KeePassXC Tips and Hidden Gems (2022)

Use autofill/plugins. Use Notes. Use file attachments. Add favicons. Use Android app. Some other stuff.

How to mess with your roommate (2018)

Fun pranks with the notification daemon turned into binary/script path/patch trickery.

Ask HN: What was being a software developer like about 30 years ago? (2022)

Great thread!

It was possible to get your head around entire tech stacks. There was no internet, so books and magazines were more relevant, then usenet as it caught on. Everything was waterfall development with longer releases. There was little/no version control, backups, or testing. Everyone was rolling their own libraries (for better or worse). A developer today can be much more productive by leveraging existing content (often open source) with only a shallow as-needed knowledge about other components.

Toy CPU by Jim Hall (2022)

Jim Hall is a constant blessing.

How I Program C by Eskil Steenberg (2016)

Some good advice, some well-justified opinions, some compiler assertions which don’t hold up anymore. (also, why so many spelling mistakes in everything this brilliant fellow does?)

What to blog about (2022)

“write about things you’ve learned, and write about things you’ve built”

Exactly what color was the text on monochrome terminals with green-on-black and amber-on-black screens? (2019)

Picking RGB colors of CRT phosphor wavelengths. Amazing.

layoffs.fyi

This site has kept track of tech layoffs since the start of 2020. Many let go at Twitter and Facebook this week as tech seems headed towards another bubble pop?

Strange Loop Conference

I’d never heard of this before, but some good looking talks, there’s a whole track on open source. I enjoyed:

ANORMAL’s executable tools (2021)

Huge collection of DOS compilers and binary tools.

Comparing TCP and QUIC (2022)

First time I’ve looked at QUIC in detail. It seems awesome. I don’t think it will supplant TCP in a hurry but I hope it does. Anybody who’s met Dave “bufferbloat” Taht knows how much he dislikes TCP now.

A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto (1993)

How does something about technology written almost 30 years ago only get more relevant over time?

The Sad, Sad Story of Laika, the Space Dog, and Her One-Way Trip Into Orbit (2018)

I love Laika.

Why does calloc exist? (2016)

I knew about the mapping to zero-page, but not about the bounds checking. Cool!

Light Colour Schemes

Apparently light schemes are better for cognition and reduce strain?

I think i could live with Solarized Light, but so many other “light” schemes are blaring white with no customisation (eg: Discord), and it feels like there’s more effort put into dark schemes these days.

Programming With DOS Debugger (2003)

Cool walkthrough of DEBUG.EXE to assemble and disassemble a basic COM executable.

vim-sneak

The first plugin I’ve added in years. Adds the s motion to jump to the next two characters.

Octotree

Browser plugin which gives GitHub a tree sidebar. So good it should be official.

Peer Production License

A “copyfair” or “copyFARleft” license which denies commercial use, unless by a collective in which the means of production is in the hands of the creators. ☭

Why no one should use the AT&T syntax ever, for any reason, under any circumstances (2021)

🔥

The 12-bit rainbow palette

I love colour palettes. I see Kate’s work on Mastodon, she makes https://grid.iamkate.com/ which is some 11/10 pro-level data visualisation.

C23 implications for C libraries (2022)

Great overview of C23 changes, general and per-header for standard library. Thank you based Jens Gustedt.

An introduction to debug events: Learn how to use breakpoints (2022)

TIL you can b BREAKPOINT if CONDITION - wow! commands BREAK-ID seems useful too.

The Seven Levels of Busy (2022)

I tend to hover between 2 and 4. Also lol “the weekend” means no commitments. It just means different commitments.

How to categorize C programs by behavior (2022)

Nice human-readable explanation of correct, implementation-defined, and undefined behaviour.

A history of ARM, part 2: Everything starts to come together (2022)

Great series. I had no idea Acorn became Element14.

10 years of FTL: The making of an enduring spaceship simulator (2022)

I love FTL. These guys are great too, they even replied to an email I had about SDL and scaling.

GCC undefined behaviors are getting wild (2022)

My biggest takeaway here was using Ghidra to decompile ones’ own logic, to see different ways it can be represented.

Everything I wish I knew when learning C (2022)

A couple of incorrect points (notably suggested array type is int[5] not *int) but lots of good ones. I’ve not played with -Og before, -Werror=implicit seems a good idea.