Programming on dan.heskett

Python's experimental JIT to be removed

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 19:05:00 -0400

“After creating PEP 836 (“JIT Go Brrr: The Path to a Supported JIT Compiler for CPython”) to try to meet the council’s request, and after months of discussion, the JIT maintainers have withdrawn the PEP.”

Denmark's bid to ditch Microsoft Office for open-source alternative Collabora collapses in under six months

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:13:00 -0400

“Denmark isn’t alone in moving away from U.S. software, with France and the Netherlands both taking steps to replace Microsoft Windows.”

CSS-Tricks has a new owner!

Tue, 27 Oct 2026 10:08:00 -0400

“CSS-Tricks is an independent site once again!”

New LF Research Survey Shows Generative AI Cuts Open Source Coding Time in Half, but 25% of Incoming Pull Requests are Considered AI Slop

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:35:00 -0400

“For high-complexity tasks, however, 21% of respondents report taking more time when using GenAI.”

Tesco replacing VMware with Proxmox in its stores and on the edge

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:30:00 -0400

“Tesco says that during negotiations, VMware made an offer that represented a 175 percent price increase.”

The result of the C++26 DIS ballot

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:25:00 -0400

“C++26 failed its DIS ballot.”

Work to protect DNS from quantum decryption attacks is speeding up

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:15:00 -0400

“One way to quantum-proof DNSSEC is to use larger keys that even a quantum computer will struggle to crack.”

TIL: POSIX wordexp(3) is dangerous

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 05:10:00 -0400

“Bottom line: don’t use wordexp(3) on untrusted inputs, even with WRDE_NOCMD.”

Introducing Scope: Open-source evaluation for AI coding agents

Mon, 26 Oct 2026 04:55:00 -0400

“AI coding agents are becoming users of your software.”

JPEG XL, Welcome to the Web!

Sun, 25 Oct 2026 17:55:00 -0400

“AVIF lossless is 30–122% larger and slower to decode.”

Software is slow because of bad design, not slow languages

Sat, 24 Oct 2026 09:10:00 -0400

“Software performance is usually dominated by I/O, not the speed of the language.”

The Vulnerability Apocalypse and Why We Should Fund Open Source

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 22:38:00 -0400

“In just the month of October, 13,000 new CVEs have been submitted.”

Docker is weird

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 16:09:00 -0400

“Unlike VMs, containers are just processes with special restrictions on them.”

Several Linux Kernel Vulnerabilities Accidentally Posted To Public Kernel Mailing List

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:38:00 -0400

“Seemingly as an accident, overnight several new Linux kernel vulnerability reports were posted to the public Linux kernel mailing list rather than the private security mailing list.”

A farewell to Arc

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:34:00 -0400

“Arc is sunsetting on December 22, 2026.”

Epic Rolls Out Vibe-Coded Launcher Update & It's Absolute Trash

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:32:00 -0400

“Epic wants to be the corporate goon the naysayers have said to watch out for.”

examining the macOS gcc binary

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 15:30:00 -0400

“the so-called gcc is just clang in disguise”

Today's PHP Security Release, and How We're Strengthening PHP Security

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:20:00 -0400

“Any attacker could now study the fix in binary form while every other PHP user was still waiting for the release.”

Lambda Web Functions: public by default, and already in your lambda:* grants

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:18:00 -0400

“A public, data reaching Web Function produces no finding in any of them.”

Local Mode

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:13:00 -0400

“This feature allows you to register multiple mappings in order to load local files through custom https:// URLs.”

Google Cloud's London zones takes a nap, multiple services disrupted

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:56:00 -0400

“We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services.”

Microsoft admits that Always On VPN problems were not fixed in the October Security Update

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:53:00 -0400

“The issue affects Windows 11 versions from 24H2 through 26H2.”

Cutting our inference bill by 68% by being obsessive about optimization

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:51:00 -0400

“Lower cost reviews didn’t automatically mean worse quality, but it didn’t automatically mean fine either.”

DeepSeek just open-sourced its inference engine

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:49:00 -0400

“DeepInfer is the high-performance inference framework that powers DeepSeek’s large-scale production services.”

OpenBSD 8.0

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:46:00 -0400

“Added MP support for up to 64 VCPUs per guest VM.”

Setting up SSH keys on macOS with Touch ID

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:44:00 -0400

“Let’s see how it can be set up on your consumer-grade Mac.”

There is no official XScreenSaver GitHub repository

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 07:42:00 -0400

“I publish releases as tar files on the official web site and only there.”

Wine ported to OpenBSD

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 21:39:00 -0400

“Biggest limitation is that WoW64 doesn’t work, so 32bit Windows software is still a no-op.”

So long, Spokes: GitHub rewrites storage to restore reliability, just in time for agentic hordes

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:20:00 -0400

“GitHub will need a miracle of that proportion just to keep up with customer demand.”

Let's Encrypt to Cut SSL Certificate Lifetimes to 64 Days in February 2027

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:05:00 -0400

“Let’s Encrypt will reduce TLS certificate validity from 90 to 64 days starting February 10, 2027”

Windows 11's easiest account bypass gets the Microsoft boot

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 07:00:00 -0400

“Microsoft has won this round of account workaround Whac-a-Mole, though another bypass may yet pop up.”

I paid people to try and follow my README

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:08:00 -0400

“I guarantee you that your README will become much better for it.”

Published Version Update in App Stores

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:44:00 -0400

“Some future components will be published under the commercial license and will exist only in that build.”

oh, apparently it's not possible to portably check for string-to-float conversion errors in standard c

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:37:00 -0400

“the return value alone isn’t enough to determine if an error occurred”

Bootstrap 6 Alpha

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 11:36:00 -0400

“To help people build more software, faster and easier.”

Tensorlake npm Package Compromised: A Worm With a Hostage Token That Wipes Your Machine If You Revoke It

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 03:23:00 -0400

“If you revoke the GitHub token it stole, a background job on your machine deletes your home directory.”

Conflict in the Red Sea is forcing cloud giants to find a new route for the internet

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 18:58:00 -0400

“Repairs took months because the repair ships needed assurances they would not be fired upon.”

Why Are Coding Agents So Dumb?

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 18:55:00 -0400

“Instead, coding agents just stayed bad.”

Programming Isn't Special

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 14:57:00 -0400

“Slop is slop, no matter the medium.”

Deno is joining Cloudflare

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:04:00 -0400

“Deno will remain open source, and we welcome others who want to continue its development.”

Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:03:00 -0400

“Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers.”

The people holding up the internet

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:02:00 -0400

“Billions of phones run on code looked after by a handful of people.”

Gleam doesn't compile to Erlang source anymore

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:45:00 -0400

“The location metadata available to the runtime is now accurate to original Gleam source code, rather than to the Erlang source code.”

We're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:25:00 -0400

“I expect that most businesses and individuals would prefer errors to a surprise $10,000+ bill.”

Friendship ended with Deno, now Node is my best friend

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:20:00 -0400

“Deno went from an innovative modern JavaScript runtime to a boring start-up with uncompelling products.”

Git 3.0's upcoming SHA-256 default will be a costly mistake

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:44:00 -0400

“Git 3.0 will make SHA-256 the new default content hashing algorithm and it will be an incomprehensibly expensive and ultimately valueless and avoidable global nightmare.”

Pi 1.0

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:30:00 -0400

“Today we are proudly shipping Pi 1.0: a hardened, minimal, extensible agent harness that you can make your own. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world use Pi every week.”

IANA's email about why example.com changed

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 07:33:00 -0400

“There is no requirement there is a HTTP service present on the host in order to fulfill its purpose, we just operate it as a courtesy.”

Azure maintenance mess disrupts hybrid clouds, VPNs, cloudy VMware services

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 07:30:00 -0400

“Microsoft has advised users of its ExpressRoute Gateway, VPN Gateway, and Azure VMware service that they may experience degraded or interrupted network connectivity, and struggle to perform some network management operations.”

StreetComplete on iOS is now in public beta

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 07:24:00 -0400

“We very roughly estimated some time ago that developing a full port to iOS would take one man-year of work.”