Urgent.News

What's breaking now, across thousands of outlets.

More in Tech

Reimplementing a Trie Reminded Me How Autocomplete Actually Works

I spent an embarrassing amount of time last week reimplementing something I'd "known" since a data structures class a decade ago: the trie.

  • Trie stores strings by character along shared paths from root
  • Autocomplete features utilize trie's prefix lookup mechanism
  • Trade-off of naive trie implementation is significant memory waste

Break It, Then Ask Why: Exposing a Hidden Internal Dev Console With One Flipped Flag

Honestly, this one was kind of an accident. I'd been on this travel site for a couple of hours (the big booking one) and had basically nothing to show for it.

  • Hidden internal developer console exposed on travel booking website
  • Boolean flags set to true revealed console due to validation flags set to false
  • Console contained internal service names, ports, and override options

More from Friday 2 October →