Show HN: I made a Doom-like game fit inside a QR code
Comments ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net awww thank you :‘))) you all are too nice!!! i really wanted to share how i did this because i think i’m the first person to publicly attempt a production instance of dreamwidth code in docker, so i’m glad i did a good job at documenting it!!!!!!!

@eaplme@eapl.me you wrote:

“That PHP snippet could be merged into https://twtxt.dev/exts/twt-hash.html”

Why, though? AFAIK @andros@twtxt.andros.dev’s client is on Emacs, @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org’s is on Python (and Golang, for tt2), @movq@www.uninformativ.de’s is on Python, and @prologic@twtxt.net’s is on Golang. All the client creator needs to know is in the documentation already, coding language agnostic.

That’s an interesting research article about Wallbleed, a memory disclosure vulnerability in the Great Firewall of China. They reverse-engineered the buggy DNS query processing code that injects a response if the hostname should be censored: https://gfw.report/publications/ndss25/data/paper/wallbleed.pdf

Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks
Comments ⌘ Read more

OpenAI Codex CLI: Lightweight coding agent that runs in your terminal
Comments ⌘ Read more

Why is there a “small house” in IBM’s Code Page 437?
There’s a small house ( ⌂ ) in the middle of IBM’s infamous character set Code Page 437. “Small house”—that’s the official IBM name given to the glyph at code position 0x7F, where a control character for “Delete” (DEL) should logically exist. It’s cute, but a little strange. I wonder, how did it get there? Why did IBM represent DEL as a house, of all things? ↫ Heikki Lotvonen Don’t waste any time here, and go read the article. It’ … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net On average, a good news item usually scores 300 points, outstanding ones reach 400… and only the extraordinary ones exceed 600 points. If you want, you can customise it. The source code: https://0x0.st/8pnq.py

DragonFlyBSD Lands “Next-Gen” Disk Encryption Code
Comments ⌘ Read more

Elliptical Python programming
One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom. ↫ Susam Pal I can’t program and know nothing about Python, but this still made me laugh. ⌘ Read more

AI can’t stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything
Comments ⌘ Read more

AI problems, top to bottom:

1: Open AI nerds, believe fine tuning a language model algorithm, will eventually produce an AGI god.

2: Subpar artists and techbros who can’t code, convinced AI image bashing and vibe coding, will help convince the dumber parts of Internet, they are a real deal.

3: Parasites, using AI to scam people, because they just want passive income, selling crap, made by an automated process.

Side: Adobe&co, killing Flash/old web, pricing new artists and developers out, to face learning curves of free tools, or use AI, peddled as solution.

No code is dead. Long live vibe coding
Comments ⌘ Read more

the Fireworks and Confetti animations are amazing. It reminds me a lot of my first code on QBasic a few years ago.

AI coding mandates are driving developers to the brink
Comments ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I see your code block, with timestamp in brackets.

Test:

this is a code block
[2025-04-08 17:50:00] with a timestamp in brackets

The end.

I’m so confused. None of this code has changed in yarnd at all. Hmmm 🤔

Show HN: I Built a Tool to Find Devs Based on Code, Not LinkedIn Titles
Comments ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net there is a space on the first line on that codeblock. I think this one is the culprit:

pre>code {
    padding:0 .25rem;
}

@bender@twtxt.net It does right 🤣 (no highlights though, will have to figure out how I refactor the display code to support that)

@prologic@twtxt.net Not sure if the confirmation helps at all. You just condition yourself to immediately press y on a daily basis.

Apart from that, aborting the removal should probably terminate the function with a non-zero exit code, something like return 1.

@bender@twtxt.net I was a bit confused at first what that is: Apparently, it’s the source code of Altair BASIC: https://gizmonaut.net/soapflakes/EXE-199711.html

(Of course they have a user agent filter. 😂 Can’t download that PDF with wget.)

How big is VMS?
This question was asked during my Boot Camp presentation last fall in Boston, and over the past 35 years dozens of times people have asked, how big is VMS? That translates into “how many lines of code are in VMS”? I thought it was time to at least make a stab at pursuing some insight into the answer. I wrote some command procedures to count the number of source lines in .B32, .B64, .C, .MAR, .M64, and .S files. Not counted are blank lines and lines beginning with the standard comment characters and m … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations tainted by the company’s role in the genocide in Gaza
Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and in honour of this milestone, Bill Gates has published a blog post about the first code the company ever wrote. In 1975, Paul Allen and I created Microsoft because we believed in our vision of a computer on every desk and in every home. Five decades later, Microsoft continues to innovate new way … ⌘ Read more

I got some assembly for you: https://images.gatesnotes.com/12514eb8-7b51-008e-41a9-512542cf683b/34d561c8-cf5c-4e69-af47-3782ea11482e/Original-Microsoft-Source-Code.pdf

I stopped using AI code editors
Comments ⌘ Read more

Hi, So i made a little MVP registry crawler tool for twtxt. It now has a basic UI to play with. It has a somewhat full history back to about 2018-ish. Plus some interesting bits that were timestamped to earlier.

Find it here: https://watcher.sour.is

Code base is found here: https://git.sour.is/sour-is/xt

UpCodes (YC S17) Is Hiring SWEs and CSMs to make construction more productive
Comments ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I do agree “the rules of the web”, are far too loose - at least the syntax ones. I do think backwards compatibility is necessary.

As for my website, it might be visually very similar, to how it looked since its creation, many years ago, but it is frequently improved. Features that originally used JavaScript, changed to HTML and CSS components, code simplified, optimised to withstand browser updates and new screen resolutions,… Even a good chunk of the errors on your list, were already addressed and I plan to address the rest soon.

Just find it a bit depressing, that my attempt to bring back some of the old Internet spirit, by making a hidden easteregg page page for this years April 1st, was met with people complaining about April fools day jokes and you insinuating my website sucks.

Bletchley code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101
Comments ⌘ Read more

Okay trying SqliteCache again with a slight tweak. I might have to rethink the hard-coded LIMIT 50.

Microsoft releases Windows 11 roadmap tool to help make sense of Windows 11’s development
I’ve complained about the utter inscrutability of the Windows release process for a long time, with Microsoft seemingly using channels, build numbers, code names, date-based version numbers, and so on interchangeably, making it incredibly hard to keep track of what is being released when. It turns out even Microsoft itself started losing track, because it … ⌘ Read more

Vibe Coding with Cursor
Comments ⌘ Read more

DOGE To Rewrite SSA Codebase In ‘Months’
Longtime Slashdot reader frank_adrian314159 writes: According to an article in Wired, Elon Musk has appointed a team of technologists from DOGE to “rewrite the code that runs the SSA in months.” This codebase has over 60 million lines of COBOL and handles record keeping for all American workers and payments for all Social Security recipients. Given that the code has to track the byzantine … ⌘ Read more

We hacked Google’s A.I Gemini and leaked its source code (at least some part)
Comments ⌘ Read more

Replit (YC W18) Is Hiring Engineers to Automate Coding
Comments ⌘ Read more

Launch HN: Continue (YC S23) – Create custom AI code assistants
Comments ⌘ Read more

First C compiler source code from 1972
Comments ⌘ Read more

Google moves all Android development behind closed doors
Up until now, Google developed several components of Android out in the open, as part of AOSP, while developing everything else behind closed doors, only releasing the source code once the final new Android version was released. This meant that Google had to merge the two branches, which lead to problems and issues, so Google decided it’s now moving all development of Android behind closed doors. What will change is th … ⌘ Read more

I have finished 1-9 on Python. If anyone is interested, I could share the code, or in Reddit many people have shared theirs.

i really wanna learn golang it looks fun and capable and i can read it kind of but every time i try it i’m immediately stuck on basic concepts like “what the fuck is a pointer” (this has been explained to me and i still don’t get it). i did have types explained to me as like notes on code which makes sense a bit but i’m mostly lost on basic code concepts

I always find the ‘Adven of code’ challenges difficult to follow.
i18n-puzzles.com has been a blast, but I don’t like having to think about puzzles on weekends. Like with exercise, doing it every day without rest doesn’t sound healthy.

I’d rater have a weekly challenge, at most three.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz i could build that myself but also i can’t because i don’t know code!!!!!!!!! her ass only knows ruby on rails!!!!!!!!!

I have released new updates to the twtxt.el client.

• New feature: Notifications.
  
• Updated: Improved user interface for new posts.
  
• Updated: Documentation.
  
• Updated: Some UI elements and included information about shortcuts in each buffer.
  
• Minor fixes.
  Source code: https://codeberg.org/deadblackclover/twtxt-el
  In the next version: You will be able to send direct messages.
  Enjoy!
  #emacs #twtxt #twtxtel

SQL scares me i tweaked a bash script that pulled from a DB and the bash part was easy even if i was just going off of the code in there that i didn’t write (like i understood it at least) but the SQL parts had me suffering

Vous connaissez coolmaze pour transférer des fichiers? Je ne trouve pas le code source, donc ça ne doit pas être libre. Vous connaîtriez un équivalent, si possible auto-hébergeable? https://coolmaze.io/

Google, DuckDuckGo massively expand “AI” search results
Clearly, online search isn’t bad enough yet, so Google is intensifying its efforts to continue speedrunning the downfall of Google Search. They’ve announced they’re going to show even more “AI”-generated answers in Search results, to more people. Today, we’re sharing that we’ve launched Gemini 2.0 for AI Overviews in the U.S. to help with harder questions, starting with coding, advanced math and multimodal queries, with mor … ⌘ Read more

NetBSD on a JavaStation
Back when Java was still a new programming language, Sun had the idea of building a computer specifically designed for Java, unique processor running byte-code as its native machine code and all. This whole endeavour proved to be more complicated than Sun had hoped, and as such, they eventually abandoned the idea of a Java processor in favour of plain SPARC. When the JavaStation shipped, it was a regular SPARC workstation without a hard drive, running something called JavaOS from fla … ⌘ Read more

Amd of course, TDD! I tried that, but it doesn’t work all that great for me in its strict form. I have the feeling that coming up with a single new failing test, making it pass, maybe some refactoring, rinse and repeat wastes significantly more time than doing it in – what they call – the “bundle” approach. Coming up with several tests in advance and then writing the code or vise versa is usually much quicker. I do find that more enjoyable, it also helps me to reduce smaller context switches. I can focus on either the tests or the production code.

As for the potentially reduced code coverage with a non-TDD approach, I can easily see which parts are lacking tests and hand them in later. So, that’s largely a specious argument. Granted, I can forget to check the coverage or simply ignore it.

I agree with John, TDD results in less elegant code or requires more refactoring to tidy it up. Sometimes, it’s also not entirely clear at the beginning how the API should really look like. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Especially when experimenting or trying out different approaches. With TDD, I then also have to refactor the tests which is not only annoying, but also involves the danger of accidentally breaking them.

TDD only works really well, if you have super tiny functions. But we already established that I typically don’t like tiny methods just for the purpose of them being extremely short.

When fixing a bug, I usually come up with a failing test case first to verify that my repaired code later actually resolves the problem. For new code, it depends, sometimes tests first, sometimes the productive code first. Starting off with the tests requires the API to be well defined beforehand.