TIL on my bike
Today, with the weather at a nice 19 °C, I took the chance for another bike tour. I had tried out my new, warmer cycling clothes yesterday during a long break from work, but since the weather will be much colder soon, I really wanted to get this second ride in. ⌘ Read more
Design trends I think will take off in 2026
but tierlist

S - move from flat design to more detailed, 3D, more complex logos.
A - glass, not just liquid, Windows Vista, 7, 11,… accessibility concerns, but I like to see it.
B-/C+ - black and white icons, favicons. I did it before it was cool, but it’s getting overused.
E - gradientslop, barely started, already all blends together.
Deals: AirPods Pro 2 for $170, $100 Off Apple Watch Ultra 3, & More
AirPods Pro 2 are fantastic earbuds and offer advanced features like hearing aid functionality for mild to moderate hearing loss, active noise cancellation, high fidelity sound, water and sweat resistance, Spatial Audio, custom fit, transparency mode, ear detection, a USB-C charging case, and more. AirPods Pro 2 – $170 (down from $249) Apple Watch Ultra … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/2025/11/01/de … ⌘ Read more
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, give it a shot. At worst you know that you have to continue your quest. :-)
Fun fact, during a semester break I was actually a little bored, so I just started reading the Qt documentation. I didn’t plan on using Qt for anything, though. I only looked at the docs because they were on my bucket list for some reason. Qt was probably recommended to me and coming from KDE myself, that was motivation enough to look at the docs just for fun.
The more I read, the more hooked I got. The documentation was extremely well written, something I’ve never seen before. The structure was very well thought out and I got the impression that I understood what the people thought when they actually designed Qt.
A few days in I decided to actually give it a real try. Having never done anything in C++ before, I quickly realized that this endeavor won’t succeed. I simply couldn’t get it going. But I found the Qt bindings for Python, so that was a new boost. And quickly after, I discovered that there were even KDE bindings for Python in my package manager, so I immediately switched to them as that integrated into my KDE desktop even nicer.
I used the Python KDE bindings for one larger project, a planning software for a summer camp that we used several years. It’s main feature was to see who is available to do an activity. In the past, that was done on a large sheet of paper, but people got assigned two activities at the same time or weren’t assigned at all. So, by showing people in yellow (free), green (one activity assigned) and red (overbooked), this sped up and improved the planning process.
Another core feature was to generate personalized time tables (just like back in school) and a dedicated view for the morning meeting on site.
It was extended over the years with all sorts of stuff. E.g. I then implemented a warning if all the custodians of an activitiy with kids were underage to satisfy new the guidelines that there should be somebody of age.
Just before the pandemic I started to even add support for personalized live views on phones or tablets during the planning process (with web sockets, though). This way, people could see their own schedule or independently check at which day an activity takes place etc. For these side quests, they don’t have to check the large matrix on the projector. But the project died there.
Here’s a screenshot from one of the main views: https://lyse.isobeef.org/tmp/k3man.png
This Python+Qt rewrite replaced and improved the Java+Swing predecessor.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Hmmmmmmmmmmmm … guess I should take a look at Qt. 🤔 That’s the one popular toolkit that I’ve never really tried for some reason. I really don’t like C++ (might as well use Rust), so I’ll also use Python.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Don’t you worry, this was meant as a joke. :-D
There was a time when I thought that Swing was actually really good. But having done some Qt/KDE later, I realized how much better that was. That were the late KDE 3 and early KDE 4 days, though. Not sure how it is today. But back then it felt Trolltech and the KDE folks put a hell lot more thought into their stuff. I was pleasantly surprised how natural it appeared and all the bits played together. Sure, there were the odd ends, but the overall design was a lot better in my opinion.
To be fair, I never used it from C++, always the Python bindings, which were considerably more comfortable (just alone the possibility to specify most attributes right away as kwargs in the constructor instead of calling tons of setters). And QtJambi, the Java binding, was also relatively nice. I never did a real project though, just played around with the latter.
Not so proud to be American — ‘fed up’ expats renounce citizenship
Steve Hendrix, - msn
_Stephan: Today, I got the third email I have received since August from an SR reader living overseas telling me they are giving up their American citizenship. I have known many Americans living overseas, but until recently, I couldn’t remember any of them telling me they were giving up their American citizenship. However, as this article describes, renouncing American c … ⌘ Read more
The Linux boot process: from power button to kernel
You press the power button. A second later a wall of text scrolls by, or a logo fades in, and eventually Linux appears. What happens in between is not magic. It is a careful handshake between tiny programs and a very literal CPU. This part follows that handshake until the very first line of C code inside the Linux kernel runs. ↫ 0xkato’s blog Exactly what it says on the tin. ⌘ Read more
B.C. to launch anti-tariff ads as Ontario pauses controversial campaign ⌘ Read more
@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, this is similar to my 2025 GWM Cannon Ute (truck) that we recently bought. It has this app called the “GWM App” that lets you view various health/stats of the vehicle, open/close the door, locks, control the A/C etc, all from your Mobile Phone. – But… Guess what?! :D It has a goddamn fucking SIM card in the head unit (dash) somewhere that once you “consent” and agree it signs up to some god knows what local cellular service and all that wonderul functionality is controlled by, guess what… A fucking goddamn CLOUD service! da actual flying fuck is wrong with these people?! – Are we some of the only people in the world that realize how fucking dumb all this Internet-connect shit™ really is?
Why C variable argument functions are an abomination (and what to do about it) | H4X0R****
Comments ⌘ Read more
Canada’s Privacy Watchdog Not Consulted on Bill C-8, Enabling Secret Internet & Phone Shutdowns ⌘ Read more
Sam Whited: Coffeeneuring 2025
This year I haven’t blogged much at all, but it’s time for the 15th annual
Coffeeneuring and who-knows-how-many-annual Biketober challenges so here we go!
This post will be updated with each of my Coffeeneuring rides as the month goes
on, and may (or may not) contain a few fun C+1 rides that count towards
Biketober, but not for Coffeeneuring.
… ⌘ Read more
lavandula: A fast, lightweight web framework in C for building modern web applications
Comments ⌘ Read more
N3694: Functions with Data - Closures in C (A Comprehensive Proposal Overviewing Blocks, Nested Functions, and Lambdas)
Comments ⌘ Read more
How to write a complete GNOME application in Lua
This article is intended to be a comprehensive guide to writing your first GNOME app in Lua using LuaGObject. The article assumes that you already understand Lua and want to get started with building beautiful native applications for GNOME. I also assume you know how to use a command line to install and compile software. Having some knowledge of the C programming language, as well as the Make, Gettext, and Flatpak software will be hel … ⌘ Read more
Tiny RISC-V Development Board with WCH CH32V317WCU6 Available from $6.80
The nanoCH32V317 is a compact development board created by MuseLab to simplify prototyping and embedded system development. It integrates USB connectivity, Ethernet support, and a straightforward programming interface through USB Type-C, providing an accessible platform for engineers and hobbyists working with RISC-V microcontrollers. The board is powered by the WCH CH32V317WCU6, a RISC-V microcontro … ⌘ Read more
UNIX99: UNIX for the TI-99/4A
I’ve been working on developing an operating system for the TI-99 for the last 18 months or so. I didn’t intend this—my original plan was to develop enough of the standard C libraries to help with writing cartridge-based and EA5 programs. But that trek led me quickly towards developing an OS. As Unix is by far my preferred OS, this OS is an approximation. Developing an OS within the resources available, particularly the RAM, has been challenging, but also surprisingly doab … ⌘ Read more
How to get LSP semantic highlighting working for C++ ⌘ Read more
Beyond Containers: llama.cpp Now Pulls GGUF Models Directly from Docker Hub
The world of local AI is moving at an incredible pace, and at the heart of this revolution is llama.cpp—the powerhouse C++ inference engine that brings Large Language Models (LLMs) to everyday hardware (and it’s also the inference engine that powers Docker Model Runner). Developers love llama.cpp for its performance and simplicity. And we at… ⌘ Read more
@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com, hi there! Welcome to the twtverse! It seems you have a typo on your site address, an extra “c”.
Here’s an example of X11/Xlib being old and archaic.
X11 knows the data type “cardinal”. For example, the window property _NET_WM_ICON (which holds image data for icons) is an array of “cardinal”. I am already not really familiar with that word and I’m assuming that it comes from mathematics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number
(It could also be a bird, but probably not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinalidae)
We would probably call this an “integer” today.
EWMH says that icons are arrays of cardinals and that they’re 32-bit numbers:
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/latest-single/#id-1.6.13
So it’s something like 0x11223344 with 0x11 being the alpha channel, 0x22 is red, and so on.
You would assume that, when you retrieve such an array from the X11 server, you’d get an array of uint32_t, right?
Nope.
Xlib is so old, they use char for 8-bit stuff, short int for 16-bit, and long int for 32-bit:
That is congruent with the general C data types, so it does make sense:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_data_types
Now the funny thing is, on modern x86_64, the type long int is actually 64 bits wide.
The result is that every pixel in a Pixmap, for example, is twice as large in memory as it would need to be. Just because Xlib uses long int, because uint32_t didn’t exist, yet.
And this is something that I wouldn’t know how to fix without breaking clients.
st tries not to redraw immediately after new data arrives:
https://git.suckless.org/st/file/x.c.html#l1984
The exact timings are configurable.
This is the PR that changed the timing in VTE recently (2023):
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/vte/-/issues/2678
There is a long discussion. It’s not a trivial problem, especially not in the context of GTK and multiple competing terminal widgets. st dodges all these issues (for various reasons).
We covered quite some ground in the two and a half hours today. The weather was nice, mostly cloudy and just 23°C. That’s also why we decided to take a longer tour. We saw four deer in the wild, three of which I managed to just ban on film, quality could be better, though. My camera produced a hell lot of defocused photos this time. Not sure what’s going on with the autofocus. https://lyse.isobeef.org/waldspaziergang-2025-07-10/
When the sun came out, colors were just beautiful:
