A vulnerability was found stemming from musl libc's crypt function returning the sentinel string "*" when a password is too long to hash, which collides with the Unix convention that "*" denotes a locked account. Because sshd hashes login attempts for locked accounts to prevent timing attacks, this collision allows an unauthenticated user to obtain a shell—potentially as root—on musl-based systems lacking PAM, such as the official Alpine AWS image.
sunshowers.io
· 2026-11-06
A developer has published a multi-part series explaining how to write bare-metal applications for UEFI-based PCs using a Linux workstation. The series, aimed at experienced Linux developers with no prior UEFI knowledge, walks through compiling and linking code, creating bootable disk images, and handling files via the Simple File Protocol. The author notes the five parts are designed to be read sequentially, as each builds on the previous one.
kevinboone.me
· 2026-11-06
A new book introduces the ATS programming language, walking readers through functional programming basics, static and dependent types, recursively defined datatypes, polymorphism, linear types, theorem-proving, and template-based programming. The author notes the material is dense and best suited to readers who already have substantial programming experience, despite not formally requiring it.
ats-lang.sourceforge.net
· 2026-11-03
A developer reports replicating findings from a paper titled 'Sparks of Weight-Space Programming,' which described GPT-6 Astra analyzing and editing raw neural network weights directly from text. The blogger says a locally run Qwen 3.8 27B model performed similar weight interpretation tasks on a laptop, following an example from the paper.
simonwillison.net
· 2026-11-03
A new BASIC interpreter called Tiny Basic for Arduino has been released, designed to run on mid-range Arduino boards and microcontrollers. It lets users write, edit, and execute BASIC code directly on the hardware without an external compiler step.
dilshan.github.io
· 2026-11-03
A research team reports that its frontier model, called Astra, can directly read and edit neural network weights without any training loop or gradient updates. By identifying a reasoning-loop flaw in Qwen3.5-0.8B's weights, Astra edited roughly 0.016% of them and raised the model's MATH-500 score from 7.9% to 48.1%, with IFEval scores tripling. Astra also reportedly wrote small game-playing networks from scratch that beat networks trained with PPO over 100 million steps, and could identify a network's training task just by inspecting its weights.
rikiyat.github.io
· 2026-11-02
A developer has published Copper, a programming language positioned as an alternative to C. It adds features such as type inheritance, generics, multiple return values, out-of-order definitions, deferred statements, option types, and a Ruby-inspired syntax, while emphasizing minimalism and fast compilation. The project is released under the BSD license.
tibleiz.net
· 2026-10-30
Developer David Priver published a post explaining common mistakes programmers make when writing backward loops over unsigned size_t counters in C, including tautological comparisons and signed-integer workarounds that introduce portability or truncation issues. He presents an alternative idiom, 'for (size_t i = count; i--; )', which uses the postdecrement operator to keep the index in bounds and relies on well-defined unsigned wraparound behavior in C to terminate the loop safely.
davidpriver.com
· 2026-10-26
The Pharo community has shipped Pharo 14, the latest version of the open-source, object-oriented programming language and live-coding environment. The release introduces new development tools, including Mission Control and Pulse (replacing Spotter), a reworked Method Browser, a rewritten Settings Browser, and consolidation of Epicea and ProfStef into a unified NewTools package.
pharo.org
· 2026-10-26
Systemd's Git repository now allows individual systemd programs, rather than core library code, to be written in Rust as an alternative to C. The first beneficiary is a planned systemd-keyring-setup utility, which handles provisioning keyrings and enrolling X.509 certificates into dm-verity, fs-verity, and BPF keyrings during boot, though that component itself hasn't merged yet.
linux.slashdot.org
· 2026-10-26
A programmer has published a personal essay recalling his childhood introduction to computing, describing a neighborhood where owning a computer was risky and kids secretly traded pirated games on floppy disks. The piece opens with a quote from 1990s demoscene figure Denthor of Asphyxia about the allure of writing demos, framing the author's own path into programming.
alfie.wtf
· 2026-10-25
A writer named Eric examines where the 'else' keyword in programming languages came from, noting that 'else' is not used as a conjunction in ordinary English speech. He traces conditional logic back to 1946 work on the Eniac computer by Haskell Curry and Willa Wyatt, who called the concept 'discrimination' rather than 'else', and follows how conditional jump instructions evolved as computers moved from plugboard wiring to stored-program memory.
github.com
· 2026-10-25
GoKawiil