The Dev Dispatch

HTTP 418 · Oddities

The Calcumator 2000: Floating Point with Voltmeters

Developer lcamtuf built a retro-style calculator that uses voltmeter dials instead of modern digital displays. It looks like a relic from an earlier era, but a microcontroller handles the logic behind it.

Hackaday Retrocomputing · Jul 13, 2026 curated by Charlie

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Integrating AI Agents into .NET Development Workflows

This guide explores how generative AI agents can accelerate .NET development by automating boilerplate, testing, and documentation. It emphasizes a human-in-the-loop approach, treating AI as a productivity booster rather…

freeCodeCamp (AI) · Jul 13, 2026 curated by Georg

HTTP 418 · Oddities

The Stob Cruft Index: Measuring Software Decay

Drawing a humorous parallel to the Beaufort wind scale, Verity Stob defines 'cruft' as the inevitable corruption and accumulation of useless data and dead code over time. The Stob Cruft Index categorizes PC degradation f…

Lobsters /t/historical · Jul 13, 2026 curated by Giselle

HTTP 418 · Oddities

The Easy No

A tech support engineer investigates a printer issue in HR, only to discover an IP address conflict with a decommissioned server. The 'zombie' server, which once hosted an anonymous employee complaint system, may have be…

The Daily WTF · Jul 13, 2026 curated by Charlie

HTTP 418 · Oddities

Solar Panels Survive a Year Under Swiss Trains

Sun-Ways' pilot project in Switzerland proves that installing photovoltaics between railway tracks is technically viable, with 11,000 trains passing over the panels without incident. The CEO notes that the real bottlenec…

The Register (Offbeat) · Jul 13, 2026 curated by Charlie

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Here are all my chairs

A humorous take on poor software architecture through the lens of furniture organization. The post examines common design mistakes and over-engineering pitfalls that developers encounter when structuring their codebase, …

r/programming (Top) · Jul 13, 2026 curated by Heiko

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Build Your Own Healthcare AI Assistant with MedGemma, Ollama, and Open WebUI

This tutorial shows how to set up a fully local healthcare AI assistant using MedGemma, Ollama and Open WebUI. It focuses on keeping sensitive patient data on-premises to satisfy privacy regulations and avoid cloud servi…

freeCodeCamp (AI) · Jul 9, 2026 curated by Georg

AI · Reads

Native-speed vLLM transformers modeling backend

The Hugging Face blog post presents a native-speed modeling backend for vLLM combined with transformers. Readers working on LLM inference will find concrete details about performance gains and integration paths. The piec…

Lobsters /t/ai · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Georg

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Announcing TypeScript 7.0

This Reddit submission points to the official announcement for TypeScript version 7.0. Professional developers using TypeScript in web projects should read it to learn about the latest additions, potential breaking chang…

r/programming (Top) · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Georg

HTTP 418 · Oddities

Tiny Emulators: A Museum of 8-Bit Logic

FlohOfWoe has created a collection of lightweight, browser-based emulators for a vast array of 8-bit systems, including the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Robotron. The project transforms complex CPU architectures into a…

Hacker News (Kurioses, Frontpage) · Jul 12, 2026 curated by Heiko

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Postgres Is Enough for More Than We Admit

This short piece argues that many teams add extra databases, queues, caches, and services before they actually need them. It is worth reading for its practical framing of when Postgres can stay the center of a stack, and…

r/programming (Top) · Jul 9, 2026 curated by Charlie

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How to Achieve Pruning When Querying by Non-Partitioned Columns in PostgreSQL

The post examines techniques for enabling partition pruning in PostgreSQL when queries filter on columns outside the partitioning key. It covers practical approaches to preserve performance gains from table partitioning …

r/programming (Top) · Jul 9, 2026 curated by Georg

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Self-hosting Umami analytics on Cloudflare, Fly, and Supabase

Guide to deploying Umami, a privacy-focused analytics platform, across serverless and edge infrastructure. Covers practical setup on Cloudflare Workers, Fly.io, and Supabase, appealing to developers seeking vendor-indepe…

r/programming (Top) · Jul 11, 2026 curated by Heiko

HTTP 418 · Oddities

Ghostel.el: Terminal emulator powered by libghostty

An Emacs package wraps libghostty to embed a terminal inside the editor. For those who thought alt-tabbing between buffers wasn't enough friction, now you can run shells without leaving the monolithic text machine.

Hacker News (Kurioses, Frontpage) · Jul 12, 2026 curated by Heiko

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Passwordless Sign-In with Fortify Two-Factor Support in Laravel

This piece looks at a Laravel package that adds passwordless authentication through magic links and one-time codes, with a handoff to Fortify for two-factor flows. It is worth reading if you work on login UX or security,…

Laravel News · Jul 10, 2026 curated by Charlie

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HTTP Query Method Support in Laravel 13.19

Laravel 13.19.0 adds support for the HTTP QUERY verb with a new Http::query() client method and query/queryJson testing helpers. The release also includes a reduceInto collection method, a counted string helper, and bulk…

Laravel News · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Charlie

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CLAUDE.md is RAM, not disk

Freek Van der Herten argues that CLAUDE.md serves best as temporary working memory for AI coding sessions rather than growing into permanent project documentation. The post shares concise practices to keep the file focus…

freek.dev · Jul 9, 2026 curated by Georg

HTTP 418 · Oddities

The early History of the Singular Value Decomposition (1993) [pdf]

A 1993 paper traces the singular value decomposition through earlier centuries of mathematical work. The account follows contributions from the 1800s that predate modern matrix computations. Readers seeking current appli…

Hacker News (Kurioses, Frontpage) · Jul 11, 2026 curated by Georg

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Intercept: Middleware Guardrails for Laravel AI Agents

Developers integrating AI into Laravel applications should read this to learn about Intercept, a package offering middleware that protects against prompt injection and PII exposure in the Laravel AI SDK. It provides an e…

Laravel News · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Georg

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AI Review for Laravel Upgrades

Shift now integrates AI-powered code review into its Laravel upgrade workflow. The feature combines Shift's detailed migration comments with AI context for a second-pass analysis, improving upgrade accuracy and reducing …

Laravel News · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Heiko

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Official jscrambler npm Package Compromised at 8.14.0

The official jscrambler npm package was compromised at version 8.14.0, introducing malicious code into the dependency chain. Developers using this version should update immediately and audit their projects for potential …

r/programming (Top) · Jul 11, 2026 curated by Heiko

HTTP 418 · Oddities

MicroPython is this Summer's Hottest Title for the SNES, Thanks to Claude Fable

A developer enlisted Anthropic's Claude Fable LLM to port MicroPython to the SNES—an absurdly underpowered target. The AI-generated code passes 430/468 core tests, enabling Python games at 0.8 FPS. A tongue-in-cheek vict…

Hackaday Retrocomputing · Jul 11, 2026 curated by Heiko

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How to Build an MCP Server with FastMCP for Your Local AI Agent

This tutorial is worth reading for developers working with local AI agents. It explains how to create an MCP server using FastMCP, connect the agent to its tools, and add support for remote MCP servers to extend function…

freeCodeCamp (AI) · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Georg

HTTP 418 · Oddities

Error'd: Einfach so

A collection of real-world software mishaps: FAQ acronym pronunciation debates, NaN price tags, time zone pizza delivery paradoxes, broken discount stacking, and a particularly unhelpful error message where variable name…

The Daily WTF · Jul 10, 2026 curated by Heiko

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AI Paper Review: Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Models

This review examines how self-consistency enhances chain-of-thought prompting for LLM reasoning tasks. Rather than relying on a single reasoning path, the technique samples multiple diverse paths and aggregates results, …

freeCodeCamp (AI) · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Heiko

HTTP 418 · Oddities

C64 Finally Gets the SRAM Corporate Wouldn't Pay For

Forty years later, a hobbyist retrofit adds SRAM to the Commodore 64—a cost-cutting measure Tramiel refused in 1981 when RAM was prohibitively expensive. Hardware archaeology meets modern abundance.

Hackaday Retrocomputing · Jul 9, 2026 curated by Heiko

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A tour of my dotfiles

A walkthrough of a developer's dotfile repository—shell aliases, functions, and CLI tools that enable rapid machine setup. Covers modern replacements for Unix utilities (eza, bat, ripgrep, fd, zoxide, delta) with transpa…

freek.dev · Jul 10, 2026 curated by Heiko

HTTP 418 · Oddities

It's Now Imperative That You Copy That Floppy

A retrospective on the 1990s anti-piracy campaign 'Don't Copy That Floppy,' which deployed hip-hop to warn youth against software piracy. The piece examines how this earnest effort to reach computer-savvy audiences throu…

Hackaday Retrocomputing · Jul 8, 2026 curated by Heiko

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Why developers are ditching GitHub for Codeberg and self-hosting alternatives

The Reddit thread explores reasons developers are moving from GitHub to Codeberg and self-hosted options. It highlights concerns around platform policies, pricing changes, data control, and the appeal of community-owned …

r/programming (Top) · Jul 9, 2026 curated by Georg

HTTP 418 · Oddities

Flushed Out

A Daily WTF tale about a project manager with an MBA, a stack of certifications, and very little practical experience. Put in charge of a multidisciplinary hardware-and-software project, she offers management-sounding bu…

The Daily WTF · Jul 9, 2026 curated by Charlie