft's Open-Source MS-DOS Editor Remake: A Blast from the Past

2025-06-25

Microsoft has released a modern, open-source remake of its classic MS-DOS Editor, aptly named "Edit." Built with Rust, this cross-platform editor runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux—a significant departure from its 1991 origins in MS-DOS 5.0. The release has delighted longtime users, offering a nostalgic trip back to a simpler time while also providing a user-friendly alternative to complex text editors found on some platforms. The full-screen interface, mouse support, and intuitive menus stand in stark contrast to its predecessor, EDLIN, and even some modern Linux editors like Vim, making it a welcome addition for both seasoned programmers and newcomers alike.

(arstechnica.com)

Development MS-DOS Editor

Gnosis Mystic: Empowering AI to Control Your Python Functions in Real-Time

2025-06-25

Gnosis Mystic is a powerful tool that gives AI assistants direct access and control over your Python functions through runtime hijacking and intelligent analysis. With minimal decorators, Claude can inspect, optimize, and control your code in real-time. It solves the problem of AI assistants being blind to your running code, lacking access to runtime behavior and state, and enables real-time function monitoring, safe experimentation, runtime control, intelligent analysis, and live debugging, significantly boosting development efficiency and code security.

(github.com)

Development

Category: Development