The compiler technique I’m using here is to not “emit” most of the runtime if it’s actually never used in your program, and also dropping dead code in the SSA pass.

My little toy operating system from last year runs in 16-bit Real Mode (like DOS). Since I’ve recently figured out how to switch to 64-bit Long Mode right after BIOS boot, I now have a little program that performs this switch on my toy OS. It will load and run any x86-64 program, assuming it’s freestanding, a flat binary, and small enough (< 128 KiB code, only uses the first 2 MiB of memory).

Here I’m running a little C program (compiled using normal GCC, no Watcom trickery):

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/los86%2D64.mp4

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/c.png

Next steps could include:

• Use Rust instead of C for that 64-bit program?
  
• Provide interrupt service routines. (At the moment, it just keeps interrupts disabled.)

@thecanine@twtxt.net Is it because you’ve used white pixels around it to sort of give it aht 3D look? 👀 Hmm? 🤔

2025 end the year rewind:

Compared to only 3 new artworks in 2024 and next to no work, on other projects, this year I not only met the self-imposed goal of monthly pixelart, but exceeded it by 50%, with 18 additions in total.

Relicensed the majority of canine faction owned art and projects, under two less restrictive Creative Commons licensees*. This also applies retroactively, to everyone who used/archived our art and projects, back when the old license didn’t allow it.

Disappointed by the current state of the Internet and continued lack of competition among browsers, completely reworked the main website* and made Smol Drive** (a new image gallery project), both made to be compatible with as many web and Gemini browsers, as possible.

*see https://thecanine.smol.pub
**see https://thecanine.smol.pub/smolbox

Hi everyone 👋

I’ve been experimenting with different creative tools recently, mostly around image and video editing, and I came across an interesting AI-based face editing website:
https://remakeface.ai/

What I found useful is that it focuses on realistic face replacement and quick previews, which can be handy for creative projects, short videos, or just experimenting with ideas before doing more detailed work elsewhere.

I’m curious if anyone here has tried similar tools or has recommendations for AI-assisted image or face editing that feels natural rather than overly artificial. Always interested in learning what others in the community are using or testing lately.

Looking forward to your thoughts 🙂

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Very nice! I often wish other languages had something similar. Sometimes, I use lambdas, but that also looks ugly and feels a bit like a misuse. Other times, just the normal blocks are enough, but it’s not the same. Especially with the mutability aspects as the article explains. Typically, I just put it in a function or ignore it if it’s just a few lines.

This feels useful: Rust’s Block Pattern

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I was surprised by that as well. 😅 I thought these were features that you can use, but no, you must do all this.

By the way, I now fixed the issue that I mentioned at the end and it works on the netbook now. 🥳

https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2025-12-21/0/netbook.jpg

@kiwu@twtxt.net Assembly is usually the most low-level programming language that you can get. Typical programming languages like Python or Go are a thick layer of abstraction over what the CPU actually does, but with Assembler you get to see it all and you get full control. (With lots of caveats and footnotes. 😅)

I’m interested in the boot process, i.e. what exactly happens when you turn on your computer. In that area, using Assembler is a must, because you really need that fine-grained control here.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah, well, given that I didn’t need this for such a long time, it’s probably not an essential tool. 😅

I’ve often wanted to have an outline of text documents, though, and tagbar/ctags can do that as well:

https://movq.de/v/3c6d1a13d6/tagbar-md.png

https://movq.de/v/abc58e6d66/tagbar-latex.png

This isn’t as powerful as the “Navigator” tool in StarOffice/LibreOffice (which can be used to rearrange the document), but still pretty useful:

https://www.uninformativ.de/blog/postings/2024-05-23/0/so31.mp4

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Interesting. I never found a big use for these kind of lists in general. But I might give it a shot again.

If your very popular project with lots of stars on GitHub is over 10 years old, and you’re still at a pre-1.0 version because you’re using SemVer and a 1.0 would mean making some kind of commitment and that’s somehow not desirable for you, then I think you’re doing something wrong. 🤔

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe it was a mess, we are better without it. Until a new mobile client comes (not holding my breath), Yarn is very usable on the mobile, just using the browser.

Webp, though it has been around for a long while, wasn’t fully supported on all browsers until recently. The other formats have been in use for such a long time, proving to work just fine, that the advantages Webp provides haven’t been seemingly enough to merit a switch.

Google is also the one behind Webp, and, well, people don’t trust, nor like, them much.

@zvava@twtxt.net I figure I will know when it is ready, the day I see you using it. Can’t wait! :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de lovely, thanks for sharing! Now you know what I will be using today on a loop.

Use more WebP, I guess.

• Lossless PNG, 635 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot.png
  
• Lossless WebP, 469 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot.webp
  
• Lossy WebP, 110 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot%2Dlossy.webp
  
• Lossy JPEG, 110 kB: https://movq.de/v/b239c54838/scrot%2Dlossy.jpg

@prologic@twtxt.net Here you go:

(LTT = “Linus Tech Tips”, that’s the host.)

LTT: There was a recent thing from a major tech company, where developers were asked to say how many lines of code they wrote – and if it wasn’t enough, they were terminated. And there was someone here that was extremely upset about that approach to measuring productivity, because–

Torvalds: Oh yeah, no, you shouldn’t even be upset. At that point, that’s just incompetence. Anybody who thinks that’s a valid metric is too stupid to work at a tech company.

LTT: You do know who you just said that about, right?

Torvalds: No.

LTT: Oh. Uh, he was a prominent figure in the, uh, improved efficiency of the US government recently.

Torvalds: Oh. Apparently I was spot on.

But it is weird that none of the slot plates (that I can find) appear to have the correct pin order. 🤔

The two mainboards I have here use this order:

2468x
13579

But the slot plates use this:

12345
6789x

I tripped over this at first and wondered why it didn’t work.

Has this changed recently or what? 🥴

@prologic@twtxt.net Ah, shit, you might be right. You can even buy these slot plates on Amazon. I didn’t even think to check Amazon, I went straight to eBay and tried to find it there, because I thought “it’s so old, nobody is going to use that anymore, I need to buy second-hand”. 🤦🤦🤦

It really shows that I built my last PC so long ago … I know next to nothing about current hardware. 😢

@prologic@twtxt.net Bwahahaha! I tried to establish some form of “convention” for commit messages at work (not exactly what you linked to, though), but it’s a lost cause. 😂 Nobody is following any of that. Nobody wants to invest time in good commit messages. People just want to get stuff done.

I’m just glad that 80% are at least somewhat useful – instead of “wip” or “shit i screwed up”.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I couldn’t agree more! I think good commit messages are very useful, however, and I’d much prefer the conventional mood style for Commit messages, but rather prefer telling a story rather than this weird syntax all over the shop!

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Are you using your Gitea username instead of got@ ? Are you forwarding auth?

@prologic@twtxt.net he uses subdomains. Which do you think the identity be associated with? (hint, “it is not so hard!”).

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe yeah, that’s the only reason why I use sub-domains when trying anything federated (I believe Matrix has the same problem), in case things didn’t go as planned I can just migrate and take it down.

@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com Nice to see someone else also participating! 🥳

(Btw, they don’t want us to share our inputs: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventofcode/wiki/faqs/copyright/inputs/ Yeah, it’s a bit annoying. I also have to do quite a bit of filtering on my repo …)

FWIW, day 03 and day 04 where solved on SuSE Linux 6.4:

https://movq.de/v/faaa3c9567/day03.jpg

https://movq.de/v/faaa3c9567/day04%2Dv3.jpg

Performance really is an issue. Anything is fast on a modern machine with modern Python. But that old stuff, oof, it takes a while … 😅

Should have used C or Java. 🤪 Well, maybe I do have to fall back on that for later puzzles. We’ll see.

@bender@twtxt.net Nothing will make me use Discord, though. 😅 Not voluntarily.

@prologic@twtxt.net I couldn’t find the exact blog post from before, one that used redirection directives in its nginx config. but I found [this one ](https://melkat.blog/p/unsafe-pricing#:~:text=Something%20else%20I’ve%20been%20doing%20this%20year,%20fine.) mentioning a similar process but done differently.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org no wonder I picked that cake (albeit coincidentally), I adore almonds, and hazelnuts! Your teammates are absolutely amazing, dude! A very nice project farewell! On leaving places I have a small anecdote.

I know someone who on 3 February 2004 left his job to go elsewhere. At the time his teammates threw a party, and gave him a very nice portable storage. Twenty days later, he returned, and jokingly they asked him for the storage, and money spent on farewell party back. I heard, from a close source, that he gave them his middle finger, but don’t quote me on that. 😂😂😂

@prologic@twtxt.net right! I’ve been looking at used ones I might be able to use…

Before smartphones people used to use the Sony Camcorders, but even though they still exist today, they’re uber expensive 😂

@prologic@twtxt.net Using your own language?! That’s really nice! I hope you get home soon so you can give the code a try. 😅

Thinking about doing Advent of Code in my own tiny language mu this year.

mu is:

• Dynamically typed
  
• Lexically scoped with closures
  
• Has a Go-like curly-brace syntax
  
• Built around lists, maps, and first-class functions
  

Key syntax:

• Functions use fn and braces:
  

fn add(a, b) {
    return a + b
}

• Variables use := for declaration and = for assignment:
  

x := 10
x = x + 1

• Control flow includes if / else and while:
  

if x > 5 {
    println("big")
} else {
    println("small")
}

while x < 10 {
    x = x + 1
}

• Lists and maps:
  

nums := [1, 2, 3]
nums[1] = 42

ages := {"alice": 30, "bob": 25}
ages["bob"] = ages["bob"] + 1

Supported types:

• int
  
• bool
  
• string
  
• list
  
• map
  
• fn
  
• nil
  

mu feels like a tiny little Go-ish, Python-ish language — curious to see how far I can get with it for Advent of Code this year. 🎄

Website Task Flowchart
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“The Internet Used To Be A Place”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYlcUbLAFmw

@movq@www.uninformativ.de yeah, you fetched it too quickly, it was edited seconds after picking the wrong image. LOL. Which brings us back in a whole, huge circle, to twtxt edits, and how to handle them. 😅

Advent of Code 2025 starts tomorrow. 🥳🎄

This year, I’m going to use Python 1 on SuSE Linux 6.4, writing the code on my trusty old Pentium 133 with its 64 MB of RAM. No idea if that old version of Python will be fast enough for later puzzles. We’ll see.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Damn. That was stupid of me. I should have posted examples using 2026-03-01 as cutoff date. 😂

In my actual test suite, everything uses 2027-01-01 and then I have this, hoping that that’s good enough. 🥴

def test_rollover():
    d = jenny.HASHV2_CUTOFF_DATE
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d - timedelta(days=7), TEXT)) == 7
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d - timedelta(seconds=3), TEXT)) == 7
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d - timedelta(seconds=2), TEXT)) == 7
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d - timedelta(seconds=1), TEXT)) == 7
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d, TEXT)) == 12
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d + timedelta(seconds=1), TEXT)) == 12
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d + timedelta(seconds=2), TEXT)) == 12
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d + timedelta(seconds=3), TEXT)) == 12
    assert len(jenny.make_twt_hash(URL, d + timedelta(days=7), TEXT)) == 12

(In other words, I don’t care as long as it’s before 2027-01-01. 😏😅)

I have to say. A well designed Hypermedia Driven Web Application such as yarnd‘ using HTMX is just as good, i'd not better, than one written in React.

As someone that almost exclusively uses “Discover”, that is. If you do use it like I do, you know I mean.

easily the only one not using Mastodon either, lol

then again I don’t use Mastodon…

Pleroma may have worked, perhaps

I think i may have fixed threading too but can’t easily test now as i’ve left for my
holiday and don’t really use Mastodon 😂

I’m kind of tired of late of telling support folks, for example, ym registrar, how to do their fucking goddamn jobs 🤦‍♂️

Hi James,

Thank you for your patience.

There are several reasons why a .au domain registration might fail or be cancelled, including inaccurate registrant information, ineligibility for a .au domain licence, or issues related to Australian law.

For a full list of possible reasons, please see this article: https://support.onlydomains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/6415278890141-Why-has-my-au-domain-registration-been-cancelled

If you believe none of these reasons apply to your case, please let us know so we can investigate further.

Best regards,

Yes, so tell me support person, why the fuck did it fail?! 🤬

I have a question! I’m looking for a small personal camera(specifically good for videos because that’s what I’ll use it for) that’s cheap enough for a teen to afford but also actually good. Do any of you tech people have any good recs?

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com I think I’ll just end up using the Official CrowdSec Go library 🤔

PSA: Just in case you start getting 5xxs on my end, I’m not dead 😂 (well, unless I am). Well be changing ISPs and hopefully get the new line up and running before the old provider cuts us off.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Yeah and I think I can basically pull the crowssec rules every N interval right and use this to make blocking decisions? – I’ve actually considered this part of a completely new WAF design that I just haven’t built yet (just designing it).

@prologic@twtxt.net I remember reading a blog-post where someone has been throwing redirects to some +100GB files (usually used for speed testing purposes) at a swarm of bots that has been abusing his server in order to criple them, but I can’t find it anymore. I’m pretty sure I’ve had it bookmarked somewhere.