** …but I can do that with regex? **
The other day a co-worker showed me a project that seemed genuinely useful, but I didn’t love some bits of how complicated and resource intensive its architecture were, so, I made my own version of it! Check out diff heatmap.

Your browser does not support the video tag. You are rad as hell.

As an aside, I put this one on github which I don’t generally choose to use for personal projects, but I’d love to see folks contribute rules to this projec … ⌘ Read more

ProcessOne: AI Bots Can’t Use WhatsApp Anymore. So… Who Are They Going to Talk To?

Image

Meta just closed the gates on AI chatbots. I think this is an early warning.

Starting January 15, 2026, [WhatsApp will ban all third-party general-purpose AI chatbots from its platform](https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/18 … ⌘ Read more

Another top (3 Star) US General Steps Down Following Recent Strikes ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, give it a shot. At worst you know that you have to continue your quest. :-)

Fun fact, during a semester break I was actually a little bored, so I just started reading the Qt documentation. I didn’t plan on using Qt for anything, though. I only looked at the docs because they were on my bucket list for some reason. Qt was probably recommended to me and coming from KDE myself, that was motivation enough to look at the docs just for fun.

The more I read, the more hooked I got. The documentation was extremely well written, something I’ve never seen before. The structure was very well thought out and I got the impression that I understood what the people thought when they actually designed Qt.

A few days in I decided to actually give it a real try. Having never done anything in C++ before, I quickly realized that this endeavor won’t succeed. I simply couldn’t get it going. But I found the Qt bindings for Python, so that was a new boost. And quickly after, I discovered that there were even KDE bindings for Python in my package manager, so I immediately switched to them as that integrated into my KDE desktop even nicer.

I used the Python KDE bindings for one larger project, a planning software for a summer camp that we used several years. It’s main feature was to see who is available to do an activity. In the past, that was done on a large sheet of paper, but people got assigned two activities at the same time or weren’t assigned at all. So, by showing people in yellow (free), green (one activity assigned) and red (overbooked), this sped up and improved the planning process.

Another core feature was to generate personalized time tables (just like back in school) and a dedicated view for the morning meeting on site.

It was extended over the years with all sorts of stuff. E.g. I then implemented a warning if all the custodians of an activitiy with kids were underage to satisfy new the guidelines that there should be somebody of age.

Just before the pandemic I started to even add support for personalized live views on phones or tablets during the planning process (with web sockets, though). This way, people could see their own schedule or independently check at which day an activity takes place etc. For these side quests, they don’t have to check the large matrix on the projector. But the project died there.

Here’s a screenshot from one of the main views:

Image

This Python+Qt rewrite replaced and improved the Java+Swing predecessor.

French Army Chief General Says France is Ready to Send 7,000 Troops to Ukraine ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Uh, that actually looks not that terrible. Somehow, I remember Swing GUIs being way uglier.

As for Visual Basic, I only had to use VBA once in my life. That was in the beginning of my career when I inherited a project from a leaving coworker. Fuck me, was that awful. Just alone the damn compiler error dialog box popping up in my face all the time while editing and the compiler already trying to parse the unfinished and hence of course uncompilable code. Boy, that left a lasting impression on me. I ported everything to Java very quickly. Luckily, the code base wasn’t all that large at that point in time. I had to add a bunch of new features after that, so I was very glad that I convinced my workmate/project manager to do that first. We didn’t even need a GUI, the button in Excel was transformed to a command line program that just generated the large file.

But I cannot comment on the VB GUI designer, I never used that. Your screenshot looks very similar to the Delphi one, though. Only towards the end of my Delphi days I found out about the possibility to make the widgets snap to window edges and corners (I don’t remember how that was called), so that resizing the windows was actually possible without messing up their entire contents.

Switching to Linux, Delphi wasn’t an option anymore. For some reason I couldn’t use Kylix. Maybe it was already dead by the time I changed OSes. Or I couldn’t get it to run. I just don’t remember. I just recall that the unavailability of Delphi was the reason it took me a while to actually settle on Linux. I then fully switched to Java. The GridBagLayout was my absolutely favorite Swing layout manager. I reckon I used it 98% of the time, because it was so powerful and made the windows resize properly, just as I had learned to do in Delphi shortly before.

Up until discovering Swing, I used Java’s AWT for a short amount of time. That was very limited I think and I hit the limits fairly quickly. Later at uni, we had one project making use of SWT. Didn’t convince me either. I could be wrong, but I think there was also a SWT GUI designer plugin for Eclipse. If there really was, that one wasn’t in the same street as Delphi’s (there must be a reason I forgot about it ;-)).

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org (… I am making a Zalgo Generator in Python right now, because I need it for something else … 🤣)

NATO secretary general says Putin is “running out of money, troops and ideas” ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Ah, I see. Yeah, you might be right. (Still a fragile process due to the general AI wonkiness, but it can help to some degree, yes.)

Ukrainian forces strike Ryazan oil refinery and ammunition depot in Russia, General Staff reports ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de My impression also is that good sysadmins are missing. No wonder if they all get laid off because they’re “not doing anything” and developers can just operate their shit themselves. Or so the bosses and plenty devs think. Sadly, that’s the general view.

Hell no, devops is bullshit in my opinion. Most developers (including myself) are rather bad at administrating. A good sysadmin offers other skills. Great admins appear to just sit around, but they’re much more proactively working than programmers who also operate the same stuff. The latter have a waaay more reactive work model in comparison. When things have already gone south. The sysadmin, on the other hand, would have noticed and thus prevented the vast majority very early on when it was far from becoming a problem in the future.

At least that’s my personal experience in all those years in different projects and what my mates tell me from their companies. Sure, skills can be learned, but it’s just not happening (enough). And obviously, there are people out there who excel in both disciplines, but they are rare. Most fall in one of the categories. Not to forget, plenty are just bad at everything. :-)

Triad Prague, is perhaps the only mainstream “Contemporary advertising” company, who fucking AI generates “pixelart” and everyone there is either too blind, dumb, or lazy, to at the very least, align the pixels, to a grid (or even check they’re square, the same size,…anything really).

I guess they must have some remains of shame and self preservation instinct, that made them sweep these off their portfolio website and set the video ads with them, to “Private” on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/s7GZK8FGRvA
But sadly not enough shame, to stop putting these on billboards, I have to see on daily basis and making new versions of them, with different inconsistent styles, of badly AI generated “pixelart”!

I checked their website, this is their footer, with the text that always overlaps - maybe they also never heard about CSS, can’t blame them, it’s only been a thing, since 1996.

No, Em Dash is Not Indicative of AI Generated Text
The Em Dash ( — ) has been in use for centuries by some of the most renowned writers — from journalists to classic literature to modern Sci-Fi authors. ⌘ Read more

@dce@hashnix.club Arch is the most stress-free OS I’ve ever run (I last reinstalled it 14 years ago, only rolling updates since then) – but to be honest, I sometimes wonder what role my general choice of software plays. I mostly run minimalistic software or programs that I wrote myself. I guess that greatly reduces the chance of breakage. 🤔

Generation of harmful slow electrons in water is a race between intermolecular energy decay and proton transfer
When high-energy radiation interacts with water in living organisms, it generates particles and slow-moving electrons that can subsequently damage critical molecules like DNA. Now, Professor Petr Slavíček and his bachelor’s student Jakub Dubský from UCT Prague (University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague) have described in detail one of the key mechanisms for the creation … ⌘ Read more

Poorer health linked to more votes for Reform UK, 2024 voting patterns suggest
Poorer health is linked to a higher proportion of votes for the populist right wing political party, Reform UK, indicates an analysis of the 2024 general election voting patterns in England, published online in the open access journal BMJ Open Respiratory Research. ⌘ Read more

I noticed Google put out this article: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/09/lets-talk-security-answering-your-top.html it’s very current day Google, but the comments under the YouTube video are pretty on point and I saw a few familiar faces there. There is also, unexpectedly, ways to contact Google.

First a form for “teachers, students, and hobbyists”, that I filled politely, as someone who falls under their hobbyist category. It can be filled both anonymously, or with an e-mail attached, to be contacted by them (I chose the second option).

Also a general feedback and questions form, that I was not as polite in and used to send them the following message:

I have already provided some feedback, in the teacher, student and hobbyists form/questionaire, as well as an open letter I’ve recently sent to the European Commission digital markets act team, as I do believe your proposal might not even be legal, given the fact it puts privacy-focused alternative app stores at risk (https://f-droid.org/cs/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html) and it was proposed this early, after Google lost in court to Epic Games, over similar monopoly concerns. Why should we trust Google to be the only authority for all developer signatures, right after the European courts labeled it a gatekeeper?

Assuming this gets passed, despite justified developer backlash and at best questionable legality, can you give us any guarantees, this will not be used to target legal malware-free mods, or user privacy enhancing patchers, like the ones used for applying the ReVanced patches? I have made a few mods myself, but I am in no way associated with the ReVanced team. I just share many peoples concerns, Google Chrome has been conveniently stripped of its manifest v2 support, that made many privacy protecting extensions possible and now you’re conveniently asking for the government IDs, of all the developers, who maintain these kinds of privacy protections (be it patches, or alternative open-source apps) on Android.

‘We tried’ - Rooney defends his England team
England legend Wayne Rooney does not think current squads have a better attitude than his so-called golden generation. ⌘ Read more

10 Unique Ancient Peoples Whose Cultural Footprints Still Shape the World
History has a funny way of remembering the loudest voices—the emperors, conquerors, and generals whose names echo through textbooks and tourist guides. But for every Caesar or Alexander, countless quieter civilizations shaped the world we live in today. Their contributions hide in plain sight, etched into our laws, our languages, our festivals, and even the […]

The post [10 Unique Anci … ⌘ Read more

Memory access is O(N^[1/3])
Comments ⌘ Read more

**Man arrested on suspicion of starting Pacific Palisades fire **
They said evidence collected from his digital devices showed an image he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city. ⌘ Read more

When Will Apple’s Macs Get M5 Chips? 2025-2026 Launch Timeline
We’re just about due for the next-generation Apple silicon chip, which will kick off a new wave of Mac refreshes. The M5 chip is expected to make an appearance in some new products before the end of the year, but most Mac refreshes will happen in 2026.

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We’ve rounded up current rumors on when we might see updates for Apple’s notebook and desktop machines.

How England’s ‘Golden Generation’ describe the reasons why they failed
Tactical shortcomings, misguided managers or stellar opponents - why do England’s so-called ‘Golden Generation’ think they failed to deliver success? ⌘ Read more

Generative design of novel bacteriophages with genome language models
Comments ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net I guess most clocks don’t support that. 😅 My wrist watch can do it, you can select it in the menu:

Image

In general, different transmitter means different frequency and different encoding, for example these two:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL_(MSF)

AI advance helps astronomers spot cosmic events with just a handful of examples
A new study co-led by the University of Oxford and Google Cloud has shown how general-purpose AI can accurately classify real changes in the night sky—such as an exploding star, a black hole tearing apart a passing star, a fast-moving asteroid, or a brief stellar flare from a compact star system—and explain its reasoning, without the need for complex training. ⌘ Read more

Surging price restores growers confidence in Australian merino wool
Amid a run of price rises at Australian wool auctions, the next generation of growers say global demand and fresh confidence could mark a turning point for the fibre. ⌘ Read more

Israelis mark 7 October anniversary as talks on Gaza peace plan continue
“The horror of that dark day will be forever seared in the memories of us all,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said. ⌘ Read more

I vibecoded a port of snig image gallery generator in php
Comments ⌘ Read more

England’s Golden Generation ‘weren’t a team’ - Gerrard
Former England captain Steven Gerrard says he sometimes “hated” being on international duty and blames a lack of success with the Three Lions on a shortage of team spirit. ⌘ Read more

Robin Williams’s daughter begs fans to stop making AI content of her father
The daughter of the late actor Robin Williams has condemned AI-generated content featuring her father’s likeness. ⌘ Read more

10 Shocking Crimes Where the Perpetrator Walked Free
The legal system operates on a fundamental principle: a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. For the general public, this can sometimes lead to jarring and controversial outcomes. In certain high-profile cases, the facts of a crime seem clear. Yet, the legal defenses and trial procedures result in a stunning […]

The post [10 Shocking Crimes Where the Perpetrator Walked Free](https://listve … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net I wouldn’t know where to look for little cockroaches, or roaches, in general! LOL. We buy seeds to feed them. But not around the neighborhood, otherwise we would have a problem. 😅

Chemists create red fluorescent dyes that may enable clearer biomedical imaging
MIT chemists have designed a new type of fluorescent molecule that they hope could be used for applications such as generating clearer images of tumors. ⌘ Read more

iPad Mini 8 on the Way: Expected Features and Release Timeline
A new iPad mini is “absolutely” on the way, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released a year ago?

Image

Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to in … ⌘ Read more

After a lost generation, Australia looks to the past on drought-breaking Ashes tour
New Kangaroos coach Kevin Walters was part of an era where the green and gold jersey was the highest honour rugby league could offer and ahead of the return of the Ashes it’s a legacy he’s desperate to pass down to his players. ⌘ Read more

Next iPad Pro to Have Two Key Features, But One Rumor Still Uncertain
The next iPad Pro models are rumored to feature two key upgrades, including Apple’s M5 chip, and an increased minimum of 12GB of RAM.

Image

Last week, apparent unboxing videos for the next-generation 13-inch iPad Pro were uploaded to YouTube by Russian channels Wylsacom and [Romance … ⌘ Read more

Best Apple Deals of the Week: Apple Watch SE 2 Hits Ultra Low $179 Price, Plus Early Prime Day Deals
We’re gearing up for big Prime Day deals over the next few days, and this week saw multiple early Prime Day discounts arriving for iPhone 17 cases, the second generation Apple Watch SE, and more.

Image

Upcoming Apple Vision Pro Could Get More Comfortable ‘Dual Knit Band’
Apple is working on a next-generation version of the Vision Pro with an updated chip, and it could include a new Dual Knit Band that provides a more comfortable fit.

Image

Updated Apple backend code found by MacRumors includes a reference to a “Dual Knit Band,” which is not a band that exists at the current time. The [Apple Vision Pro](https://www.macrumors … ⌘ Read more

Ultra-thin sodium films offer low-cost alternative to gold and silver in optical technologies
From solar panels to next-generation medical devices, many emerging technologies rely on materials that can manipulate light with extreme precision. These materials—called plasmonic materials—are typically made from expensive metals like gold or silver. But what if a cheaper, more abundant metal could do the job just as well or better? ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de can’t you use generic drivers? I did that for an enterprise copier/printer/scanner we used to have at work, and it worked just fine!

The MacRumors Show: Leaks Reveal What Apple Products Are Coming Next
On this episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss the latest leaks about the next-generation iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, Studio Display, and Vision Pro.

_[Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel](h … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I think you should be able to find some even in general stores in the hardware section.

Apple’s 2026 Smart Glasses: Five Key Features to Expect
Apple is working on a set of smart glasses to rival the Meta Ray-Bans, and now that Meta has debuted glasses that include a display, Apple wants to speed up development on its first-generation model. Work has stopped on the next Vision Pro so that Apple can prioritize getting the glasses to market.

![](https://images.macrumors.com/article-new/2021/01/Apple-Glasses-Yellow-Featur … ⌘ Read more

Powerbeats Fit Review: Apple’s New $200 Workout Earbuds Replace Beats Fit Pro
Apple’s Beats brand has a new set of fitness-focused earbuds available, the Powerbeats Fit. We picked up a set of the Powerbeats Fit to see how they compare to the prior-generation Beats Fit Pro and Apple’s AirPods Pro 3.

_Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos._

The Powerbeats Fit are designed for wo … ⌘ Read more

Vim Config Generator Idea ⌘ Read more

Spec-driven development: Using Markdown as a programming language when building with AI
I coded my latest app entirely in Markdown and let GitHub Copilot compile it into Go. This resulted in cleaner specs, faster iteration, and no more context loss. ✨

The post [Spec-driven development: Using Markdown as a programming language when building with AI](https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/generative-ai/spec-driven-development-using-markdown-as-a-p … ⌘ Read more

MacOS Tahoe 26 Feels Slow? Try These 6 Performance Tips
Some Mac users who have updated to macOS Tahoe 26 feel like the new operating system runs slower than their prior MacOS installation did. Reports online suggest there can be general sluggishness and lagging performance, sometimes with frame rate drops and stuttering animations on the screen, or even when typing. Other users in various forums … Read More ⌘ Read more

Monica Rizzolli has edited a new smashing magazine that covers some cool historic and contemporary #CreativeCoding in Brazil (disclosure / bias warning: I’m on it). Published in Portuguese with an English translation of the text.
500 unique generative covers, art by Rod Junqueira and title variations by André Burnier.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/variavel-magazine

@prologic@twtxt.net I know we won’t ever convince each other of the other’s favorite addressing scheme. :-D But I wanna address (haha) your concerns:

1. I don’t see any difference between the two schemes regarding link rot and migration. If the URL changes, both approaches are equally terrible as the feed URL is part of the hashed value and reference of some sort in the location-based scheme. It doesn’t matter.

2. The same is true for duplication and forks. Even today, the “cannonical URL” has to be chosen to build the hash. That’s exactly the same with location-based addressing. Why would a mirror only duplicate stuff with location- but not content-based addressing? I really fail to see that. Also, who is using mirrors or relays anyway? I don’t know of any such software to be honest.

3. If there is a spam feed, I just unfollow it. Done. Not a concern for me at all. Not the slightest bit. And the byte verification is THE source of all broken threads when the conversation start is edited. Yes, this can be viewed as a feature, but how many times was it actually a feature and not more behaving as an anti-feature in terms of user experience?

4. I don’t get your argument. If the feed in question is offline, one can simply look in local caches and see if there is a message at that particular time, just like looking up a hash. Where’s the difference? Except that the lookup key is longer or compound or whatever depending on the cache format.

5. Even a new hashing algorithm requires work on clients etc. It’s not that you get some backwards-compatibility for free. It just cannot be backwards-compatible in my opinion, no matter which approach we take. That’s why I believe some magic time for the switch causes the least amount of trouble. You leave the old world untouched and working.

If these are general concerns, I’m completely with you. But I don’t think that they only apply to location-based addressing. That’s how I interpreted your message. I could be wrong. Happy to read your explanations. :-)

@zvava@twtxt.net @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I also think a location based reference might be better.

A thread is a single post of a single feed as a root, but the hash has the drawback of not referencing the source, in a distributed network like twtxt it might leave some people out of the whole conversation.

I suggest a simpler format, something like: (#<TIMESTAMP URL>)

This solves three issues:

• Easier referencing: no need to generate a hash, just copy the timestamp and url, it’s also simpler to implement in a client without the rish of collisions when putting things together
  
• Fetchable source: you can find the source within the reference and construct the thread from there
  
• Allow editing: If a post is modified the hash becomes invalid since it depends on [ timestamp, url, content ]

Outback gardeners share the joys of turning dust to daisies
Flower farmer Suzanne Stanton says generations of outback women have taken comfort in their gardens, proof that life can survive in the harshest of climates. ⌘ Read more

wait why are so many of my post hashes not generating correctly ;w;

edit: i read the spec wrong :3 only +/-00:00 is stripped, not the entire timezone offset >.<

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org retwts are a discovery feature! on federated platforms with no algorithm where you only ever see posts from accounts you explicitly follow, the element of “hey look at this!” helps users to find other accounts they might like organically

i agree quoting and replying forum-style is generally a much better way of doing things even though im a heathen and i revel in the dark patterns inspired by quote posts but when you have nothing to add and you just want to share a twt with your followers it’d be good to have a standardized way of linking to twt

** Strata **

A Counterfeit - a Plated Person -

I would not be -

Whatever strata of Iniquity

My Nature underlie -

Truth is good Health - and Safety, and the Sky.

How meagre, what an Exile - is a Lie,

And Vocal - when we die -

– Emily Dickinson

I made another game! This one pretty much has one single verb:“move.” The game, like most games I make, is a roguelike that relies heavily on probabilities and rng (random number generation).

Each level is … ⌘ Read more

How Generative AI Video Works - Computerphile ⌘ Read more

the code to generate this image (have you noticed it is a 3D mesh?)
is here: https://abav.lugaralgum.com/selected-work/py5band/

#python #numpy #shapely #trimesh #py5

Ni Hao; bīng qílín!
I’m just dropping in, to emphasize my love for ice cream and the Chinese crawler bots, allocating their time and resources, towards scraping my humble website.

To show my gratitude, I’ve even added a random little dog generator to https://thecanine.ueuo.com/sparkle.html so that everyone can pick up their own custom dogFT, on their journey through my site.

Why do I care about this?

1. The load will become a problem at some point.
   
2. These crawlers and the current “AI” in general are breaking the rules. I am supposed to be paying for every little thing, I get sued for “piracy”. But apparently, these rules only apply to me. If I had more money, I could break them. Fuck that.
   
3. I simply don’t want it. Period.

Erlang Solutions: Healthcare Blog Round-Up
Healthcare is moving quickly, and technology is playing a big part in that shift. The way information is collected, the way patients are cared for, and the way hospitals run are all changing.

Over the past year, our team has written about some of the most important trends shaping the future of healthcare. In this round-up, we bring together three of those articles: remote patient monitoring, big data, and generative AI.

Maybe you have been following along, or … ⌘ Read more

Dear @doctormo@doctormo, I’m a great admirer of your work in general and hopefully I won’t creep you out by telling everyone I’m your fan!

As a creator of digital vector-based art I find the color management stuff (trying to figure how to generate things to print “in CMYK”) mind boggling. I slowly try to read and acquire the concepts and vocabulary to understand more about this. I’m grateful for your work in this area. Thank you!

#FLOSS #CMYK #ColorManagement #inkscape

#Pyxel is a retro inspired #GameEngine for #Python, it’s very impressive!

It’s not hard to generate a static HTML page that loads your game to run on the browser with #pyodide (WASM). And it comes with an assets editor and a #chiptune making tool.

https://github.com/kitao/pyxel

@prologic@twtxt.net That’s fair, this version really is a stretch. Similar to old Atari game spirites, a lot is left to interpretation,especially by those who have not seen any of the more detailed ones, before.

On the other hand, some suggested I’m still wasting too many pixels on the tail, but removing those, makes it just a generic dog (at best), even to me.

In order to publish my personal projects/pages (and most of my teaching materials, hundreds of pages) on #Codeberg, I need to convert #markdown files into #HTML and sprinkle some CSS & JS from a layout template, like #GitHub’s Pages #Jekyll does, but I dread the complexity of installing and tending to Jekyll or Hugo or other static site generators, and I can’t even imagine going near Forejo Actions or any sort of CI intergration.

Should I be brave and do the Jekyll /static generator thing? Any other ideas for poor, overworked, stressed out, clumsy people? :(

Sam Whited: Notes
I’ve recently been using the Mixxx software for DJs. This page includes some
personal notes on my own use cases, what’s good, what’s bad, etc.
It is not really made for general consumption, but is thrown up here anyways.
It will be a bit rambling and/or ranty at times, most likely.

Let’s get my overall impressions of the software out of the way up front: it’s
absolutely great and I recommend it over the commercial alternatives for DJs of
all stripes (except maybe Radio DJs, it’s not really for … ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de having to go to a gopher proxy to see a text document better served on readily available web servers… 🤭, but I digress. Verbatim text:

What's Missing from "Retro"
~softwarepagan
------------------------------------------------------------------
You know, often, when I say I miss older ways of computing or
connecting online, people tell me "there's nothing stopping you
from doing that now!" and they are technicay correct in most cases
(though I can't, for example, chat with friends on MSN ever
again...) However, let me explain that while this type of thing can
*sort of* fill that hole in my heart, it isn't *the same.*

Say, for example, I wanted to connect with others over a BBS. This
wouldn't offer the same types of connections it used to. While
there are BBSes around with active users, they're no longer there
to discuss movies, Star Trek, D&D, games, etc. They're there to
discuss *BBSes.* The same can be said for Gopher, old-school forums
and all sorts of revival projects (such as Escargot, Spacehey,
etc.) Retrocomputing enthusiasts, while they have a variety of
interests, are often in these spaces to discuss the medium itself
and not other topics. This exists at a stark contrast from how
things were in the past, where a non-tech-inclined person may learn
the tech to connect with likeminded others (as I did as a
Zelda-obsessed kid.)

The same can be said of old media. People will say "well, nobody is
stopping you from watching old shows/movies now!" Again, they are
technically correct. I can go home right now and watch *Star Trek:
The Next Generation* to my heart's content. It will never again,
however, be current, or new. When something is new, it serves as a
shared cultural experience. Remember how "Game of Thrones* felt in
the mid-to-late 2010s? Yeah, that.

It's sad. I sustain myself on a mixed diet of old things, new
things, and new things intended for old millenials like me who like
old things. It can be bittersweet. 

I wish I could watch this (maybe they’ll record it… but I’m not sure):

“From #Fortran to #Python: A Conversation Across Generations of #ScientificComputing” #PyOhio

https://www.pyohio.org/2025/program/talks/from-fortran-to-python/

Here’s an example of X11/Xlib being old and archaic.

X11 knows the data type “cardinal”. For example, the window property _NET_WM_ICON (which holds image data for icons) is an array of “cardinal”. I am already not really familiar with that word and I’m assuming that it comes from mathematics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number

(It could also be a bird, but probably not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinalidae)

We would probably call this an “integer” today.

EWMH says that icons are arrays of cardinals and that they’re 32-bit numbers:

https://specifications.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/latest-single/#id-1.6.13

So it’s something like 0x11223344 with 0x11 being the alpha channel, 0x22 is red, and so on.

You would assume that, when you retrieve such an array from the X11 server, you’d get an array of uint32_t, right?

Nope.

Xlib is so old, they use char for 8-bit stuff, short int for 16-bit, and long int for 32-bit:

https://x.org/releases/current/doc/libX11/libX11/libX11.html#Obtaining_and_Changing_Window_Properties

That is congruent with the general C data types, so it does make sense:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_data_types

Now the funny thing is, on modern x86_64, the type long int is actually 64 bits wide.

The result is that every pixel in a Pixmap, for example, is twice as large in memory as it would need to be. Just because Xlib uses long int, because uint32_t didn’t exist, yet.

And this is something that I wouldn’t know how to fix without breaking clients.

gomdn: Yet another Static Site Generator
Yet another Static Site Generator (SSG), but this one is mine.

It’s a stupidly simple Go program ( wc says 229 lines), more like a
hack, really, but I don’t need something like Hugo. Most of the real
work is done by the goldmark package, of course. This is mostly just a
wrapper, deciding if something needs to be rebuilt.

I’ve been using a Perl script together with cmark (originally
Markdown.pl) since forever. And before that the old [txt2tags](htt … ⌘ Read more

Desktop SSH->Pinephone->here. This is crazy. Sxmo is the best UI for the Pinephone, and maybe phones in general. Insane: basically dwm on a phone with gestures and built-in yt-dlp + mpv (among others).

I have a Python script that transforms the original YouTube channel Atom feed into a more useful Atom feed by removing the spam description and replacing it with the video duration, filtering out videos by title, duration, etc. I just updated it to exclude the damn Shorts garbage more efficiently. Finally, YouTube updated their Atom feed generation, so that the video URL contains /short/ if it’s of this useless kind. Never thought that they ever actually will improve their Atom feeds. Thank you, much appreciated!

PEP 798: Unpacking in Comprehensions
This PEP proposes extending list, set, and dictionary comprehensions, as well as generator expressions, to allow unpacking notation (* and **) at the start of the expression, providing a concise way of combining an arbitrary number of iterables into one list or set or generator, or an arbitrary number of dictionaries into one dictionary, for example: ⌘ Read more

I give up.

Let’s try again next year. I don’t have the stamina. Death by a thousand paper cuts.

Can’t set up a meaningful taskbar: https://github.com/labwc/labwc/discussions/2924 (This is not a labwc issue, it’s a generic issue in the broader Wayland ecosystem.)

TKey: The Next Generation
Not speaking for my employer, just as an interested developer in an
interesting open source project.

As you might have noticed, the platform repo of the Tillitis TKey has
some alpha tags for the next generation, Castor:

https://github.com/tillitis/tillitis-key1/tags

An alpha tag means that all planned features for the platform are in
place, but there’s not yet a complete audit and a lot of testing … ⌘ Read more

** Om nom nom LLMs, in which I respond to Simon Willison’s analogy **
I am hesitant to wade into the tumultuous waters that are the discourse around generative AI and LLMs, but this morning I came across a thing that so thoroughly melted my brain I feel uncontrollably compelled to respond.

This morning, at evidently 4:10 AM (no mention of timezone), Simon Willison shared the following blog post, quoted here in full:

Quitting programming as … ⌘ Read more

#Meta to the #EU: “the focus should be on creating a regulatory infrastructure that ensures any licence that is sufficiently permissive for the user is considered open source, rather than anointing specific licences as “open source”.”

Brilliant, sure, let’s ignore existing definitions and go with gut feeling (incidently, Meta has a gut feeling generator).

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14625-Apply-AI-Strategy-strengthening-the-AI-continent/F3563576_en

#OpenSource

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Welcome back. 👋 (It’s a bit quiet here in general. 🤔)

Da wird nicht gedacht: Apple-Studie deckt Schwachstellen bei KI-Reasoning auf
Forscher von Apple haben eine brisante Studie veröffentlicht, die ein ernüchterndes Bild der aktuellen KI-Generation zeichnet. ( Apple, KI)

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The PM might be a baby boomer but gen X rules Australia’s political class
Generation X is overwhelmingly in charge of government and increasingly holding the wealth. ⌘ Read more

#qotd

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Ukraine’s General Staff confirms strike on Russian facility producing special receivers for Shahed drones ⌘ Read more

Inquest for woman who died after fall from moving car on Bruce Highway
Queensland’s Attorney-General says Courtney Anderson’s family provided new information and shared their concerns that the case was not fully investigated. ⌘ Read more

‘Buy a generator’, power provider tells WA hotel angry at blackouts
The owners of Bremer Bay Resort say Western Power told them purchasing a diesel generator was the only way to avoid the outages plaguing the small community. ⌘ Read more

Scientists breed coral from ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ parents to stop bleaching
After one generation of breeding, scientists say they have been able to double the heat tolerance of Ningaloo Reef coral. ⌘ Read more

Live tracking solution for OsmAnd
I previously shared my transition from Komoot to OsmAnd, and after some time, I’ve grown accustomed to its comprehensive capabilities. Whether for cycling, hiking, or general navigation, OsmAnd truly functions as a versatile “Swiss Army knife” for offline mobile navigation and tracking. ⌘ Read more

I wanted to port this to Rust as an excercise, but they still have no random number generator in the core library: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/130703

On my blog: Generative AI Wish List https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/06/08/ai-wish-list.html #artificialintelligence #harm #rant

Current toy project: an image feed generated by mk(1). Still some edges to clean up but it’s nice: http://a.9srv.net/img/_readme.html

I Read All Of Cloudflare’s Claude-Generated Commits
Comments ⌘ Read more

Europe can sustain Ukraine’s war effort without US, German general says ⌘ Read more

Man mistakenly deported to El Salvador returns to US to face criminal charges
US Attorney-General Pam Bondi says Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, has returned to the United States to face criminal charges. ⌘ Read more

How Gaza has ‘lost a generation’ of students
Palestinian academics who fled Gaza after the war say a “generation of students” has been lost due to the conflict. ⌘ Read more

Conventional Commit message generator using local LLMs
Comments ⌘ Read more

Ukraine’s defence forces strike two Russian airbases overnight – Ukraine’s General Staff, photos, videos ⌘ Read more

Climate activists fined $10k each after Woodside stench gas media stunt
Three climate activists who planned to release stench gas in an attempt to cause the evacuation of a Woodside annual general meeting in Perth’s CBD have been fined $10,000 each. ⌘ Read more

[$] Open source and the Cyber Resilience Act
The European Union’s
Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) has caused a stir in the
software-development world. Thanks to advocacy by the Eclipse Foundation, Open
Source Initiative, Linux Foundation, Mozilla, and others, open-source software
projects generally have minimal requirements under the CRA
— but nothing to do with law is ever quite
so simple. Marta Rybczyńska spoke at Linaro Connect 2025 about the impact of the
CRA on the open-source eco … ⌘ Read more

Is this ‘once-in-a-generation’ mini city the Rosehill Racecourse solution?
Half an hour south-west of the Rosehill Gardens Racecourse lies a large swathe of industrial land, ripe for rezoning, Liverpool City Council argues. ⌘ Read more

iPhone 17 May Support Up to 50W MagSafe Wireless Charging (Qi 2.2)
Apple appears to be moving to the next-generation Qi 2.2 wireless charging standard, according to regulatory filings on Taiwan’s NCC certification website. Qi2.2 is the forthcoming update to the Wireless Power Consortium’s (WPC) Qi standard, building on improvements introduced with Qi 2.

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Spotted by _[91mobiles.com](https://www.91mobile … ⌘ Read more

The Luke Bateman backlash highlights publishing’s diversity problem
When former Canberra Raiders player and farmer Luke Bateman joined TikTok, he went viral for his love of fantasy novels. A month later he announced a book deal, but the news has generated controversy. ⌘ Read more

Settings Management for Docker Desktop now generally available in the Admin Console
We’re excited to announce that Settings Management for Docker Desktop is now Generally Available!  Settings Management can be configured in the Admin Console for customers with a Docker Business subscription.  After a successful Early Access period, this powerful administrative solution has been enhanced with new compliance reporting capabilities, completing our vision for … ⌘ Read more