News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

ckcheng

Re:Is this the new cyber normal? on Saturday October 24, 2026 @04:36AM (#50219302)
But if AI produces code with 90% fewer vulnerabilities per line, but generates 10 times as much code, the total security exposure remains the same .
Re:A wandering black hole caught feeding on the run on Sunday September 13, 2026 @10:40AM (#49684513)
> but "now" is the collection of events that currently affect us.

Just to see if I understand what you’re saying…

So a hypothetical photon from the big bang (era?) gets observed now means the big bang is happening now?

A dinosaur decays to bones and now gets observed means the dinosaur died just now - not that it died millions of years ago?

(Dinosaur = photon from a star or something. Decay = red shift. Or a real dinosaur— guess it’s the same now.)

Re:Program images and portable Scheme back ends for Jolt on Thursday August 13, 2026 @02:19AM (#49282345)
Looking forward to seeing what the performance is like for a Clojure on “a whole-program optimizing compiler in the Stalin lineage”!
Re:Go 1.27 Interactive Tour on Sunday August 02, 2026 @12:02AM (#49140981)
Took a few more years to get really bug free.

> Fast forward to 2006. I was shocked to learn that the binary search program that Bentley proved correct and subsequently tested in Chapter 5 of Programming Pearls contains a bug. ... Lest you think I'm picking on Bentley, let me tell you how I discovered the bug: The version of binary search that I wrote for the JDK contained the same bug. It was reported to Sun recently when it broke someone's program, after lying in wait for nine years or so.

https://research.google/blog/extra-extra-read-all-about-it-n...

Re:GitHub has alternatives, but no replacement on Saturday August 01, 2026 @12:21PM (#49135738)
How’s about radicle.dev ? Apparently like GitHub, but decentralized like Git.
Re:Recursion is lying to you on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @06:07PM (#49090587)
TCO is surprisingly commonly supported in the real world. TCO is supported in C++ compilers, JavaScript in Safari, Scala, Clojure in a way, etc.!

For instance:

"All current mainstream [C++] compilers perform tail call optimisation fairly well (and have done for more than a decade), even for mutually recursive calls" [1].

"As of July 22, 2023 Safari is the only browser that supports tail call optimization" of JavaScript [2].

"Since Clojure uses the Java calling conventions, it cannot, and does not, make the same tail call optimization guarantees. Instead, it provides the recur special operator, which does constant-space recursive looping" [3].

"The Scala compiler will automatically optimize any truly tail-recursive method. If you annotate a method that you believe is tail-recursive with the @tailrec annotation, then the compiler will warn you if the method is actually not tail-recursive" [4].

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/34129

[2]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/37224563

[3]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/34097339

[4]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/3114245

Re:Bitchat Is Now on Radicle on Saturday July 25, 2026 @02:32PM (#49050268)
Yes, I think it’s like a decentralized GitHub?
Re:Bitchat Is Now on Radicle on Saturday July 25, 2026 @11:30AM (#49048421)
Works over Bluetooth mesh offline and Nostr online.

Relevant discussion yesterday:

> “Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036433

Like many countries, China has an unemployment problem especially with new grads.

> demanding jobs and long hours in the private sector, where 12-hour days and weekend shifts are common

But well, there’s the problem right there, right? If they restrict max working hours to like European standards, they’d immediately reduce unemployment to near zero.

Plus the extra time off produces greater domestic demand too.

This solution is too obvious. So why don’t they do it?

What’s more funny to me is the set up to that quote:

> Bill Gates had somehow manifested, alone, surrounded by ten Apple employees. … Steve started yelling at Bill, asking him why he violated their agreement.

And what’s more interesting is the conclusion:

> Apple filed a monumental copyright lawsuit against Microsoft in 1988, but they eventually lost on a technicality (the judge ruled that Apple inadvertently gave Microsoft a perpetual license to the Mac user interface in November 1985).

Microsoft didn’t steal Apple’s GUI … Apple gave it to them.

It’s important not to forget the (work) politics while looking at the work produced. Unfortunately when you get a politically astute Mad Men (for real, from Ogilvy) in the organization, great damage can be done for a very long time without much recourse.

You’ll note Dye was an Ive decision. And you’ll see the successor was not in Dye’s camp. Because (work) politics.

From https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job

> Gurman reported that Billy Sorrentino, a Dye deputy who has served as a senior director of design at Apple since 2016, is leaving for Meta with Dye.3 I don’t have any other names, but word on the street is that other members of Dye’s inner circle are leaving Apple for Meta with him. But those who remain — or who might remain, if they’d have been offered the promotion to replace Dye — simply can’t be trusted from the perspective of senior leadership, who were apparently blindsided by Dye’s departure for Meta.

> Putting Alan Dye in charge of user interface design was the one big mistake Jony Ive made as Apple’s Chief Design Officer.

> Dye had no background in user interface design... Before joining Apple, he was design director for the fashion brand Kate Spade, and before that worked on branding for the ad agency Ogilvy.

> Alan Dye is not untalented. But his talents at Apple were in politics. His political skill was so profound that it was his decision to leave, despite the fact that his tenure is considered a disaster by actual designers inside and outside the company. He obviously figured out how to please Apple’s senior leadership. His departure today landed as a total surprise because his stature within the company seemed so secure.

> Isn't the available learning material better than it has ever been?

Yes, and so’s the available distractions and entertainment.

Re:Our eighth generation TPUs: two chips for the agentic era on Wednesday April 22, 2026 @10:05AM (#47863853)
Unless you don’t think Attention Is All You Need?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_Is_All_You_Need

The strangest thing I found is:

> on April 7, 2026 … U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent, in-person meeting in Washington with the chief executives of [major US banks] to brief them directly on the cyber risks posed by [Anthropic’s] Mythos

Then a similar meeting happened with the Canadian Financial Sector Resiliency Group (i.e. the Bank of Canada, the Canadian government’s Department of Finance, the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation (Canada’s FDIC) and Canada’s six major banks).

Multiple central banks don’t usually do that right?

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/article/anthropics-new-ai-mo...

Re:LibreOffice Writer now supports Markdown on Sunday March 08, 2026 @01:51PM (#47299344)
You could open the doc or docx in LibreOffice 26.2 and use its Markdown export feature?
Well they already chose Swift over Rust because they said:

> Swift is strictly better in OO support and C++ interop

So I guess from their point of view that’s why not rust.

I don’t have a horse in the race.

I was genuinely interested in why they didn’t even consider D given they already ruled out rust for those particular reasons, for which it seems D would fulfill nicely.

> In the end it came down to Swift vs Rust, and Swift is strictly better in OO support and C++ interop

Why not D?

Re:15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram on Wednesday February 18, 2026 @09:44AM (#47061474)
>> apples.stream()

>> .filter (a -} ajsRed());

>> .forEach(giveApple); [sic]

> The red apple streams one is good. It shows how developers chase shiny new stuff with no respect for fundamentals.

The problem isn’t streams, it’s slop.

> more emphasis on in-person tests and exams

$$$

There’s a lot of interacting parts as to why many places have arrived where we are where cheap ghost writers (AI or not) can so easily negatively impact education. But it pretty much all comes down to costs.

Re:Skip Is Now Free and Open Source on Thursday January 22, 2026 @10:02AM (#46720092)
“Please don't do things to make titles stand out…

“If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out…

“If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it…

“Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.” (From that link.)

Hope that helps.

Re:iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan on Thursday January 01, 2026 @03:42PM (#46457829)
Oh definitely! I know you’re just using the phrase and don’t imply otherwise, but to clarify the word “imitation”, uBO lite is not a fake imitation but actually an official thing from uBO and Raymond Hill: see https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home
Re:iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan on Thursday January 01, 2026 @01:35PM (#46456687)
FYI. iOS Safari already supports uBlock Origin Lite. iOS Firefox can do the same anytime but it already has some tracking and content blocking built in too.
Re:C++ move semantics from scratch (2022) on Saturday November 08, 2025 @12:30PM (#45858378)
I retired from wanting to write C++ when Scott Meyers retired from writing more Effective Modern C++.
Yes, and it’s instructive to see how automation has reduced head count in oil and gas majors. The reduction comes when there’s a shock financially or economically and layoffs are needed for survival. Until then, head count will be stable.

Trucks in the oil sands can already operate autonomously in controlled mining sites, but wide adoption is happening slowly, waiting for driver turnover and equipment replacement cycles.

Re:Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507 on Wednesday August 06, 2025 @03:34PM (#44816611)
Re:Read your code on Monday August 04, 2025 @08:10PM (#44792822)
Why? I doubt they’d confuse Gen AI Assistance with an ID management system?
Re:Read your code on Monday August 04, 2025 @12:38PM (#44788210)
I propose: Software Development/Engineering with “Gen AI Assistance” (yes, “Gaia” [1]. Also spelled “Gaea” in engineering communities).

Just like no one speaks of vibe-aeronautics-engineering when they’re “just” using CAD.

More specifically, GAIA in SDE produces code systematically with human in the loop to systematically ensure correctness. e.g. Like the systematic way tptacek has been describing recently [2].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44163063

Briefly summarized here I guess: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44296550

No android but “can” be built?

> protocol is designed to be platform-agnostic. An Android client can be built

https://github.com/jackjackbits/bitchat?tab=readme-ov-file#a...

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