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When Your Hash Becomes a String: Hunting Ruby's Million-to-One Memory Bug

https://mensfeld.pl/2025/11/ruby-ffi-gc-bug-hash-becomes-string/
53•phmx•5d ago

Comments

alexnewman•3h ago
I don’t get it. Also it reads llmish
mwkaufma•3h ago
A little strange to write up a bug hunt that was resolved by the ffi upstream already, and not by the hunt itself. OP didn't fix the bug, though identifying that the upgrade was relevant is of some interest. Writing could have been clearer.
mbac32768•2h ago
The bug that was fixed in upstream manifested differently than what he was experiencing so the journey was to validate it for his case.

OTOH I'm a bit surprised he didn't pull back earlier and suggest to his user to update to the latest version though and let him know.

eichin•47m ago
15 or so years ago I had a similar journey - a single python interpreter "impossible" segfault in production that turned out to be a bug in glibc realloc, that had already been fixed in an update, we just didn't figure out to even look for one until we'd narrowed it down that far. (We were shipping custom Debian installs on DVD, a fair number of our customer installs weren't internet accessible so casual upgrades were both impossible and unwanted, but it was also a process mistake on my part to not notice the existence of the upgrade sooner.)

Never wrote it up externally because it was already solved and "Debian updates to existing releases are so rare that you really want to pay attention to all of them" (1) was already obvious (2) was only relevant to a really small set of people (3) this somewhat tortured example wasn't going to reach that small set anyway. (Made a reasonable interview story, though.)

fleshmonad•2h ago
LLM slop. Why do people (presumably) take the time to debug something like this, do tests and go to great lengths, but are too lazy to do a little manual writeup? Maybe the hour saved makes up for being associated with publishing AI slop under your own name? Like there is no way the author would have written a text that reads more convoluted than what we have here.
sb8244•2h ago
I read it just fine and everything made sense in it.

I would spend similar time debugging this if I were the author. It's a pretty serious bug, a non obvious issue, and would be impossible to connect to the ffi fix unless you already knew the problem.

dpark•2h ago
Sorry, why is this LLM slop? I only got about halfway through because I don’t care about this enough to finish the read, but I don’t see the “obvious LLM” signal you do.
scmccarthy•1h ago
It's clearest in the conclusion.
dpark•1h ago
I still don’t see it.

I feel like the “this is AI” crowd is getting ridiculous. Too perfect? Clearly AI. Too sloppy? That’s clearly AI too.

Rarely is there anything concrete that the person claiming AI can point to. It’s just “I can tell”. Same confident assurance that all the teachers trusting “AI detectors” have.

fn-mote•45m ago
> Why do people […] take the time to debug […] but are too lazy to do a little manual writeup[?]

They like to code. They don’t like to write.

I’m not excusing it, but after you asked the question the conclusion seems logical.

michaelcampbell•30m ago
> LLM slop

Is this the new "looks shopped. I can tell by the pixels."?

philipp-gayret•1h ago
Had me in the first half. But from the "The Microsecond Window" chapter and on...;

> No warning. No error. Just different methods that make no sense.

> This is why write barriers exist. They're not optional extras for C extension authors. They're how you tell the garbage collector: "I'm holding a reference. Don't free this

It's all ChatGPT LinkedIn and Instagram spam type slop. An unfortunate end to an otherwise interesting writeup.

Marble Fountain

https://willmorrison.net/posts/marble-fountain/
154•chris_overseas•3h ago•17 comments

The Manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/
119•nathan-barry•4h ago•46 comments

Montana Becomes First State to Enshrine 'Right to Compute' into Law

https://montananewsroom.com/montana-becomes-first-state-to-enshrine-right-to-compute-into-law/
191•bilsbie•6h ago•96 comments

The Principles of Diffusion Models

https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.21890
59•Anon84•3h ago•3 comments

Drilling Down on Uncle Sam's Proposed TP-Link Ban

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/drilling-down-on-uncle-sams-proposed-tp-link-ban/
27•todsacerdoti•1h ago•15 comments

Bumble Berry Pi – A Cheap DIY Raspberry Pi Handheld Cyberdeck

https://github.com/samcervantes/bumble-berry-pi
41•MakerSam•3h ago•6 comments

AI isn't replacing jobs. AI spending is

https://www.fastcompany.com/91435192/chatgpt-llm-openai-jobs-amazon
351•felineflock•4h ago•208 comments

Reviving Classic Unix Games: A 20-Year Journey Through Software Archaeology

https://vejeta.com/reviving-classic-unix-games-a-20-year-journey-through-software-archaeology/
97•mwheeler•6h ago•36 comments

Zensical – A modern static site generator built by the Material for MkDocs team

https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/blog/2025/11/05/zensical/
73•japhyr•6h ago•26 comments

Samsung Family Hub for 2025 Update Elevates the Smart Home Ecosystem

https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-family-hub-2025-update-elevates-smart-home-ecosystem/
272•janandonly•4h ago•245 comments

When Your Hash Becomes a String: Hunting Ruby's Million-to-One Memory Bug

https://mensfeld.pl/2025/11/ruby-ffi-gc-bug-hash-becomes-string/
53•phmx•5d ago•14 comments

Visualize FastAPI endpoints with FastAPI-Voyager

https://www.newsyeah.fun/voyager/
87•tank-34•7h ago•12 comments

Startups are pushing the boundaries of reproductive genetics

https://www.wsj.com/tech/biotech/genetically-engineered-babies-tech-billionaires-6779efc8
33•nradov•4h ago•43 comments

Using bubblewrap to add sandboxing to NetBSD

https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/gsoc2025_bubblewrap_sandboxing
53•jaypatelani•6h ago•16 comments

The overengineered solution to my pigeon problem (2022)

https://maxnagy.com/posts/pigeons/
59•cyb0rg0•6d ago•41 comments

William Gass and John Gardner: A Debate on Fiction (1979)

https://medium.com/the-william-h-gass-interviews/william-h-gass-interviewed-by-thomas-leclair-wit...
4•ofalkaed•6d ago•0 comments

CHIP8 – writing emulator, assembler, example game and VHDL hardware impl

http://blog.dominikrudnik.pl/chip8-emulator-assembler-game-vhdl
8•qikcik•5d ago•0 comments

Email verification protocol

https://github.com/WICG/email-verification-protocol
97•sgoto•1w ago•63 comments

I Am Mark Zuckerberg

https://iammarkzuckerberg.com/
970•jb1991•13h ago•353 comments

Ironclad – formally verified, real-time capable, Unix-like OS kernel

https://ironclad-os.org/
331•vitalnodo•20h ago•95 comments

Python Software Foundation gets a donor surge after rejecting federal grant

https://thenewstack.io/psf-gets-a-donor-surge-after-rejecting-anti-dei-federal-grant/
25•MilnerRoute•2h ago•6 comments

Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

https://www.marineinsight.com/shipping-news/worlds-largest-cargo-sailboat-completes-historic-firs...
355•defrost•23h ago•241 comments

Ask HN: How do you get over the fear of sharing code?

26•sodokuwizard•2h ago•41 comments

Reverse engineering Codex CLI to get GPT-5-Codex-Mini to draw me a pelican

https://simonwillison.net/2025/Nov/9/gpt-5-codex-mini/
131•simonw•15h ago•62 comments

Bull markets make you feel smarter than you are

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2025/11/ben-graham-bull-market-brains/
69•raw_anon_1111•3h ago•22 comments

American Heart Association says melatonin may be linked to serious heart risks

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251104012959.htm
18•pogue•2h ago•9 comments

Ask HN: How would you set up a child’s first Linux computer?

131•evolve2k•8h ago•180 comments

Alive internet theory

https://alivetheory.net/
132•manbitesdog•7h ago•61 comments

Open-source communications by bouncing signals off the Moon

https://open.space/
244•fortran77•1w ago•64 comments

Knowledge Insulating Vision-Language-Action Models: Train, Run Fast, Generalize [pdf]

https://www.physicalintelligence.company/download/pi05_KI.pdf
6•arunc•1w ago•0 comments