Remembered a fun little “hello world” program I made in 2018:

https://movq.de/v/a1c4a819e6/vid.mp4

(It runs smoothly. My computer just isn’t fast enough for a smooth X11 screengrab at that resolution.)

@xuu@txt.sour.is Hahaha, that’s cool! You were (and still are) way ahead of me. :-)

We started with a simple traffic light phase and then added pedestrian crossing buttons. But only painting it on the canvas. In our computer room there was an actual traffic light on the wall and at the very end of the school year our IT basics teacher then modified the program to actually control the physical traffic light. That was very impressive and completely out of reach for me at the time. That teacher pulled the first lever for me ending up where I am now.

I will be adding the code in for yarnd very soon™ for this change, with a if the date is >= 2025-07-01 then compute_new_hashes else compute_old_hashes

The VTech Socratic method
We’ve had a lot of fun with VTech’s computers in the past on this blog. Usually, they’re relatively spartan computers with limited functionality, but they did make something very interesting in the late 80s. The Socrates is their hybrid video game console/computer design from 1988, and today we’ll start tearing into it. ↫ Leaded Solder web log Now we’re in for the good stuff. A weird educational computer/game console/toy thing from the late ’80s, by VTech. I have a massive soft s … ⌘ Read more

A Computational Proof of the Highest-Scoring Boggle Board
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Fujitsu and RIKEN develop world-leading 256-qubit sup quantum computer
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Show HN: New world record – verified Goldbach Conjecture up to 4*10^18+7*10^13
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@bender@twtxt.net super old ass CPU lol it’s probably ancient in computer years! GTS needs a CPU thing that came after 2010 so that explains it (2008 machine) lmao

Even though I really do like the shell, I always use Dolphin to mount my digicam SD card and copy the photos onto my computer. I finally added a context menu item in Dolphin to create a forest stroll directory with the current date in order to save some typing:

The following goes in ~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/galmkdir.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin,inode/directory
Actions=Waldspaziergang;

[Desktop Action Waldspaziergang]
Name=Heutigen Waldspaziergang anlegen…
Icon=folder-green
Exec=~/src/gelbariab/galmkdir "%f"

In order to update the KDE desktop cache and make this action menu item available in Dolphin, I ran:

kbuildsycoca5

The referenced galmkdir script looks like that:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

current_dir="$1"
if [ -z "$current_dir" ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 DIRECTORY" >&2
    exit 1
fi

dir="$(kdialog \
    --geometry 350x50 \
    --title "Heutigen Waldspaziergang anlegen" \
    --inputbox "Neues Verzeichnis in „$current_dir“ anlegen:" \
    "waldspaziergang-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)")"
mkdir "$current_dir/$dir"
dolphin "$current_dir/$dir"

This solution is far from perfect, though. Ideally, I’d love to have it in the “Create New” menu instead of the “Actions” menu. But that doesn’t really work. I cannot define a default directory name, not to mention even a dynamic one with the current date. (I would have to update the .desktop file every day or so.) I also failed to create an empty directory. I somehow managed to create a directory with some other templates in it for some reason I do not really understand.

Let’s see how that works out in the next days. If I like it, I might define a few more default directory names.

Orthogonal Devices ER-301 Sound Computer 32-bit AM3352-SOM ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz system on module chip

IBM unveils z17 mainframe, z/OS 3.2
IBM today announced the IBM z17, the next generation of the company’s iconic mainframe, fully engineered with AI capabilities across hardware, software, and systems operations. Powered by the new IBM Telum II processor, IBM z17 expands the system’s capabilities beyond transactional AI capabilities to enable new workloads. ↫ IBM z17 press release Alongside this brand new behemoth of a computer, IBM also announced z/OS 3.2, the next version of its mainframe opera … ⌘ Read more

The Coming Convergence of AI and Quantum Computing
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Fuuuuuuucking hell. 😮‍💨 It’s one of “those” days.

Getting the firmware of a VTech/LeapFrog LeapStart/Magibook
This is a very small blog post about my first reverse engineering project, in which I don’t really reverse engineer anything yet, but I am just getting started! A family member asked me to add additional book data to the LeapStart he bought for his son, this is the starting point here. ↫ leloubil’s blog We’ve all seen toy, child-focused computers like these, and I always find them deeply fascinating. I’m not buyi … ⌘ 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

Thunder Compute (YC S24) is hiring a GPU systems engineer
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Hey kids, stay away from computer jobs.

AR Computers to Terminate Eyestrain and Myopia
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The 32bit RISC OS needs to be ported to 64bit to survive, seeks help
RISC OS, the operating system from the United Kingdom originally designed to run on Acorn Computer’s Archimedes computers – the first ARM computers – is still actively developed today. Especially since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, new life was breathed into this ageing operating system, and it has gained quite a bit of steady momentum ever since, with tons of small updates, applications, … ⌘ Read more

Blue95: Fedora Atomic Xfce converted to a Windows 95 desktop
Blue95 is a modern and lightweight desktop experience that is reminiscent of a bygone era of computing. Based on Fedora Atomic Xfce with the Chicago95 theme. ↫ Blue95 GitHub page Exactly as it says on the tin. This is by far the easiest way to get the excellent Chigaco95 theme for Xfce set up and working in a polished way, and it also contains a few different application choices from the regular Fedora Xfce desk … ⌘ Read more

FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
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Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home’s computer room
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CIA Director Reveals Signal Comes Installed on Agency Computers
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SoftBank acquires Ampere Computing
SoftBank Group Corp. today announced that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a leading independent silicon design company, in an all-cash transaction valued at $6.5 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Ampere will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group and retain its name. As part of the transaction, Ampere’s lead investors – Carlyle and Oracle – are selling their respective positions in Ampere. ↫ SoftBank and Ampere Computing press release … ⌘ Read more

Google makes Vulkan the official graphics API for Android
Google’s biggest announcement today, at least as it pertains to Android, is that the Vulkan graphics API is now the official graphics API for Android. Vulkan is a modern, low-overhead, cross-platform 3D graphics and compute API that provides developers with more direct control over the GPU than older APIs like OpenGL. This increased control allows for significantly improved performance, especially in multi-threaded a … ⌘ Read more

I got a small desk calendar as advertising gift. It shows three months at once. I’m using this thing since the beginning of this year and I have to say that it turned out to be super useful. I’m happily surprised.

It sits on my desk next to my rightmost monitor. I’ve set it up so that I can see the last, current and next months. Each morning, I advance the “today window” or whatever its proper name is. This gives me a sense of what date we have today and which I will have forgotten half a minute later already. At most. However, it’s easily at hand by turning my head just a few degrees.

With the last month still showing, I had several occasions so far where a date in the past popped up in a meeting. I could easily tell when something happened, how long ago that was. Or how many days or weeks are left until we have to deliver something, etc.

In hindsight, this is absolutely no surprise at all. But I still find it fascinating. I’m now actually wondering why I never had something like that before. How could I live without that thing? Sure, I pulled up a calendar on my computer, ncal -w3 or so. But I always hated the inverted ncal output, necessary for showing week numbers, though. Having a paper calander right next to my screen at all times is sooooo much more handy.

So, do yourself a favor and think about whether such a desk calendar might be useful to you.

The only annoying thing is that the “today window” moves too easily. It slips down by its own. I reckon it wants me to regularly interact with it, so that I memorize the current date.

Startup launches biological computer made of human brain cells
Melbourne start-up launches biological computer using human neurons; Novel immune system function reveals potential for antibiotic advancements; Australia reveals its oldest-known impact crater dating back 3.47 billion years ⌘ 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

It’s so interesting and mind-bending at the same time. Many concepts resemble classical computing, binary states, and logic gates.

Microsoft unveils experimental quantum chip using new state of matter + 1 more story
Microsoft unveils a new chip that accelerates quantum computing; Nvidia launches Evo 2, largest AI system for genetic research ⌘ Read more

I’m in an article in Quanta Magazine! It’s about the bizarre world of algorithms that re-use memory that’s already full. https://www.quantamagazine.org/catalytic-computing-taps-the-full-power-of-a-full-hard-drive-20250218/ I’m the one with all the snow in the background.

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev I’m all for elegant solutions. I prefer when the computer helps me to really achieve my goal and solve it completely, not where I still have to manually filter a list by hand. Anyway. :-)

💭 Remember kids 🧒

The “Cloud” is just someone else’s computer(s).

@f1ee6 Hello, for my part, I’m discovering Gopher :-). Really cool to give a little life to old computers. For the moment, I access Gopher from an old Mac G3/OS9, lynx on linux on an I3 laptop and for fun, Gopher from my old Palm PDA with Overbite. Lots of good things to all, friendship from France ;-)

The GNU Guix System
GNU Guix is a package manager for GNU/Linux systems. It is designed to give users more control over their general-purpose and specialized computing environments, and make these easier to reproduce over time and deploy to one or many devices. ↫ GNU Guix website Guix is basically GNU’s approach to a reproducible, functional package manager, very similar to Nix because, well, it’s based on Nix. GNU also has a Linux distribution built around Nix, the GNU Guix System, which is fully ‘libre’ as al … ⌘ Read more

Old Computer Challenge https://occ.deadnet.se/

A random suggestion. You should add a password to your private ssh key. Why? If someone steals your key, they won’t be able to do anything without the password.
You should run: ssh-keygen -p
And remember to make a backup copy of key file. As a developer, it is a one of the most valuable files on your computer.

Right to root access
I believe consumers, as a right, should be able to install software of their choosing to any computing device that is owned outright. This should apply regardless of the computer’s form factor. In addition to traditional computing devices like PCs and laptops, this right should apply to devices like mobile phones, “smart home” appliances, and even industrial equipment like tractors. In 2025, we’re ultra-connected via a network of devices we do not have full control over. Much of this has t … ⌘ Read more

How UNIX spell ran in 64kB RAM
How do you fit a 250kB dictionary in 64kB of RAM and still perform fast lookups? For reference, even with modern compression techniques like gzip -9, you can’t compress this file below 85kB. In the 1970s, Douglas McIlroy faced this exact challenge while implementing the spell checker for Unix at AT&T. The constraints of the PDP-11 computer meant the entire dictionary needed to fit in just 64kB of RAM. A seemingly impossible task. ↫ Abhinav Upadhyay They still managed to … ⌘ Read more

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I approve! That’s how I learned HTML (version 4 at the time and XHTML shortly after) and making websites, too. Some of them are still made like this to this day. Hand-written HTML. Hardly any <div> and class nonsense. I can’t remember with which editor I started out with, but I upgraded to Webweaver (later renamed to Webcraft) quickly. Yeah, this were the times when there was just a single computer for the whole family.

Free hosting on Arcor, Freenet and I don’t know anymore how they were all called. Like this author, I uploaded everything via FTP. Oh dear, when was the last time I used that? And I had registered plenty of free .de.vu domains.

Being on Windows at the time, everything was ISO-8859-1 for me. No UTF-8, I don’t think I’ve heard about it back then.

Later, I wrote my own CMSes in PHP. Man, were they bad in retrospect. :-D Of course, MySQL databases were used as backends. I still exactly know the moment I read the first time about SQL injections. I tried it on my own CMS login and was shocked when I could just break in. The very next thing I did was to lock down everything with an .htaccess until I actually fixed my broken PHP code. Hahaha, good memories.

I swear by Atom or RSS feeds. Many of my sites offer them. I daily consume feeds, they’re just great.

Israel and Hamas agree to ceasefire + 3 more stories
Scientists showcase new antimony atom method in quantum computing; UK leader signs treaty with Ukraine enhancing security; Israel and Hamas agree on ceasefire and hostages; SpaceX launches Falcon 9 with lunar landers for commercial missions. ⌘ Read more

I forget where I found this, but it’s really beautiful, for the right kind of nerd (hi, it’s me!) — Docubyte’s Guide To Computing. https://www.docubyte.com/projects/guide-to-computing/

That’s a well done mapping of computer time scale to human time scale: https://youtu.be/PpaQrzoDW2I

Matt Godbolt is also a guy that I just enjoy listening to.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz i don’t even have like time or space to stream unless it was no mic/video and just me doing stuff on my computer which can be boring without even mic input. plus no way to use camcorder that way. but. it’d be cool if i could so i dream

@bender@twtxt.net I’m that kind of dude who disables all silly animations and delays. Simply don’t waste my time, please. We have fast enough computers nowadays, no need to slow them back down artificially.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz am i in an idol video watching mood or play with single board computers mood

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz i think what i love about “retro” (relative to me because i was born 2004) is that it has friction but in a different way than modern tech does. sure there’s friction with getting a video from your phone to a computer unless you’re a nerd like me with android and syncthing. but not only is that something that could be but isn’t easier, it’s just… it makes sense for a camcorder from ~2009 to have the kind of friction it does

my camcorder battery & mini dvds came in the mail so i did a test recording! it’s so cool i love the crap quality. i do hope the memory stick arrives soon though because for the discs i can’t get them on my computer (not even a rom drive filesystem mount) without “finalizing” the disc which is like an old camcorder thing. i still think i’ll prefer disc recording though even if a limit of 30 minutes (or longer for lower quality) is strict. i like limitations like that

this is sooo cute and so fun i got it for timer stuff bc lord knows i need a timer on my computer and now i’m staring at animated ASCII cats that kiss https://github.com/poetaman/arttime

“Plez give me all the compute, money, and copyright allowance and i give you shitty autocomplete for fee!” - Tech Bro.