A brief history of the numeric keypad
The title is a lie. This isn’t brief at all. Picture the keypad of a telephone and calculator side by side. Can you see the subtle difference between the two without resorting to your smartphone? Don’t worry if you can’t recall the design. Most o...
A brief history of the BSD Fast FileSystem
We’re looking at an article from 2007 here, but I still think it’s valuable and interesting, especially from a historical perspective. I first started working on the UNIX file system with Bill Joy in the late 1970s. I wrote the Fast File System, no...
Kagi’s Orion Browser Linux Port Uses GTK4/libadwaita
I reported a few months back Kagi, the company behind the paid, private and privacy-focused search engine of the same time, is porting its Orion web browser to Linux – now we have our first early look at how its Linux GUI is shaping up. A recent deve...
MySQL at 30: Still important but no longer king
This month MySQL turns 30. Once the bedrock of web development, MySQL remains immensely popular. But as MySQL enters its fourth decade, it ironically has sown the seeds of its own decline, especially relative to Postgres. Oracle, the steward over MySQ...
How to build (real) cloud-native applications
Cloud-native applications are increasingly the default way to deploy in both public clouds and private clouds. But what exactly is a cloud-native application and how do you build one? It’s important to start with first principles and define what clo...
What software developers need to know about cybersecurity
In 2024, cyber criminals didn’t just knock on the front door—they walked right in. High-profile breaches hit widely used apps from tech giants and consumer platforms alike, including Snowflake, Ticketmaster, AT&T, 23andMe, Trello, and Life360. Mea...
Render a Guitar Pro Score in Real Time
We will use Tuxguitar to render the audio of a Guitar Pro score [5]. Guitar Pro scores are files with a complete band score transcribed (guitars, bass, drums, synths and more). Introduction Tuxguitar is a quite powerful application written in a mixture...
Bits from the DPL
Dear Debian community, This is bits from the DPL for April. End of 10 I am sure I was speaking in the interest of the whole project when joining the "End of 10" campaign. Here is what I wrote to the initiators: Hi Joseph and all drivers of the "End of ...
KDE Plasma 6.3.5 Update Available to Kubuntu Users
If you’re running Kubuntu 25.04 and want the latest fixes the KDE Plasma 6.3.5 release, you can use the Kubuntu backports PPA to get ’em. KDE Plasma 6.3.5 popped out a few weeks back, serving as the fifth and (likely) final bug-fix release prior to...
Microsoft unveils the new Start menu for Windows 11 users
I think one of the more controversial parts of Windows 11 – aside from its system requirements, privacy issues, crapware, and “AI” nonsense – is its Start menu. I’ve heard so many complaints about how it’s organised, its performance, the la...
Visual Studio Code beefs up AI coding features
Visual Studio Code 1.100, the latest release of Microsoft’s code editor, has arrived with several upgrades to its AI chat and AI code editing capabilities. Highlighting the list are support for Markdown-based instructions and prompt files, faster co...
A formal analysis of Apple’s iMessage PQ3 protocol
We present the formal verification of Apple’s iMessage PQ3, a highly performant, device-to-device messaging protocol offering strong security guarantees even against an adversary with quantum computing capabilities. PQ3 leverages Apple’s identity s...
Even John Siracusa thinks Tim Cook should step down
John Siracusa, one third of the excellent ATP podcast, developer of several niche Mac utilities, and author of some of the best operating system reviews of all time, has called for Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to step down. Now, countless people call for T...
“AI” automated PR reviews mostly useless junk
The team that makes Cockpit, the popular server dashboard software, decided to see if they could improve their PR review processes by adding “AI” into the mix. They decided to test both sourcey.ai and GitHub Copilot PR reviews, and their conclusion...
