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Show HN: Easy alternative to giflib – header-only decoder in C

GIF Decoder Library TurboStitchGIF is a lightweight, header-only C library for decoding GIF images with a focus on efficiency and minimal resource usage. Designed for embedded systems and performance-critical applications, it provides a simple API for decoding both static and animated GIFs while maintaining a tiny footprint. ✨ Key Features Single-header implementation - Just include gif.h in your project - Just include in your project Zero dynamic allocations - Works with user-provided memor

Easy dynamic dispatch using GLIBC Hardware Capabilities

TL;DR With GLIBC 2.33+, you can build a shared library multiple times targeting various optimization levels, and the dynamic linker/loader will pick the highest version supported by the current CPU. For example, with the layout below, on a Ryzen 9 5900X, x86-64-v3/libfoo0.so would be loaded: In the meantime, ggml has extended its support for its own dynamic dispatch to arm64 and ppc64el , the lack of which originally motivated this work. The Debian package will soon switch to this. However, an

Lua beats MicroPython for serious embedded devs

Why Lua Beats MicroPython for Serious Embedded Devs In professional embedded projects, ranging from industrial automation to medical devices and commercial IoT products, developers increasingly favor high-level, lightweight, and easy-to-use environments. While MicroPython has earned praise for rapid prototyping and field deployments on microcontrollers, its active ecosystem is largely centered around hobbyist boards. It is important to note that Python’s greatest strength, its vast library eco

Automatically Packaging a Haskell Library as a Swift Binary XCFramework

Announcing xcframework or: the happy path for wiring a Haskell dependency to your Swift app I’ve written about Haskell x Swift interoperability before. Calling Haskell from Swift is about marshalling and the foreign function interface. But Creating a macOS app with Haskell and Swift tells the much messier tale of hijacking XCode to vodoo together the Haskell library, its headers, and two handfuls of other magic ingredients into one buildable SwiftUI application. Stop! Don’t click on the last l

A Virginia public library is fighting off a takeover by private equity

Photo from The Samuels Public Library After being targeted by anti-LGBTQ book banners and having their funding pulled, a local library in Virginia successfully stopped a threatened takeover by a private equity group. The local community rallied around The Samuels Public Library in Front Royal, Virginia, to push back against attacks and the private equity owned Library Systems & Services withdrew their bid to run operations. But with their funding cut for the fiscal year that began this July, th

Browser extensions turn nearly 1 million browsers into website-scraping bots

Extensions installed on almost 1 million devices have been overriding key security protections to turn browsers into engines that scrape websites on behalf of a paid service, a researcher said. The 245 extensions, available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, have racked up nearly 909 million downloads, John Tuckner of SecurityAnnex reported. The extensions serve a wide range of purposes, including managing bookmarks and clipboards, boosting speaker volumes, and generating random numbers. The common

Phrase origin: Why do we "call" functions?

On StackExchange, someone asks why programmers talk about “calling” a function. Several possible allusions spring to mind: Calling a function is like calling on a friend — we go, we stay a while, we come back. Calling a function is like calling for a servant — a summoning to perform a task. Calling a function is like making a phone call — we ask a question and get an answer from outside ourselves. The true answer seems to be the middle one — “calling” as in “calling up, summoning” — but indi

Free as Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge (1992)

``Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As Knowledge'' by Bruce Sterling Speech to the Library Information Technology Association June 1992, San Francisco CA Hi everybody. Well, this is the Library Information Technology Association, so I guess I ought to be talking about libraries, or information, or technology, or at least association. I'm gonna give it a shot, but I want to try this from an unusual perspective. I want to start by talking about money. You wouldn't guess it sometimes to hear so

``Free as Air, Free as Water, Free as Knowledge'' (1992)

``Free as Air, Free As Water, Free As Knowledge'' by Bruce Sterling Speech to the Library Information Technology Association June 1992, San Francisco CA Hi everybody. Well, this is the Library Information Technology Association, so I guess I ought to be talking about libraries, or information, or technology, or at least association. I'm gonna give it a shot, but I want to try this from an unusual perspective. I want to start by talking about money. You wouldn't guess it sometimes to hear so

Compression Dictionary Transport

Algorithms like Brotli compression and Zstandard compression achieve even greater efficiency by allowing the use of dictionaries of commonly encountered strings, so you don't need any copies of them in the compressed resource. These algorithms ship with a predefined default dictionary that is used when compressing HTTP responses. Compression Dictionary Transport builds on this by enabling you to provide your own dictionary which is especially applicable to a particular set of resources. The com

Publishing Pepys

Two hundred years ago this month, Samuel Pepys’s diary was published to great acclaim. Readers of the first edition in 1825 relished Pepys’s ‘honest’ observations and ‘private anecdotes’. While writing his journal in the 1660s, Pepys had worked hard to keep it secret. He knew he was placing his livelihood at risk by recording seditious criticisms of his superiors, along with details of his own bribe-taking and sexually explicit accounts of his ‘amours’. There was much that, when writing, he did

Resurrecting flip phone typing as a Linux driver

LibT9 A C library for creating T9 typing systems. How to run As a Linux Driver See driver/ As a Cli Utility Needs: ncurses & cmake mkdir build cd build cmake .. make -j$(nproc) cli/main As a Website Go to foxmoss.github.io/libt9/ Dependencies None! The library requires nothing but a basic implementation of the C standard library. The CLI requires ncurses solely, but this is by no means needed to just compile the library. Todo Feel free to contribute! Punctuation Punctuation IBus D

Microsoft adds Steam games to its Xbox PC app on Windows

is a senior editor and author of Notepad , who has been covering all things Microsoft, PC, and tech for over 20 years. Microsoft is starting to test its new aggregated gaming library in its Xbox PC app on Windows. Xbox Insiders will now be able to see their Steam and Battle.net games all within the Xbox app this week — making it a single launcher for most installed PC games. This new consolidated library will roll out to the Xbox app later this year, as well as new devices like the ROG Xbox Al

Cosmoe: BeOS Class Library on Top of Wayland

The current iteration of Cosmoe is a shared library which implements the BeOS class library on top of Wayland. There are no supporting programs, e.g. app_server or registrar, needed to use it. All the necessary functionality is rolled into the library. Apps linked with the library run natively on Linux via Wayland. The previous iteration of Cosmoe (now known as "Cosmoe Classic") is a full port of the Haiku OS to the Linux kernel. It runs inside an SDL window on Linux. It would be possible to de

Libraries are under-used. LLMs make this problem worse

Libraries are under-used. LLMs make this problem worse. Libraries are under-used. Why? Briefly: Writing code is more fun than reading documentation. Dunning-Kruger effect leads us to understimate the complexity of the problem solved by the library we're considering. Perverse incentives: libraries compete with big internal engineering projects that look good in a promo packet. LLMs make this problem worse. Why? Less briefly: Vibe coding is more fun than reading documentation. Shit, vibe-codin

I took my e-book library back from Amazon with this self-hosted app

Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority If you’ve ever bought an e-book from Amazon, you already know you don’t really own it. Sure, it’s in your Kindle library and you can read it in the app. But try moving it to another device or archiving it somewhere else, and you’ll quickly run into walls. In fact, Amazon has been doubling down on its attempts to curtail access to the books you’ve bought from the Kindle store. Between DRM, proprietary file formats, and a complete lack of export tools, you are s

Playnite allows you to unify game libraries from multiple platforms and emulators

Playnite is an open-source video game library manager and launcher with support for third-party libraries like Steam, Epic, GOG, EA App, Battle.net and others. Playnite includes game emulation support, providing one unified interface for your games. Can Playnite import and sync with Steam, Epic, and other launchers? Yes, Playnite can automatically import games from Steam, Epic Games Store, GOG Galaxy, Origin, Battle.net, Xbox PC app, and more. It uses official or community plugins to sync your

Apple finally added my most-requested iPhone feature with iOS 26 (and you'll love it, too)

Maria Diaz/ZDNET Last year, Apple announced a redesigned Photos app, touting it as "the biggest-ever redesign." Over the past year, we've seen users complaining about the redesign and wanting to go back to iOS 17's Photos app. Apple seems to have listened to all the feedback and fixed its Photos app with the new iOS 26 update. Also: Everything announced at Apple's WWDC 2025 keynote: Liquid Glass, MacOS Tahoe, and more "Many of you missed using tabs in the Photos app," said Craig Federighi, Ap