At around 19 seconds in the video, you can see some minor graphical glitches.

Text mode applications in Unix terminals are such a mess. It’s a miracle that this works at all.

In the old DOS days, you could get text (and colors) on the screen just by writing to memory, because the VGA memory was mapped to a fixed address. We don’t have that model anymore. To write a character to a certain position, you have to send an escape sequence to move the cursor to that position, then more escape sequences to set the color/attributes, then more escape sequences to get the cursor to where you actually want it. And then of course UTF-8 on top, i.e. you have no idea what the terminal will actually do when you send it a “🙂”.

Mouse events work by the terminal sending escape sequences to you (https://www.xfree86.org/current/ctlseqs.html#Mouse%20Tracking).

ncurses does an amazing job here. It’s fast (by having off-screen buffers and tracking changes, so it rarely has to actually send full screen updates to the terminal) and reliable and works across terminals. Without the terminfo database that keeps track of which terminal supports/requires which escape sequences, we’d be lost.

But gosh, what a mess this is under the hood … Makes you really miss memory mapped VGA and mouse drivers.

DHS Says REAL ID, Which DHS Certifies, Is Too Unreliable To Confirm US Citizenship
An anonymous reader shares a report: Only the government could spend 20 years creating a national ID that no one wanted and that apparently doesn’t even work as a national ID. But that’s what the federal government has accomplished with the REAL ID, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) now considers un … ⌘ Read more

Public Domain Day 2026 Brings Betty Boop, Nancy Drew and ‘I Got Rhythm’ Into the Commons
As the calendar flips to January 1, 2026, thousands of copyrighted works from 1930 are entering the US public domain alongside sound recordings from 1925, making them free to copy, share, remix and build upon without permission or licensing fees. The literary haul includes William Faulkner’s As I Lay D … ⌘ Read more

UK Company Sends Factory With 1,000C Furnace Into Space
A UK-based company has successfully powered up a microwave-sized space factory in orbit, proving it can run a 1,000C furnace to manufacture ultra-pure semiconductor materials in microgravity. “The work that we’re doing now is allowing us to create semiconductors up to 4,000 times purer in space than we can currently make here today,” says Josh Western, CEO of Space … ⌘ Read more

Tech Startups Are Handing Out Free Nicotine Pouches to Boost Productivity
The Wall Street Journal reports that a growing number of tech startups are stocking offices with free nicotine pouches as founders and employees chase sharper focus and stamina in hyper-competitive AI-era work environments. The Wall Street Journal reports: Earlier this year, two nicotine startups – Lucy Nicotine and Sesh – mad … ⌘ Read more

Asahi Linux Has Experimental Code For DisplayPort, Apple M3/M4/M5 Bring-Up Still Ongoing
Prominent Asahi Linux developer Sven Peter spoke at this week’s 39th Chaos Communication Congress “39C3” in Hamburg, Germany. He provided an update around the still-in-the-works Apple M3 / M4 / M5 SoC and device support as well as other outstanding features like getting DisplayPort working on Apple Macs under Linux… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Closing Out 2025 With Several Laptop Additions
A New Year’s Eve pull request is ready with several Intel/AMD laptop improvements for the ongoing Linux 6.19 kernel cycle. An x86 platform drivers pull request sent to Linus Torvalds today brings several notable driver enhancements with expanding the range of supported laptops… ⌘ Read more

The Problem With Letting AI Do the Grunt Work
The consulting firm CVL Economics estimated last year that AI would disrupt more than 200,000 entertainment-industry jobs in the United States by 2026, but writer Nick Geisler argues in The Atlantic that the most consequential casualties may be the humble entry-level positions where aspiring artists have traditionally paid dues and learned their craft. Geisler, a screenwriter and WGA membe … ⌘ Read more

What Working with Neil deGrasse Tyson is REALLY like ⌘ Read more

Well, you girls and guys are making cool things, and I have some progress to show as well. 😅

https://movq.de/v/c0408a80b1/movwin.mp4

Scrolling widgets appears to work now. This is (mostly) Unicode-aware: Note how emojis like “😅” are double-width “characters” and the widget system knows this. It doesn’t try to place a “😅” in a location where there’s only one cell available.

Same goes for that weird “ä” thingie, which is actually “a” followed by U+0308 (a combining diacritic). Python itself thinks of this as two “characters”, but they only occupy one cell on the screen. (Assuming your terminal supports this …)

This library does the heavy Unicode lifting: https://github.com/jquast/wcwidth (Take a look at its implementation to learn how horrible Unicode and human languages are.)

The program itself looks like this, it’s a proper widget hierarchy:

(There is no input handling yet, hence some things are hardwired for the moment.)

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Because you might not want to commit all changed files in a single commit. I very often make use of this and create several commits. In fact, I like to git add --patch to interactively select which parts of a file go in the next commit. This happens most likely when refactoring during a feature implementation or bug fix. I couldn’t live without that anymore. :-)

If you have a much more organized way of working where this does not come up, you can just git commit --all to include all changed files in the next commit without git adding them first. But new files still have to be git added manually once.

PhDs Can’t Find Work as Boston’s Biotech Engine Sputters
The Wall Street Journal reports that Boston’s once-booming biotech sector has hit a sharp downturn, leaving newly minted Ph.D.s struggling to find work as venture funding dries up, lab space sits empty, and companies downsize or relocate amid rising costs and policy uncertainty. The Wall Street Journal reports: Boston’s biotech sector, long a vital economic eng … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Well, I used SnipMate years ago (until 2012). IIRC, it’s more than just “insert a bit of text here”, it can also jump to the correct next location(s) and stuff like that. Don’t remember why I stopped using it.

Then I used nothing for a long time. Just before Christmas, I made my own plugin (… of course …), which does everything I need at the moment (and nothing more).

It can insert simple templates and then jump to the next location:

https://movq.de/v/67cdf7c827/sisni%2Dpython.mp4

And replace a string after insertion:

https://movq.de/v/67cdf7c827/sisni%2Dheader.mp4

(It’s not public (yet?) and it also uses vim9script, so I guess it wouldn’t work on your system.)

‘Why Academics Should Do More Consulting’
A group of researchers is calling on universities to treat consulting work as a strategic priority, arguing that bureaucratic obstacles and inconsistent policies have left a massive revenue stream largely untapped even as higher education institutions face mounting financial pressures. (Consulting work refers to academics offering their advice and expertise to outside organizations – industry, … ⌘ Read more

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I can tell you this right now, writing assembly / machine code is fucking hard work™ 😓 I’m sure @movq@www.uninformativ.de can affirm 🤣 And when it all goes to shit™ (which it does often), man is debugging fucking hard as hell! Without debug symbols I can’t use the regular tools like lldb or gdb 😂

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Yeah I remember you said some days back that your interest in compilers was rekindled by my work on mu (µ) 😅

Updated Linux Drivers Posted For Legion Go & Legion Go S Configuration
Open-source developer Derek J. Clark continues leading the efforts on improving the Lenovo Legion Go series hardware support under Linux. Posted today was the second iteration of the HID driver work for the Legion Go and Legion Go S for configuration support with the built-in controller HID interfaces… ⌘ Read more

KDE Plasma’s Wayland Transition “Nears Completion” In Ending Out 2025
In addition to today’s blog post calling out the need for others to takeover the This Week In Plasma series, KDE developer Nate Graham also published another blog post to highlight the successes of the Plasma desktop over 2025. In particular, the KDE Plasma Wayland transition “nears completion” as it works to become Wayland-only in early 2027… ⌘ Read more

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I think I can get binaries even smaller with a bit more work and effort 🤔 But yeah still working on the native code generation (at least for macOS targets)

Mesh Networks Are About To Escape Apple, Amazon and Google Silos
After more than two decades of promises and false starts in the mesh networking space, the smart home standards that Apple, Amazon and Google have each championed are finally set to escape their respective brand silos and work together in a single unified network.

Starting January 1, 2026, Thread 1.4 becomes the Thread Group’s only certified sta … ⌘ Read more

Wine 11.0-rc4 Brings 22 Bug Fixes
Wine 11.0-rc4 is out today as the latest weekly release candidate in working toward the stable Wine 11.0 release in January… ⌘ Read more

Indian IT Was Supposed To Die From AI. Instead It’s Billing for the Cleanup.
Two years after generative AI was supposed to render India’s $250 billion IT services industry obsolete, the sector is finding that enterprises still need someone to handle the unglamorous plumbing work that large-scale AI deployment demands. Less than 15% of organizations are meaningfully deploying the new technology, accordin … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Not even entirely sure how I did it myself, but likely a lucky combination of the new tail swirl, the legs closer to the screen being bigger and the head looking slightly to the side (eye & ear position), with bottom part of the hair, going behind the snout. The white is just an outline, around most of my works, so I don’t think that plays a part.

Arch Linux Powered CachyOS To Develop A Server Edition
The Arch Linux based CachyOS has been quite popular with Linux gamers and enthusiasts for offering leading out-of-the-box performance, especially following the shutdown of Intel’s Clear Linux. CachyOS has developed quite a following on the Linux desktop while looking ahead to 2026 they will be working on a server edition… ⌘ Read more

Mobileye Eyeq6Lplus SoC Support Being Worked On For Mainline Linux Kernel
The mainline Linux kernel already supports several different Mobileye SoCs for that company focused on self-driving tech and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Consulting firm Bootlin has been working on bringing their latest SoC, the Mobileye Eyeq6Lplus, to the mainline Linux kernel… ⌘ Read more

Page Cache Sharing Looks To Be Very Beneficial For EROFS Containers
One of the features being worked on for a while with the read-only EROFS file-system is page cache sharing. Besides EROFS being popular on some mobile/embedded devices, this open-source read-only file-system has been quite popular for container usage and there this page cache sharing functionality can provide some significant reductions in RAM usage… ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Using The Linux Scheduler Designed For Valve’s Steam Deck On Its Servers
Phoronix’s Michael Larabel writes: An interesting anecdote from this month’s Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo is that Meta (Facebook) is using the Linux scheduler originally designed for the needs of Valve’s Steam Deck… On Meta Servers. Meta has found that the scheduler can actually adapt and work very well on t … ⌘ Read more

Remote Work is Officially Dead, Says the World’s Largest Recruiter
The great return-to-office battle has effectively concluded and a clear pecking order has emerged, according to Sander van ’t Noordende, the CEO of Randstad, a staffing giant that places around half a million workers in jobs every week. Remote work is becoming a status symbol reserved for star performers and those possessing rare skills. “You have t … ⌘ Read more

Micro QuickJS Engine Compiles & Runs JavaScript With As Little As 10kB Of RAM
Very talented open-source developer Fabrice Bellard who already is well known for his work on QEMU, the Tiny C Compiler, and FFmpeg, has another accomplishment: Micro QuickJS. The Micro QuickJS JavaScript engine can compile and run JavaScript programs with as little as 10 kB of RAM… ⌘ Read more

Meta Is Using The Linux Scheduler Designed For Valve’s Steam Deck On Its Servers
An interesting anecdote from this month’s Linux Plumbers Conference in Tokyo is that Meta (Facebook) is using the Linux scheduler originally designed for the needs of Valve’s Steam Deck… On Meta Servers. Meta has found that the scheduler can actually adapt and work very well on the hyperscaler’s large servers… ⌘ Read more

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

@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de A crocodile had bitten the big submarine internet cable that connects Australia to Europe. The investigations revealed that some construction work last week accidentally tore up the protective layer around it. That went unnoticed, unfortunately, so marine life had an easy job today. For just 40 minutes, they were quite fast in repairing the damage if you ask me! These communication cables are fricking large.

Just kidding, I completely made that up. :-D I didn’t notice any outage either. But I didn’t try to connect to Down Under at the time span in question.

Apple Developer’s Account Restored After Compromised Gift Card Incident
“It’s all fixed,” says that Apple developer who was locked out of his Apple Account after redeeming a compromised Apple Gift Card.

“A lovely man from Singapore, working for Apple Executive Relations, who has been calling me every so often for a couple of days, has let me know it’s all fixed. It looks like the gift card I tried to r … ⌘ Read more

‘Confused’ Waymos Stopped in Intersections During San Francisco Power Outage
“On Saturday, videos shared widely on social media showed Waymo vehicles stopped mid-intersection with hazard lights flashing, forcing other cars to maneuver around them,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Independent notes that “Without working traffic lights, the driverless cars were seemingly left confused, with m … ⌘ Read more

Package Forge: The Lesser Known Snap/Flatpak Alternative Without Distro Lock-In
An anonymous reader shared this report from the site It’s FOSS:

Linux gives you plenty of ways to install software: native distro packages, Flatpak, Snap, AppImage, source builds, even curl-piped installers. The catch is that each one solves a different problem, yet none of them fully eliminates the “works here, break … ⌘ Read more

Will Work Change Over the Next 20 Years?
What is the future of work? The Wall Street Journal asked five workplace experts and practitioners.

So while AI “is already doing tasks once relegated to newly minted college graduates in many professions,” the Journal predicts that in the next 20 years AI “will have an impact on the role of managers, how organizations measure business outcomes and accelerate tasks that once took months.”

A sen … ⌘ Read more

Trump Admin to Hire 1,000 for New ‘Tech Force’ to Build AI Infrastructure
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:

The Trump administration on Monday unveiled a new initiative dubbed the “U.S. Tech Force,” comprising about 1,000 engineers and other specialists who will work on artificial intelligence infrastructure and other technology projects throughout the federal government.

Participants wi … ⌘ Read more

@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. 🥳

Image

Intel Prepares For KVM Guest VMs To Support Advanced Performance Extensions (APX)
Since Linux 6.16 the Intel APX support has been ready for the kernel infrastructure and goes along with the compiler toolchain support for Advanced Performance Extensions with the likes of GCC and LLVM/Clang. The latest element being worked on for APX enablement in the open-source/Linux world is for allowing KVM guest virtual machines (VMs) to make use of APX… ⌘ Read more

While Releasing ‘Avatar 3’, James Cameron Questions the Future of Movies
“If I get to do another Avatar film, it’ll be because the business model still works,” James Cameron tells CNN in a video interview — adding “That I can’t guarantee, as I sit here today. That’ll play out over the next month, really.” He says theatre is a “sacred space,” and while it will never go away, “I think that it could … ⌘ Read more

WMI Marshalling Support For Linux Aims To Match Windows’ ACPI/WMI Handling
Open-source developer Armin Wolf has been working most recently on marshalling support for the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) platform code within the Linux kernel. This WMI marshalling support is to better match the behavior of Microsoft Windows’ WMI ACPI driver and ultimately to allow for better compatibility with some ACPI firmware and enhancing some WMI drivers… ⌘ Read more

Is America’s Tech Industry Already Facing a Recession?
America’s unemployment rate for tech jobs rose to 4% in November, and “has been steadily rising since May,” reports the Washington Post (citing data from the IT training/certifications company CompTIA).

Between October and November, the number of technology workers across different industries fell 134,000, while the number of people working in the tech industry decline … ⌘ Read more

Does AI Really Make Coders Faster?
One developer tells MIT Technology Review that AI tools weaken the coding instincts he used to have. And beyond that, “It’s just not fun sitting there with my work being done for me.”

But is AI making coders faster? “After speaking to more than 30 developers, technology executives, analysts, and researchers, MIT Technology Review found that the picture is not as straightforward as it might seem…”
… ⌘ Read more

Firefox Will Ship With an ‘AI Kill Switch’ To Completely Disable All AI Features
An anonymous reader shared this report from 9to5Linux:

After the controversial news shared earlier this week by Mozilla’s new CEO that Firefox will evolve into “a modern AI browser,” the company now revealed it is working on an AI kill switch for the open-source web browser…

What was not made clear [in Tuesday’s … ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net working, at this point against my will, on a Linux VPS that has gotten me sick time and time again

Wine 11.0-rc3 Released With Another Week Of Bug Fixing
In working toward the Wine 11.0 stable release in January, Wine 11.0-rc3 is out today as the latest weekly release candidate… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Made Another Copilot Ad Where Nothing Actually Works
Microsoft’s latest holiday ad for its Copilot AI assistant features a 30-second montage of users seamlessly syncing smart home lights to music, scaling recipes for large gatherings, and parsing HOA guidelines – none of which the software can actually perform reliably when put to the test. The Verge methodically tested each prompt shown in the ad and foun … ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net I’m doing great, how’re ya going? Just two more days and then I never have to work anymore. In this year.

I just baked two trays of gingerbread. One definitely good one and another experiment.

This morning was also super pretty: https://lyse.isobeef.org/morgensonne-2025-12-19/

ACM To Make Its Entire Digital Library Open Access Starting January 2026
The Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, announced that all publications and related artifacts in the ACM Digital Library will become freely available to everyone starting January 2026. Authors will retain full copyright to their published work under the new arrangement, and A … ⌘ Read more

Intel’s Linux NPU User-Space Driver Adds Panther Lake Support
Since late 2024 Intel has been working on 5th Gen NPU support for their Linux IVPU driver. That 5th Gen NPU support for Intel Core Ultra “Panther Lake” SoCs was upstreamed back in Linux 6.13. Now today the Intel Linux NPU user-space driver has seen its official support added for Panther Lake… ⌘ Read more