The daily ledger

Notable V8 changes from Node.js 26 to 27 (Alpha)

Mining 14,351 Chess Puzzles with Stockfish 18 (and the Illegal-FEN Trap in chess.js)

When we started building Brass Pawn (source on GitHub, AGPLv3), we needed a large offline tactics, positional judgement, and endgame dataset that ran completely on-device—both in the browser and natively on iPhone,…

I Decoded 208 Round, Triangle and Hexagon QR Codes. Here's What Actually Breaks Them

Every article about round QR codes answers "do they scan?" the same way: yes, as long as you keep good contrast and test it. That's true, and it doesn't help you much. I maintain qr-code-shapes, a small dependency-free…

Frontend Interview Question: Your Search Works Until You Type Faster

One search box, two perfectly successful requests, and the small ownership rule that keeps your interface honest. You type a few letters, the suggestions appear, and your little search component looks ready to show…

Three ways a calendar tells you what changed

Sooner or later, every app that shows a user's calendar wants its own copy of it. You want to search events in your database, join them with your own data, and show a week without waiting on three slow APIs. So you copy…

Finding a free slot across Google, Outlook and iCloud

Here's a feature request that sounds like an afternoon's work: show the times when Ana (on Google Calendar) and Raj (on Outlook) are both free for 30 minutes next week, during Berlin working hours. You fetch two lists…

One standup, three calendar APIs

A daily standup is the most boring event on any calendar. It's also where calendar APIs disagree the most. Here's the event I'll use for the rest of this post: a standup at 9:30 in Berlin, every weekday, ten times,…

Track video review gaps by version with JavaScript

A 30-second product demo can be ready to share except for two frames where a customer email appears as a menu opens. A later crop or trim can create another version that needs its own review. A useful review record…

Your Discord bot's timestamp says the year 58970 (I tested 16 edge cases)

Discord turns <t:1798765200:F> into a date shown in each reader's own time zone. The format is documented, but what Discord does with bad input isn't. Bots generate these strings, and bots get the input wrong, so on 4…

@abufatimaoman,barka

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXQKmeSjKMT/?rpxt=c2tnem13aGVqbXdn

Tracking Google Flights fares: New York to London was $197 on December 8 and $512 on December 20

Flight prices change every day, and checking them by hand gets old quickly. So I built a Google Flights scraper and fare tracker on Apify. You type routes the way you'd say them, pick dates, and get every flight back as…

What Should Happen After a Contact Form Fails?

A visitor spends five minutes explaining their project, clicks Submit, and sees: “Something went wrong.” Their message disappears. They cannot tell whether the enquiry was received. Clicking again might help—or create a…

Real-time AI dubbing in the browser: five timing bugs and how we measured them

I work on YTVT (Your Voice Translated), a Chrome and Edge extension that translates the speech in a video while it plays. You press Start, and a few seconds later you hear an AI voice in your language and see the…

How to Use shadcn/ui in React Native Applications [Full Handbook]

If you've built a couple of React Native apps, the following probably feels familiar. You start with a colors.ts file and a simple Button component. Everything looks fine at first. Then the design cha

Get Expert Answers to Your StackOverflow Questions

Stack Overflow is one of the most popular online platforms where developers can ask technical questions, share knowledge, and find solutions to programming challenges. Whether you are a beginner learning web development…

Add a mortgage/loan calculator to your app via API

When building an app, one of the most common pain points developers face is incorporating financial calculators, such as a mortgage calculator or loan calculator. These tools can be complex and time-consuming to…

After the Binance hack: find poisoned entries in a wallet history before anyone copies from them

On 29 October Binance reported a security incident and paused deposits and withdrawals. The company says about $6.3 billion was taken from its hot wallets, that it will cover all losses, and that user funds are safe (Al…

When can a PNG become a JPEG? Check opacity with sharp stats

A PNG can become a JPEG when every pixel is fully opaque. In Node, (await sharp(file).stats()).isOpaque answers that in one call. The flag is true when the image has no alpha channel, or when the alpha channel is 255…

Your Error Tracker Is Full of removeChild Errors From Users Who Translated the Page

There is a crash that shows up in every long-lived single-page app's error tracker, always with the same shape: NotFoundError: Failed to execute 'removeChild' on 'Node': The node to be removed is not a child of this…

Your Browser, Your AI: Air-Gapping Sensitive Audio Transcriptions with WebGPU

The debate is raging, and frankly, it's about time. Every week, another story emerges about sensitive data – be it confidential client meetings, delicate medical voice notes, or even unreleased podcast episodes – being…