@prologic@twtxt.net I’d love to take a look at the code. 😅

I’m kind of curious to know how much Assembly I need vs. How much of a microkernel can I build purely in Mu (µ)? 🤔

Can’t really answer that, because I only made a working kernel for 16-bit real mode yet. That is 99% C, though, only syscall entry points are Assembly. (The OpenWatcom compiler provides C wrappers for triggering software interrupts, which makes things easier.)

But in long mode? No idea yet. 😅 At least changing the page tables will require a tiny little bit of Assembly.

ReactOS Receives Fix For A Very Annoying Usability Issue
ReactOS began 2026 with another “major step” towards Windows NT 6 compatibility with updating its MSVCRT implementation from Wine for the Microsoft C Runtime DLL library. That improved support for a number of Windows applications running on this open-source OS. ReactOS is taking another step-forward now with addressing a very annoying usability issue where up until now you may need to refresh the file manager for seeing folder changes… ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Pledges Full Power Costs, No Tax Breaks in Response To AI Data Center Backlash
Microsoft announced Tuesday what it calls a “community first” initiative for its AI data centers, pledging to pay full electricity costs and reject local property tax breaks following months of growing opposition from residents facing higher power bills. The announcement in Washington, D.C. marks a clea … ⌘ Read more

GCC 16 Compiler Steps Closer To Release With Algol 68 Frontend, AMD Zen 6, C++20 Default
GCC 16 as this year’s major feature release of the GNU Compiler Collection should be out in the typical March~April timeframe if all goes well. Today the GCC 16 compiler transitioned to its final stage “stage 4” of development with a focus exclusively on documentation and regression fixing… ⌘ Read more

Intel Releases Open3D 0.19 With Experimental Cross-Platform GPU Support Using SYCL
Not to be confused with the Open 3D game engine, Intel’s Intelligent Systems Lab Organization released Open3D 0.19 as the latest iteration of this open-source library for 3D data processing in Python and C++… ⌘ Read more

C# (and C) Grew in Popularity in 2025, Says TIOBE
For a quarter century, the TIOBE Index has attempted to rank the popularity of programming languages by the number of search engine results they bring up — and this week they had an announcement.

Over the last year the language showing the largest increase in its share of TIOBE’s results was C#.

TIOBE founder/CEO Paul Jansen looks back at how C++ evolved:

From a language … ⌘ Read more

Linux 7.0 Readying Improvement For Rust + LTO Kernel Builds
Alice Ryhl of Google has been working on an improvement to the Linux kernel code for inlining C helpers into Rust when making use of a Link-Time Optimized (LTO) kernel build. At least some of the patches are queued up for merging in the upcoming Linux 6.20~7.0 cycle for helping those enabling the Rust kernel support and also making use of the LLVM/Clang compiler’s LTO capabilities for greater performance… ⌘ Read more

Rubin Observatory Spots an Asteroid That Spins Fast Enough To Set a Record
Astronomers using the Vera C. Rubin Observatory have discovered a record-setting asteroid, known as 2025 MN45, nearly half a mile wide and spinning once every 1.88 minutes – the fastest known rotation for an object of its size. “This is now the fastest-spinning asteroid that we know of, larger than 500 meters,” said Sarah … ⌘ Read more

Vacation: Doing crazy things like C on DOS, lots of Rust, bare-metal assembly code, everything is fine.

Back at work: How the fuck do I move an email in this web mail program? Am I stupid? 😮‍💨

É verdade, hoje em dia só me ligo ao MOOsaico uma vez por ano,,, no seu aniversário. Hoje é o dia - parabéns #MOOsaico pelos teus 32 aninhos!

Para quem não sabe o que é ou quer espreitar, telnet moosaico.com 7777 ou https://c.moosaico.com/ leva-vos lá. O MOOsaico é a mais antiga comunidade Virtual Multilingue portuguesa em funcionamento (mas não a mais antiga Portuguesa, essa é a Selva Virtual, que não é multilingue e nasceu em 1992).

E é sempre bom ver que neste mundo de serviços que nascem, tornam-se gigantes e depois desaparessem, há serviços que nunca chegam à ribalta mas mantêm as suas comunidades, ano após ano, década após década…

Image

HP Pushes PC-in-a-Keyboard for Businesses With Hot Desks
HP this week announced the EliteBoard G1a at CES 2026, a Windows computer built into a full-size 93-key desktop keyboard that the company is marketing to businesses where employees use hot desks and need a portable computing environment they can carry between workstations.

The device connects to a USB-C monitor for both video output and power delivery over a single … ⌘ Read more

@bender@twtxt.net They’re not completely impossible, but C makes it much easier to run into them. I think the key point is that in those “safe” languages, buffer overflows are caught and immediately crash the program (if not handled otherwise) instead of silently corrupting memory, not being noticed right away and maybe only later crashing at a different location, where it can be very hard to find the actual root cause. This is a big improvement in my book.

Some programmers are indeed horrible. I’m guilty myself. :-)

I like the article.

I came across this on “Why Is SQLite Coded In C”, which I found interesting:

“There has lately been a lot of interest in “safe” programming languages like Rust or Go in which it is impossible, or is at least difficult, to make common programming errors like memory leaks or array overruns.”

If that’s true, then encountering those issues means the programmer is, simply, horrible?

Amazon’s AI Assistant Comes To the Web With Alexa.com
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Amazon’s AI-powered overhaul of its digital assistant, now known as Alexa+, is coming to the web. On Monday, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company announced the official launch of a new website, Alexa.com, which is now rolling out to all Alexa+ Early Access customers. The site will allow c … ⌘ Read more

GCC 16 Lands Support For Using Picolibc
While veteran open-source developer Keith Packard is known for his X.Org Server contributions over many years, another more recent open-source creation of his is Picolibc as a C library for embedded systems. As the latest achievement on that front, merged this weekend to the GCC 16 compiler codebase is support for using Picolibc… ⌘ Read more

@shinyoukai@neko.laidback.moe Oh no, fuck that 🤣 That’s why I built an FFI so I can call C-functions via shared libraries 🤣

Mu (µ) is now getting much closer to where I want it to be, it now has:

• A process stdlib module (very basic, but it works)
  
• An ffi stdob module that supports dlopen / dlsym and calling C functions with a nice mu-esque wrapper ffi.fn(...)
  
• A sqlite stdlib module (also very basic) that shows off the FFI capabilities
  

😅

On my way to having windows and mouse support:

https://movq.de/v/95bbbbd3e8/basic-windows.mp4

It would be cool to have something like Turbo Vision eventually.

(I considered just using Turbo Vision, but it’s a C++ library and that’s not quite what I’m looking for. But it’s not yet completely off the table.)

Can Colossal’s Genetically Engineered Animals Ever Be the Real Thing?
Colossal Biosciences, the Texas-based startup now valued at more than $10 billion that has attracted investments from Paris Hilton, Peter Jackson and Tom Brady, claimed earlier this year to have resurrected the dire wolf – an animal that disappeared at the end of the last ice age – but a group of leading canid experts concluded the c … ⌘ Read more

The baseline here is about 55 ms for nothing, btw. Python ain’t fast to start up.

$ time python -c 'exit(0)'

real    0m0.055s
user    0m0.046s
sys     0m0.007s

Fish 4.3 Brings Scripting & Interactivity Improvements, Enhanced Terminal Support
Fish 4.3 is out today as the newest update to this user-friendly command line shell. Fish 4.0 released at the beginning of this year in porting the codebase from C++ to Rust and now before closing out 2025 they have out Fish 4.3… ⌘ Read more

Open Source Initiative Estimates the ‘Top Open Source Licenses in 2025’
The nonprofit Open Source Initiative offers “enriched” license pages with “relevant metadata to provide deeper insights and better support”.

So which pages got the most pageviews in 2025? The MIT license, Apache 2.0 license, BSD licenses (3-clause and 2-clause), and GNU General Public license:

mit
(1.5M)
apache-2-0
(344k)
bsd-3-c … ⌘ Read more

44% Of GNOME Core Apps Are Written In C, 13% In JavaScript & 10% In Rust
GNOME developer Sophie Herold has shared some interesting end-of-year code stats for the GNOME project. The “GNOME” codebase is up to 6,692,516 lines of code at the end of 2025 with 1,611,526 lines of that being from GNOME apps. Where the data gets interesting is on the programming language breakdown in different areas… ⌘ Read more

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

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.)

@prologic@twtxt.net @movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh, I take my 0°C over the 36°C anytime! Even with yesterday’s gray and windy sleet in my face. However, there are definitely more pleasant times to walk in town, I’ll give you that. For example on 0°C sunny today: https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2025-12-25/

@prologic@twtxt.net And I froze my ass off yesterday at -5°C and strong winds. 🤣

that’s a whopping 36°C today 🥵

Microsoft Says It’s Not Planning To Use AI To Rewrite Windows From C To Rust
Microsoft has denied any plans to rewrite Windows 11 using AI and Rust after a LinkedIn post from one of its top-level engineers sparked a wave of online backlash by claiming the company’s goal was to “eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030.”

Galen Hunt, a principal software engineer responsible for sever … ⌘ Read more

iOS 26.3 Brings AirPods-Like Pairing To Third-Party Devices In EU Under DMA
Under pressure from the Digital Markets Act, Apple’s iOS 26.3 adds AirPods-style proximity pairing and notification support for third-party accessories in the EU. The changes will roll out to European users in 2026. MacRumors reports: The Digital Markets Act requires Apple to provide third-party accessories with the same c … ⌘ 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

Apple Fined $116 Million Over App Privacy Prompts
Apple has been fined $116 million by Italy’s antitrust regulator over the “excessively burdensome” privacy rules it imposes on third-party apps. From a report: The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) says that Apple abused its dominant app store market position by burdening developers with “disproportionate” terms around data collection that exceed privacy law requirements, c … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft To Replace All C/C++ Code With Rust By 2030
Microsoft plans to eliminate all C and C++ code across its major codebases by 2030, replacing it with Rust using AI-assisted, large-scale refactoring. “My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,” Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt writes in a post on LinkedIn. “Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s … ⌘ Read more

Agora LMM diz que GeM está pior que Ventura. Percebo que esteja irritado, mas dizer coisas dessas só lhe fica mal, e não abona da sua posição em relação aos perigos à democracia, o que para um candidato à presidência… Já lá vamos em 20 minutos disto. Vamos conseguir falar de presidenciais? GeM vê que a coisa não lhe está a correr bem, e então fala da Lei da nacionalidade (finalmente presidenciais?) e como LMM não enviaria a lei ao Constitucional e depois aquilo foi e chumbou (boa tirada). LMM acusa GeM de ser candidato zigzag porque andou a mudar de opinião em vários temas (boa tirada). GeM aproveita ter menos tempo para falar mas está nervoso e não diz nada de jeito.

Considerações pessoais: sabia q eram maus, fico c ainda pior impressão dos 2

Parrot OS Switches to KDE Plasma Desktop
“Yet another distro is making the move to the KDE Plasma desktop,” writes Linux magazine.

“Parrot OS, a security-focused Linux distribution, is migrating from MATE to KDE Plasma, starting with version 7.0, now available in beta.”

Based on Debian 13, Parrot OS’s goal is a shift toward “modernization, focusing on clearing technical debt and future-proofing the system.” One big under-the-hood c … ⌘ Read more

Intel ISPC 1.29 Drops Gen9 GPU Targets, Add New Optimizations & Experimental RISC-V
Intel ISPC 1.29 released on Wednesday as the newest feature update to this Implicit SPMD Program Compiler as a C variant able to target Intel hardware from their CPUs to GPUs for SIMD programming… ⌘ Read more

I rewrote all my solutions in Rust (except for day 10 part 2) and these are the runtimes on my i7-3770 from 2013 (this measures CLOCK_PROCESS_CPUTIME_ID, not wallclock):

day01/1 [      00.000501311] Result: 1066
day01/2 [      00.000400298] Result: 6223
day02/1 [      00.000358848] Result: 12586854255
day02/2 [      00.000750711] Result: 17298174201
day03/1 [      00.000106537] Result: 17405
day03/2 [      00.000404632] Result: 171990312704598
day04/1 [      00.000257517] Result: 1626
day04/2 [      00.007495342] Result: 9173
day05/1 [      00.000237212] Result: 505
day05/2 [      00.000142731] Result: 344423158480189
day06/1 [      00.000229629] Result: 4076006202939
day06/2 [      00.000279552] Result: 7903168391557
day07/1 [      00.000204422] Result: 1622
day07/2 [      00.000283816] Result: 10357305916520
day08/1 [      00.029427421] Result: 84968
day08/2 [      00.028089859] Result: 8663467782
day09/1 [      00.000310304] Result: 4764078684
day09/2 [      00.015512554] Result: 1652344888
day10/1 [      00.000796663] Result: 375
day10/2 [      --.---------] Result: 15377 (Z3)
day11/1 [      00.000416804] Result: 753
day11/2 [      00.000660528] Result: 450854305019580
day12/1 [      00.000336081] Result: 577
day12/2 [      00.000000695] Result: no part 2

A little under 90 ms total.

On my Samsung NC10 netbook from 2011 with its Intel Atom N455 at 1.6 GHz:

day01/1 [      00.003771326] Result: 1066
day01/2 [      00.003267317] Result: 6223
day02/1 [      00.003902698] Result: 12586854255
day02/2 [      00.006659479] Result: 17298174201
day03/1 [      00.000747544] Result: 17405
day03/2 [      00.002737587] Result: 171990312704598
day04/1 [      00.001263892] Result: 1626
day04/2 [      00.044985301] Result: 9173
day05/1 [      00.001696761] Result: 505
day05/2 [      00.000978962] Result: 344423158480189
day06/1 [      00.001387660] Result: 4076006202939
day06/2 [      00.001734248] Result: 7903168391557
day07/1 [      00.001295528] Result: 1622
day07/2 [      00.001809659] Result: 10357305916520
day08/1 [      00.277251443] Result: 84968
day08/2 [      00.284359332] Result: 8663467782
day09/1 [      00.003152407] Result: 4764078684
day09/2 [      00.071123459] Result: 1652344888
day10/1 [      00.005279527] Result: 375
day10/2 [      --.---------] Result: 15377 (Z3)
day11/1 [      00.003273342] Result: 753
day11/2 [      00.005139719] Result: 450854305019580
day12/1 [      00.002857552] Result: 577
day12/2 [      00.000004421] Result: no part 2

A little over 700 ms total.

I like this. You get performance that’s more or less in the ballpark of C, but without the footguns.

                     ```-/oshdmNMNdhyo+:-`
y/s+:-``    `.-:+oydNMMMMNhs/-``
-m+NMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNdhmNMMMmdhs+/-`
 -m+NMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmy+:`
  -N/dMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMds:`
   -N/hMMMMMMMMMmho:`
    -N/-:/++/:.`
     :M+
      :Mo
       :Ms
        :Ms
         :Ms
          :Ms
           :Ms
            :Ms
             :Ms
              :Ms

shinyoukai@madoka-usb-mk2
-------------------------
OS: NetBSD 10.1 amd64
Host: Exomate X352 (MP PV)
Kernel: NetBSD 10.1
Uptime: 8 hours, 46 mins
Packages: 172 (pkgsrc)
Shell: sh
Display (CPT1BBD): 1024x600 @ 60 Hz in 10"
Terminal: vim
CPU: Intel(R) Atom(TM) N450 (2) @ 1.67 GHz
GPU 1: Intel Device A011 (VGA compatible)
GPU 2: Intel Device A012
Memory: 761.14 MiB / 955.69 MiB (80%)
Swap: Disabled
Disk (/): 5.20 GiB / 26.84 GiB (19%) - ffs
Local IP (iwn0): (classified information)
Battery: 28% [Charging, AC Connected]
Locale: C.UTF-8

Day 7 was pretty tough, I initially ended up implementing an exponential in both time and memory solution that I killed because it was eating all the resources on my Mac Studio, and this poor little machine only has 32GB of memory (I stopped it at 118GB of memory, swapping badly!), This is what I ended up doing before/after:

• Before: Time O(2^k · L), memory O(2^k), where k is the number of splitters along a reachable path and L is path length. Exponential in k.
  
• After: Time O(R·C) (or O(R·C + s) with s split events), memory O©, where R = rows, C = columns. Polynomial/linear in grid size.

Awk to take lines from Plan 9’s /lib/unicode and prepend the actual glyph and a tab: awk ‘{cmd=sprintf(“unicode %s”, $1); cmd | getline c; printf(“%s %s\n”, c, $0)}’

Glibc Now Enabling 2MB THP On AArch64 By Default For Better Performance
The GNU C Library’s malloc implementation is now enabling 2MB Transparent Huge Pages (THP) by default for AArch64 Linux. This is being done in the name of better performance – a healthy 6.25% performance improvement is noted for SPEC with this change… ⌘ Read more

Turbostat Introduces New Cache Statistics, Nova Lake + Wildcat Lake Support
Turbostat is the Linux command-line utility for reporting CPU frequency / power / C-states and related performance / power management items namely for modern AMD and Intel processors. This CLI utility lives within the Linux kernel source tree and for Linux 6.19 has picked up a few new features… ⌘ Read more

Cold Case Inquiries Stall After Ancestry.com Revisits Policy For Users
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Since online genealogy services began operating, millions of people have sent them saliva samples in hopes of learning about their family roots and discovering far-flung relatives. These services also appeal to law enforcement authorities, who have used them to solve cold c … ⌘ Read more

2025 is the second hottest year since records began
Mean temperatures this year approached 1.5°C above the preindustrial average, making it the second hottest year after 2024 ⌘ Read more

Meson 1.10 Build System Adds OS/2 Support, Experimental C++ “import std”
Meson 1.10 is out today as the newest feature release for this popular cross-platform build system… ⌘ Read more

Extreme heat hampers children’s early learning
Children regularly exposed to temperatures over 30°C (86°F) have lower scores on literacy and numeracy tests at age 3 to 4, according to UNICEF data from six countries ⌘ Read more

1boy 1girl amy_rose ass big_penis classic_amy_rose classic_sonic clenched_teeth cloudz comic cum cum_in_pussy cum_inside cum_leaking female flat_chested hedgehog huge_cock male mammal penetration penis pussy rosy_the_rascal sega sex skirt skirt_lift smallbreasts sonic(series) sonic_cd sonic_the_hedgehog sonic_thehedgehog(series) spread_legs superbunnygt underwater underwater_sex vaginal_penetration water
1boy 1girl amy_rose ass big_penis classic_amy_rose classic_sonic clenched_teeth cloudz comic cum c … ⌘ Read more

Bending Spoons Buys Eventbrite For $500 Million
Longtime Slashdot reader williamyf writes: The Italian company Bending Spoons seems to be on an acquisitions spree. Their recent acquisitions of AOL and Vimeo are not yet finalized, yet on Dec. 2 they announced they are buying Eventbrite, a company specializing in publicizing and organizing local events, for just half a milliard USD. Bending Spoons’ portfolio also includes other c … ⌘ Read more

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

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.

Zlib-rs 0.5.3 Expands AVX-512 Usage For Faster Performance
The Trifecta Tech Foundation today released zlib-rs 0.5.3 as the newest version of this Zlib implementation written in the Rust programming language for better memory safety. Zlib-rs is advertised as “a safer Zlib” for use by both C and Rust projects while delivering competitive performance to the C-based zlib-ng… ⌘ Read more

Linux 6.19 Goes Ahead And Enables Microsoft C Extensions Support
Last month I reported on Linux 6.19 looking to enable Microsoft C Extensions support throughout the Linux kernel with setting the -fms-extensions compiler option to allow Microsoft C Extensions when building the kernel. Linus Torvalds today merged that support without objections… ⌘ Read more