Emacs Turns 50
Emacs debuted at MIT in 1976, bringing programmers a full-screen text editor that remains widely used today. Its roots in TECO and a culture of sharing helped shape the free software movement and GNU/Linux. (technologyreview.com)
A 15-second promotional video for the Petroly fuel-price app was built as software rather than assembled in a video editor. A JavaScript function generates an SVG for any point in time; rendering 375 frames at 25 frames per second and sending them to FFmpeg produces the finished video. The same renderer powers an interactive browser preview, where viewers can scrub through scenes, switch languages, and inspect individual frames. The animation shows a fuel-price chart reaching a target, a notification appearing, and station listings sorting by price.
Treating the video as code makes its behavior testable and easier to revise. Automated checks verify that the alert appears only after the target is reached, sorting finishes before the cheapest station is highlighted, the QR code is laid out correctly, and every frame avoids invalid values. Pixel checks also confirm the logo actually renders. The video can retain transparent rounded corners in a ProRes 4444 editing master, and one shared animation generates 12 localized versions with appropriate wording, currencies, formatting, and QR destinations. The creator argues that tests protect a video’s mechanics while visual review protects its feel. Using JavaScript, SVG, sharp, and FFmpeg, he can review changes as code diffs, render exact frames, and update every language version without specialized editing software or separate timelines.
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Emacs debuted at MIT in 1976, bringing programmers a full-screen text editor that remains widely used today. Its roots in TECO and a culture of sharing helped shape the free software movement and GNU/Linux. (technologyreview.com)
C++ lookup tables can be optimized for extremely high query throughput, with the title claiming a billion queries per second. The topic is techniques for building fast lookup tables. (lemire.me)
Moxnox 1.0 is an NT-like, POSIX-compatible operating system that runs atop Btrfs. Its source code is available on GitHub. (github.com)
china-policy-data provides a free daily JSON feed of Shanghai government grant and subsidy notices. The feed is designed for researchers and AI agents. (github.com)
Linux 7.4 adds opt-in DMA-BUF read and write support through io_uring, enabling hardware memory buffers to move through the I/O path without CPU copies. The initial implementation supports NVMe block devices, with buffers up to 4 GB. (phoronix.com)
After a year running Dioxus fullstack apps, one Rust codebase and shared types across server and client make development and refactoring simpler. The major drawback is a 90-minute release build on GitHub Actions, and an all-Rust stack still has some exceptions. (oxidt.com)
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