news
Programming Leftovers
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Victor Kropp ☛ Git 3.0 to use SHA-256 hashes
The upcoming Git 3.0 is going to switch the default for commit hashes from SHA-1 to SHA-256, the newer more secure algorithm. It is being done to improve the security, however there is no real attack vector to abuse the weakness of the SHA-1 algorithm. And there are other ways to improve the security, for example, by introducing additional content hashes, not used for addressing.
The planned switch would create a dilemma for the whole community. The repository can have only one addressing, either with SHA-1 or SHA-256.
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Scott Chacon ☛ Git 3.0's upcoming SHA-256 default will be a costly mistake | Butler's Log
For existing projects that do decide to convert from SHA-1 to SHA-256, they will need to convert every object in the project to the new format, which will break all existing signatures. Also everyone working on or using that project will need to switch over at the same time to avoid split head issues. Or, again, have the mirror setup and cut over write access from one to the other. Which still does not solve the object replacement problem for other mirrors that do not have the 256 version.
If they do convert, then all existing URLs or links in Slack or emails or anything that ever had a SHA-1 hash in it will no longer work and will need to be redirected (assuming that's possible - you haven't switched hosts or something to a place that doesn't have a mapping).
All internal or other tooling globally that expects 40 characters for the hash will break or need to be updated to guess or detect the hash format.
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Steinar H Gunderson ☛ Steinar H. Gunderson: Decompilation patterns part 2: do-while
Continuing our journey on decompilation patterns, here's another common one [...]:
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Python
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Miguel Grinberg ☛ How fast is Python 3.15?
It's October once again, and that means it is time to take the new release of Python for a spin (technically, it is the 3.15.0rc3 release that I'm using, the official 3.15 release is still a few days out). As I did with my Python 3.14 performance article of a year ago, today I'm sharing a new run of my informal Python benchmark, comparing Python 3.15 against previous interpreters all the way back to 3.10.
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Raku Weekly News ☛ 2026.40 Pythonesque – Raku Weekly News
Andrew Shitov just keeps on coming with amazing developments. This week: Raku++ as a Python module, allowing Python programs to use the unique capabilities of the Raku Programming Language (in that context: think Raku grammars!) inside a Python program.
Of course Andrew also blogged about this, and continued the series of blog posts about Junctions.
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Rust
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LWN ☛ RustConf recordings
The Rust Foundation has posted the recordings from RustConf 2026 in Montreal, Canada. Photos of the event are also available. LWN covered four talks from RustConf this year.
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