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jordaneldredge.com
found this kicking around on one of the feeder sites a few days ago and only got to read it now kinda neat. it's the sort of thing that you used to find quite a lot with keygens and other things prone to easter eggs, and that I don't really know of being as prevalent in more recent gaming and such
github.com
skeet: https://bsky.app/profile/kezz.io/post/3kpzm7ya6tb2g from back when AI hallucinations were *hallucinatory*
github.com
found via someone running a server at revision retro fun. quite slick, too!
Invite up at https://2024.revision-party.net/blog/04-invitation/ ~2 weekends away (who cares about the week) Prepare for watching mathematical black magic!
Amaranth is a simple-but-expressive hardware description language (the type of language you use to define integrated circuits for FPGAs, ASICs, and similar hardware) implemented as a Python DSL. I'm not the biggest Python fan, but Amaranth is worth it -- even though it's in heavy development and its documentation is incomplete, it's by far the most comprehensible HDL I've ever used, and I've tried many of them. [its documentation](https://amaranth-lang.org/docs/amaranth/latest/) is incomplete since the language is under heavy development, but its [language guide](https://amaranth-lang.org/docs/amaranth/latest/guide.html) is still the best gentle introduction to HDL concepts I've read, and [its tutorials](https://amaranth-lang.org/docs/amaranth/latest/tutorial.html) are written for an older version of the language (sometimes called nMigen) but are still excellent -- in particular, Robert Baruch's tutorials combine design fundamentals with formal verification (which itself is usually considered an advanced technique, but Amaranth streamlines it), and the Vivonomicon RISC-V tutorials are worth a read too
aesoprock.bandcamp.com
>You could get a robot limb for your blown-off limb > >Later on the same technology could automate your gig, as awesome as it is > >Wait, it gets awful: you could split a atom willy-nilly > >If it's energy that can be used for killing, then it will be > >It's not about a better knife, it's chemistry and genocide > >And medicine for tempering the heck in a projector light > >Landmines, Agent Orange, leaded gas, cigarettes > >Cameras in your favorite corners, plastic in the wilderness > >We can not be trusted with the stuff that we come up with > >The machinery could eat us, we just really love our buttons, um > >Technology, focus on the other shit > >3D-printed body parts, dehydrated onion dip > >You can buy a Jet Ski from a cell phone on a jumbo jet > >T-E-C-H-N-O-L-O-G-Y, it's the ultimate the subject matter of Aesop Rock's latest album felt relevant to our instance's interests
Someone ported [this 8-bit miniature Unix-like](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUnix) from Commodore to Nintendo. The YouTube title is a little bit clickbaity, but the project is cool so I don't mind.
Remember how we were told that genAI learns "just like humans", and how the law can't say about fair use, and I guess now all art is owned by big tech companies? Well, of course it's not true. Exploiting a few of the ways in which genAI --is not-- like human learners, artists can filter their digital art in such a way that if a genAI tool consumes it, *it actively reduces the quality of the model*, undoing generalization and bleading into neighboring concepts. Can an AI tool be used to undo this obfuscation? Yes. At scale, however, doing so requires increasing compute costs more and more. This also looks like an improvable method, not a dead end -- adversarial input design is a growing field of machine learning with more and more techniques becoming highly available. Imagine this as sort of "cryptography for semantics" in the sense that it presents asymetrical work on AI consumers (while leaving the human eye much less effected). Now we just need labor laws to catch up. Wouldn't it be funny if not only does generative AI not lead to a boring dystopia, but the proliferation and expansion of this and similar techniques to protect human meaning eventually put a lot of grifters out of business? We must have faith in the dark times. Share this with your artist friends far and wide!
Years ago (we're talking decades) I ran into a small program that randomly generated raytraced images (think transparent orbs, lens flares, reflection etc), suitable for saving as wallpapers. It was a C/C++ program that ran on Linux. I've long since lost the name and the source code, and I wonder if there's anything like that out there now?
media.ccc.de
A follow-up to [this TechTakes post](https://awful.systems/post/677809) Saw this live at the congress. The presentation was great and the hall was packed. It was hard to find a seat in a huge auditorium even 15 minutes ahead of the talk.
this is pretty cool. it’s a tutorial with interactive exercises that explores the Nix language as a general-purpose functional programming language, outside of its role as the configuration and package definition language for NixOS. understanding Nix better as a language makes more complicated packages easier to write (and is necessary to understand the guts of nixpkgs and the parts of Nix written in itself), but it also has a number of unique advantages as a programming language within a very specific domain.
this is in part because it's for (yet another) post I'm working on, but I figured I'd pop some things here and see if others have contributions too. the post _will_ be completed (and include examples, usecases, etc), but, yeah. I've always taken a fairly strong interest in the tooling I use, for QoL and dtrt reasons usually (but also sometimes tool capability). conversely, I also have things I _absolutely loathe_ using 1. [wireguard](https://www.wireguard.com/). a far better vpn software and protocol than most others (and I have slung tunnels with _many_ a vpn protocol). been using this a few years already, even before the ios app beta came around. good shit, take a look if you haven't before 2. [smallstep cli](https://smallstep.com/cli/). it's one of two pieces of Go software I actually _like_. smallstep is trying to build its own ecosystem of CA tools and solutions (and that's usable in its own right, albeit by default focused to containershit), but the cli is _great_ for what you typically want with certificate handling. compare `step certificate inspect file` and `step certificate inspect --insecure https://totallyreal.froztbyte.net/` to the bullshit you need with openssl. check it out 3. restic. the other of the two Go-softwares I like. I posted about it [here previously](https://awful.systems/post/157098) 4. rust cli things! oh damn there's so many, I'm going to put them on their own list below 5. zsh, extremely lazily configured, with my own little module and scoping system _and no oh-my-zsh_. fish has been a thing I've seen people be happy about but I'm just an extremely lazy computerer so zsh it stays. zsh's complexity is extremely nonzero and it definitely has sharp edges, but it does work well. sunk cost, I guess. bonus round: [race your zsh](https://gist.github.com/froztbyte/67e8eab5b7b899f70e3bc40ad76f5bc4), [check your times](https://gist.github.com/froztbyte/c8b979d84561983a29feb5a734e8d8e4): ``` % hyperfine -m 50 'zsh -i -c echo' Benchmark 1: zsh -i -c echo Time (mean ± σ): 69.1 ms ± 2.8 ms [User: 35.1 ms, System: 28.6 ms] Range (min … max): 67.0 ms … 86.2 ms 50 runs ``` 6. [magic-wormhole](https://github.com/magic-wormhole/magic-wormhole). this is a really, really neat little bit of software for _just fucking sending files to someone_. `wormhole send filename` one side, `wormhole receive the-code-it-gives` the other side, bam! it uses [SPAKE2](https://jml.io/posts/what-is-spake2/) (disclaimer: I did help review that post, it's still good) for session-tied keying, and it's just generally _good software_ 7. [macos specifically] [alfred](https://www.alfredapp.com/). I gotta say, I _barely_ use this to its full potential, and even so it is a great bit of assistive stuff. more capable than spotlight, has a variety of extensibility, and generally snappy as hell. 8. [macos specifically] [choosy](https://choosy.app/). I use this to control link-routing and link-opening on my workstation to a fairly wide degree (because a lot of other software irks me, and does the wrong thing by default). this will be a fuller post on its own, too 9. [macos specifically] [little snitch](https://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html). application-level per-connection highly granular-_capable_ firewalling. with profiles. their site does a decent explanation of it. the first few days of setup tends to be Quite Involved with how many rules you need to add (and you'll probably be surprised at just how many things try to make various kinds of metrics etc connections), but well worth it. one of the ways to make modern software less intolerable. (honorary extra mention: obdev makes a number of handy pieces of mac software, check their site out) 10. [macos specifically] [soundsource](https://rogueamoeba.com/soundsource/). highly capable per-application per-sink audio control software. with the ability to pop in VSTs and AUs at multiple points. extremely helpful for a lot of things (such as perma-muting discord, which never shuts up, even in system dnd mode) rust tools: 1. [b3sum](https://crates.io/crates/b3sum). file checksum thing, but using blake3. [fast!](https://gist.github.com/froztbyte/9e273155934afe5b63706444b4cd4796). worth checking out. probably still niche, might catch on eventually 2. [hyperfine](https://crates.io/crates/hyperfine). does what it says on the tin. see example use above. 3. [dust](https://crates.io/crates/du-dust). like `du`, but better, and _way_ faster. oh dear god it is so much faster. I deal with a lot of pets, and this thing is one of the invaluables in dealing with those. 4. [ripgrep](https://crates.io/crates/ripgrep). the one on this list that people are _most_ likely to know. grep, but better, and faster. 5. [fd](https://crates.io/crates/fd-find). again, find but better and faster. 6. [tokei](https://crates.io/crates/tokei). sloccount but not shit. handy for if you quickly want to assess a codebase/repo. 7. [bottom](https://crates.io/crates/bottom). down the evolutionary chain from `top` and `htop`, has more feature modes and a number of neat interactive view functions/helpers honorary mentions (things I know of but don't use that much): 1. [mrh](https://crates.io/crates/mrh). not doing as much consulting as I used to, using it less. quickly checks all git(?) repos in a path for uncommitted changes 2. [fzf](https://crates.io/crates/fzf). still haven't really gotten to integrating it into my usage 3. [just](https://crates.io/crates/just). need to get to using it more. 4. [jql](https://crates.io/crates/jql). I ... tend to avoid jq? my "this should be in a program. with safety rails." reflex often kicks in when I see jq things. haven't really explored this 5. [rtx](https://crates.io/crates/rtx-cli). their tagline is "a better asdf". I like the idea of it because asdf is a miserable little pile of shell scripts and _fuck that_, but I still haven't really gotten to using it in anger myself. I have my own wrapper methods for keeping pyenv/nvm/etc out of my shell unless needed 6. [pomsky](https://crates.io/crates/pomsky). previously `rulex`. regex creation tool and language. been using it a little bit. not enough to comment in detail yet
Rules: no spoilers. The other rules are made up as we go along. Share code by link to a forge, home page, pastebin (Eric Wastl has one [here](https://github.com/topaz/paste#readme)) or code section in a comment.
The wider community is still on Reddit, I wonder if there’s an interest to have a small alternative? If not, what’s a good Lemmy instance for these things?
"AI for dummies" interview from Irish radio with Dr Abeba Birhane, who's on a UN advisory board about AI.
I don't really know enough about the C64 to say anything one way or the other, but this comment on youtube did okay: ``` @eightbitguru 1 year ago 2021: We have definitely seen everything the C64 can do now. 2022: My beer. Hold it. ``` and I'm posting this without even having _seen_ the whole thing yet
having recently played and refunded a terrible “modern” text adventure, I’ve had the urge to revisit my favorite interactive fiction author, [Andrew Plotkin aka Zarf](https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@zarfeblong). here’s a selection of recommendations from his long list of works: - if you’re new to playing interactive fiction (essentially the modernized form of the old Infocom text adventures), check out his [tutorial game](https://eblong.com/zarf/if.html#dreamhold) and [guide to IF parser commands](http://pr-if.org/doc/play-if-card/play-if-card.html) - [Spider and Web](https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/tangle/) is an old favorite; it uses the nature of the interactive fiction medium to involve the player in a game of deception - [Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home](https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/heliopause/) is a good interactive sci-fi short story - [Shade](https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/shade/) is an exploration into dreamlike writing and horror - [Lists and Lists](https://eblong.com/zarf/zweb/lists/) is a gamified Lisp tutorial — it’s where I learned the language!
punkx.org
A RISC-V assembly cracking board game. Can't comment on the gameplay experience, but what a cool idea.
www.pouet.net
[my comment over there](https://awful.systems/comment/704805) just made me recall this this demo is the next one in a long arc of people doing absolutely remarkable things to the original PC. that series went [8088 corruption](http://www.oldskool.org/pc/8088_Corruption) ([pouet](https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=13722)) -> [8088 domination](https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=63591) -> [8088 mph](https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=65371) and if you've never seen them before, you _absolutely_ should area 5150 has a [recording](https://youtu.be/fWDxdoRTZPc) of the production as well as an [audience reaction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xJZ9I4iqg8) recording from share day it's astoundingly awesome something I really enjoy about the scene is that the more you learn (about the technology, the math, the methodology), the deeper the appreciation of it gets
a surprisingly good Atari 2600 demo by XAYAX, originally presented at Revision 2014
nullsignal.games
Netrunner is a collectible card game with a very long history. in short: - its first edition was designed by the Magic: The Gathering guy (with about as many greed and scarcity mechanics as Magic) and took place in the same universe as Cyberpunk 2077 - the second edition was published by Fantasy Flight Games, replaced the scarcity mechanics with Living Card Game expansion packs (you get all the cards in the set with one purchase) and a sliding window for tournament play card validity, and switched universes and names to Android: Netrunner - the game went entirely out of print once Fantasy Flight dropped it - the current “edition” of the game and its rules are maintained by a non-profit cooperative named Nullsignal (formerly NISEI), who also continued the story started in Android: Netrunner. because the game is maintained by a non-profit (and actually appropriately fairly anti-corporate) cooperative, playing Netrunner ranges from free to relatively cheap: - any recognizable proxy is valid even in tournament play with the right (opaque-backed) sleeves. this means that you can print out Nullsignal’s cards at home and sleeve them with a little bit of card stock for rigidity and be ready for tournament play. this also means you can sleeve a post-it note for the same effect, so long as both players can recognize which card you’re supposed to be playing - you can buy a boxed set from Nullsignal if you’d like high quality cards, and they’ve also got on-demand manufacturing set up through DriveThruCards and MakePlayingCards - or you can forget physical cards entirely and play on [jinteki.net](https://www.jinteki.net/), a free service that lets you play an online game of Netrunner using every card ever published by Fantasy Flight and Nullsignal. the designers at Nullsignal also use Jinteki to beta test and pre-release sets, so you may also get access to cards that don’t physically exist yet the gameplay of Netrunner is fucking great: it’s an asymmetric card game where one player is a corporation (or their sysadmin at least) and the other is a runner trying to hack and bring down that corporation. the gameplay feels a lot like a mix between a shell game, the bluffing parts of poker, the better bits of Magic (most of the rules you need are on the cards), and an aggressive cat and mouse struggle, all at once. it’s actually one of my favorite ways that decking and ICE have been translated into gameplay mechanics. Nullsignal also does a great job on the story, art, and aesthetic of their new cards. modern Netrunner has a distinctive feel to it, but it’s clear that the folks behind it understand how to make good cyberpunk.
Hypnospace Outlaw is that [funny meme game with the pizza dance](https://youtu.be/L5oFYQPUnmE). it’s also a leftist parody of the California Ideology and some of the factors that led to the bursting of the dot com bubble. crucially, it’s also a whole lot of fun to play — it’s a very good point and click mystery adventure that takes place on a faithfully rendered and authentic-feeling version of a networked computer in the 90s, crafted by someone who absolutely knew what they were doing with the time period and aesthetic. above all, it’s one of the better cyberpunk games I’ve played, though I can’t really explain why without spoiling the ending. Hypnospace Outlaw can be finished fairly quickly, so I encourage anyone who hasn’t to give it a play or at least watch a playthrough from a non-annoying YouTuber. ending spoilers follow: ::: spoiler Hypnospace Outlaw ending spoilers it goes without saying that sleeptime computing in Hypnospace is a limited and janky but still revolutionary brain-computer interface, and in effect what you’re doing during the whole game is a precursor to netrunning. in fact, Hypnospace in general is a perfect prelude to a Gibsonian cyberpunk dystopia. as demonstrated in the last chapter of the game, sleeptime computing tech is fatal when pushed beyond its limits, as Merchantsoft demonstrated like only a short-sighted and greedy startup in 1999 could. Dylan even spends 20 solid years blaming a hacker for the lives he took fucking with tech he barely understood. the tech behind sleeptime computing is most likely outlawed after 1999, or its use is at least heavily stigmatized. at the same time, the promise behind Hypnospace remains alluring as fuck. in the last chapter of the game, you join up with a nostalgic effort to archive all of Hypnospace from the cache memory in your repaired moderator headband. the allure goes beyond nostalgia though: with the 90s ideas stripped away, even a janky BCI is incredibly useful. you can imagine high-frequency traders, drone pilots, and similar assholes being particularly interested in the illegal tech that replaces sleep with the ability to very efficiently do their jobs 24/7. cyberdeck tech being strictly regulated and only available to high-level corpos and obsessed hackers is a key component of classic cyberpunk. and hey, while we’re on the topic of the worst people in the world adopting illegal tech, did you finish the (excellent) M1NX and Leaky Piping side plots? cause if you did, you’ll know that sleeptime computing doesn’t actually let you sleep — it severely limits the amount of time you spend in REM sleep, but users don’t realize that because they’re still physically resting. so those high-frequency traders, drone pilots, and other assholes who’ve adopted habitual sleeptime computing use are also slowly going insane from a lack of REM sleep, and chances are they don’t know it because all the evidence was released right before the Mindcrash in short, these are all the precursor chemicals you need for a cyberpunk future. ::: the game’s author, Jay Tholen, is currently in progress on its sequel, Dreamsettler. I can’t wait for more good cyberpunk.
I found that the SerenityOS project also has a web browser with a completely new set of engines. It looks reasonably capable too. > Both LibWeb and LibJS are novel engines. I have a personal history with the Qt and WebKit projects, so there’s some inspiration from them throughout, but all the code is new. Not to mention, hundreds of people have worked on the codebase since I started it, all adding their own personal influences, so it’s definitely its own thing. Edit: Here's a recent interview with the creator Andreas Kling talking to Eric Meyer and Brian Kardell about the browser https://www.igalia.com/chats/ladybird Edit 2: Here’s their August 2023 update video of the browser https://youtu.be/OEsRW3UFjA0 Edit 3: Looks like the project was recently sponsored $100k USD from Shopify https://awesomekling.substack.com/p/welcoming-shopify-as-a-ladybird-sponsor It’s quite impressive! Note: I don't know anything about the politics of the SerenityOS project or the people behind it.
this is a computer that’s almost entirely without graphical capabilities, so here’s a demo featuring animations and sound someone did last year
I've been using it for a good while now, but figured it's worth a shoutout incase others don't know it. one of the few pieces of Go-ware I don't substantially hate. I've previously slapped together a [tiny set of shellscripts](https://gist.github.com/froztbyte/2a3b0bbdb11aa1b6cbdce93dcda081b2) for my use of it which you're welcome to steal from. also recently seen backupninja as something that can use this, but haven't tried that
They've done some really good reverse engineering on this project.
Its like tvtropes but for exotic IC engines.
Today marks five years since the death of TempleOS developer Terry A. Davis. Rest in peace. Despite some impractical quirks and limitations, this strange machine, something of a cross between DOS and Oberon, remains in our hearts and computers. Who am I to criticize God for his OS design? Let's pay our respects to a man who achieved inspiring things despite his severe illness and remember how his life was cut short in no small part by internet bullies and a capitalist system that failed him. I hope this doesn't need to be said but I don't want to see anyone emulating Terry's bigotry and slur usage nor making fun of his schizophrenia in these comments. Thanks in advance.
github.com
> Laravel creator Taylor Otwell learned PHP in 2008 and then > There were a few model-view-controller frameworks for PHP, some of which aimed to provide a "Rails-like" experience. But none was as comprehensive as Otwell wanted. So he built his own and released the first version in 2011. Taylor Otwell seems like someone who gets *design*. I've used Laravel a little bit and I know what they mean when they say "opinionated" - but I think the word doesn't do justice to his confidence in his design. Anyway, this article came up in my twitter feed yesterday and it made me happy to hear Laravel is going strong.
Someone probably named this before me but not my problem. > * 4 cℓ gin (or to taste) > * Top up with Club-Mate > * Garnish with juniper berries (optional) Recommended for taking the edge off of the usual subjects of sneer —whether Orange or LessSo— inclusive-or you like a gin and tonic with a caffeinated German hacker twist. I came up with the name after a workday of removing rules for decommissioned servers from SRX boxen. I wanted to share what I'm having for tonight's catharsis session. I think it's NotAwful; please share your findings if you like ethanol. It's not karma farming if the site doesn't record your total internet points.
bevyengine.org
Bevy is a fun, cozy game engine to play with if you’re looking for something very flexible that implements some surprisingly advanced features. things I like: - it’s all rust, which is an advantage for me and the chemical burns I have from handling the dialect of C++ a lot of older game engines used to be written in - it implements a flexible entity component system, which I found pretty great for specifying game and rendering logic for things like roguelikes and simulations, where multiple game systems might interact in dynamic ways - the API is very cozy and feels like querying an extremely fast database at times - it’s a lot lower level than something like Unity or Godot, but you get some pretty advanced rendering features included - the main developer seems to have a lot of industry experience and a solid roadmap
Nix is one of the few pieces of software I trust. I use it on just about every computer I work on — awful.systems is managed and deployed by just `nixos-rebuild` and a deployment flake, as are almost all the computers in my house (including a few embedded into the house itself). in general it makes both software development and configuring Linux a lot more fun compared with the traditional way of doing things I often call Nix fucking incomprehensible, but it doesn’t need to be. Zero to Nix is one of the documentation projects that’s intended to be a more gentle goal-oriented introduction to Nix concepts, and it’s definitely worth following along if you’re curious about Nix and want to be able to do something useful with it right away if you end up liking Nix and want more of it, NixOS is an entire Linux distro configured and managed by Nix, and it’s incredibly powerful and stable. I run it on a full-fat gaming PC as my primary OS and the experience of running it is surprisingly very good; feel free to ask and I’ll summarize how I run stuff like games on NixOS