The compiler technique I’m using here is to not “emit” most of the runtime if it’s actually never used in your program, and also dropping dead code in the SSA pass.

@prologic@twtxt.net That might be a challenge, at least in 16-bit Real Mode: The OS follows the model of COM files on DOS, i.e. the size of the binary cannot exceed 64 KiB and heap+stack of the running program will have to fit into that same 64 KiB. 😅 (The memory layout is very rigid, each process gets such a 64 KiB slice.)

And in 64-bit Long Mode, there is no “kernel” yet. The thing in the video is literally just a small bare-metal program.

But some day, maybe. 😃

Driverless Future Gains Momentum With Global Robotaxi Deployments
The global push to put autonomous taxis on public roads is accelerating as ride-hailing companies and technology firms advance from pilot programs toward limited commercial rollouts in cities across China, the United States, Europe and the Middle East.

WeRide and Uber launched Level 4 fully driverless robotaxi operations in Abu Dhabi in Novemb … ⌘ 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

https://movq.de/v/b27ced6dcb/c.png

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.)

Apple’s App Course Runs $20,000 a Student. Is It Really Worth It?
Apple’s Developer Academy in Detroit has spent roughly $30 million over four years training hundreds of people to build iPhone apps, but not everyone lands coding jobs right away, according to a WIRED story published this week.

The program launched in 2021 as part of Apple’s $200 million response to the Black Lives Matter protests and costs an esti … ⌘ Read more

Google Looks To Upstream Its Propeller Tool To LLVM For More Performance
Google’s Propeller is a profile-guided, reflinking optimizer for large codebases. Propeller is built atop LLVM and can allow for whole-program optimizations. Google compiler engineers are now hoping to bring the Propeller tool into the upstream LLVM codebase… ⌘ Read more

Ruby 4.0 Released With Ruby Box Experimental Feature, ZJIT Compiler
The past several years we have seen new releases of the Ruby programming language implementation for Christmas (25 December). This year is no different with Ruby 4.0 having been released this morning… ⌘ Read more

What Might Adding Emojis and Pictures To Text Programming Languages Look Like?
theodp writes: We all mix pictures, emojis, and text freely in our communications. So why not in our code? That’s the premise of “Fun With Python and Emoji: What Might Adding Pictures to Text Programming Languages Look Like?” (two-image Bluesky explainer; full slides), which takes a look at what mixing emoji with … ⌘ 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

Rex: Proposed Safe Rust Kernel Extensions For The Linux Kernel, In Place Of eBPF
University researchers presented Rex at this month’s Linux Plumbers Conference 2025 in Tokyo. Rex is designed for “safe and usable” Rust-based kernel extensions that could serve in place of eBPF programs for extending the Linux kernel functionality… ⌘ Read more

@kiwu@twtxt.net Assembly is usually the most low-level programming language that you can get. Typical programming languages like Python or Go are a thick layer of abstraction over what the CPU actually does, but with Assembler you get to see it all and you get full control. (With lots of caveats and footnotes. 😅)

I’m interested in the boot process, i.e. what exactly happens when you turn on your computer. In that area, using Assembler is a must, because you really need that fine-grained control here.

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

Meta ‘Pauses’ Third-Party Headset Program
Meta has paused its third-party Horizon OS headset program, effectively canceling planned VR headsets from Asus and Lenovo as it refocuses on “building the world-class first-party hardware and software needed to advance the VR market.” Road to VR reports: A little over a year and a half ago, Meta made an “industry-altering announcement,” as I called the move in my reporting: the company wa … ⌘ Read more

MI6 Chief: We’ll Be as Fluent in Python As We Are in Russian
The new chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service told officers this week that they must become as fluent in programming languages like Python as they are in foreign languages like Russian as the spy agency adapts to what she described as a space between peace and war. Blaise Metreweli, MI6’s first female chief and previously the service’s direc … ⌘ Read more

US Tech Force Aims To Recruit 1,000 Technologists
The Trump administration announced Monday the United States Tech Force, a new program to recruit around 1,000 technologists for two-year government stints starting as soon as March – less than a year after dismantling several federal technology teams and driving thousands of tech workers out of their jobs.

The program will primarily recruit early-career software engineers an … ⌘ Read more

Podcast Industry Under Siege as AI Bot Flood Airways with Thousands of Programs
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times:

Popular podcast host Steven Bartlett has used an AI clone to launch a new kind of content aimed at the 13 million followers of his podcast “Diary of a CEO.” On YouTube, his clone narrates “100 CEOs With Steven Bartlett,” which adds AI-generated animation … ⌘ Read more

I’m seeing crashes in the 3D subsystem. (Gallium? Glamor? Whatever other Mesa thing they have? No idea.) In the logs I find this:

malloc(): unaligned tcache chunk detected

And that’s why I still care about Rust and want to learn more about it, even though it’s giving me so much headache and I’ve given up so many times. Because Rust currently seems to be the only popular systems programming language that tries to eliminate these error classes.

And of course “the Rust experiment” in the Linux kernel has recently been concluded as “successful”, so that alone is reason enough for me:

https://lwn.net/Articles/1049831/

I just completed “Secret Entrance” - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2025 #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/1 — However I did it in my own toy programming language called mu, which I had to build first 🤣

Is the R Programming Language Surging in Popularity?
The R programming language “is sometimes frowned upon by ‘traditional’ software engineers,” says the CEO of software quality services vendor Tiobe, “due to its unconventional syntax and limited scalability for large production systems.” But he says it “continues to thrive at universities and in research-driven industries, and “for domain experts, it remains a power … ⌘ Read more

Ahh that’s because I forgot to call main() at the end of the source file. mu is a bit of a dynamic programming language, mix of Go(ish) and Python(ish).

$ ./bin/mu examples/aoc2025/day1.mu 
Execution failed: undefined variable readline

New Linux Patch Confirms: Rust Experiment Is Done, Rust Is Here To Stay
Rust for Linux lead developer Miguel Ojeda posted the patch a short time ago to “conclude the Rust experiment”. The “experiment” of Rust programming language code in the Linux kernel is over as it’s now accepted to be a success and “Rust is here to stay” in the kernel… ⌘ Read more

Haiku OS Sees Port Of Go 1.18 Programming Language
The BeOS-inspired Haiku operating system has received a recent port of the Go programming language to the platform. Plus Haiku also saw app improvements and more over the month of November… ⌘ Read more

SEC Gives DTCC OK to Tokenize Stocks In Move To Blockchain
The SEC has granted the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., or DTCC, a no-action letter allowing it to custody and recognize tokenized stocks, ETFs, and Treasuries on approved blockchains for three years. “Although this program is a pilot subject to various operational limitations, it marks a significant incremental step in moving markets onchain,” SEC Commiss … ⌘ Read more

Microsoft Is Back To Working On “Hornet” Security For eBPF Programs On Linux
Earlier in the year Microsoft proposed the “Hornet” Linux security module to provide signature verification capabilities for eBPF programs to provide for better system security. It’s been months since hearing anything more about it and not being merged, but yesterday they “reintroduced” it to the Linux kernel community… ⌘ Read more

Cable Channel Subscribers Grew For the First Time In 8 Years Last Quarter
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, research analyst MoffettNathanson released its “Cord-Cutting Monitor Q3 2025: Signs of Life?” report. It found that the pay TV operators, including cable companies, satellite companies, and virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs) like … ⌘ Read more

RoboCrop: Teaching Robots How To Pick Tomatoes
alternative_right quotes a report from Phys.org: To teach robots how to become tomato pickers, Osaka Metropolitan University Assistant Professor Takuya Fujinaga, Graduate School of Engineering, programmed them to evaluate the ease of harvesting for each tomato before attempting to pick it. Fujinaga’s new model uses image recognition paired with statistical analysis to evaluate … ⌘ Read more

Searching the web a bit brings up lots of threads where people hate WebP. The problem being that browsers support WebP but other programs tend to be problematic … ? 🤔

Microsoft To Invest $17.5 Billion in India
Microsoft announced on Tuesday its largest-ever investment in Asia – $17.5 billion over four years starting in 2026 – to expand cloud and AI infrastructure across India, fund skilling programs, and support ongoing operations in the country. The commitment adds to a $3 billion investment the company announced in January 2025 that is on track to be spent by the end of 2026. A new hyperscale cloud … ⌘ Read more

Iced 0.14 Released For Popular Rust Cross-Platform GUI LIbrary
Released today is a new version of Iced, the popular cross-platform GUI library for the Rust programming language. Iced is notably used by the COSMIC desktop environment and a growing variety of different Rust apps… ⌘ Read more

Is Ruby Still a ‘Serious’ Programming Language?
Wired published an article by California-based writer/programmer Sheon Han arguing that Ruby “is not a serious programming language.”

Han believes that the world of programming has “moved on”, and “everything Ruby does, another language now does better, leaving it without a distinct niche.

Ruby is easy on the eyes. Its syntax is simple, free of semicolons or brackets. More s … ⌘ Read more

All-abilities nippers surf lifesaving program extended to regional WA
Catering to children with autism spectrum disorders, it is the first of its kind in regional Western Australia. ⌘ Read more

NVIDIA Releases CUDA 13.1 With New “CUDA Tile” Programming Model
NVIDIA just released CUDA 13.1 for what they claim is “the largest and most comprehensive update to the CUDA platform since it was invented two decades ago.” The most notable addition with the CUDA 13.1 release is CUDA Tile as a new tile-based programming model… ⌘ Read more

Rust-Written Redox OS Sees Initial Wayland Port
Developers behind Redox OS, the original open-source operating system written from scratch in the Rust programming language, have ported Wayland to it with initially getting the Smallvil Wayland compositor up and running along with the Smithay framework and the Wayland version of the GTK toolkit… ⌘ Read more

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

ReactOS Lands Improvements For Its USB Stack - Fixing Various Blue Screens of Death
ReactOS as the open-source operating system aiming to be an “open-source Windows” by striving for binary compatibility with Windows programs and device drivers is now slightly better with its USB support… ⌘ Read more

Release Candidate of iOS 26.2, macOS Tahoe 26.2, iPadOS 26.2, Available for Testing
A Release Candidate (RC) build of iOS 26.2, iPadOS 26.2, and MacOS Tahoe 26.2, have been released to those users participating in the beta testing programs for Apple system software. With the issuing of a Release Candidate build, it’s likely the final versions of these operating system versions will arrive next week. The new versions … [Read More](https://osxdaily.com/20 … ⌘ Read more

Sched_EXT With Linux 6.19 Improves Recovering For Misbehaving eBPF Schedulers
The Linux kernel’s innovative sched_ext code for being able to easily write extensible task schedulers using eBPF programs has some nice enhancements merged for Linux 6.19… ⌘ Read more

I love this quote. “Dependencies are a lot like sexual partners, and it seems most (all?) programming languages are trying to make it easy to be as promiscuous as possible via internal package managers.” gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/Reticulum/35090

Michael and Susan Dell Donate $6.25 Billion To Encourage Families To Claim ‘Trump Accounts’
Michael and Susan Dell pledged $6.25 billion to boost participation in the new “Trump Accounts” child investment program. “The historic gift has little precedent, with few single charitable commitments in the past 25 years exceeding $1 billion, much less multiple billions,” notes the Associate … ⌘ Read more

TornadoVM 2.0 Released For Java On NVIDIA PTX, OpenCL & SPIR-V Devices
TornadoVM 2.0 is out today as the newest feature release for this OpenJDK and GraalVM plug-in that allows Java programs to run on heterogeneous hardware. TornadoVM targets continue to be OpenCL, NVIDIA PTX, and SPIR-V compatible devices for a range of accelerator support for use from conventional Java code… ⌘ Read more

Russian Launch Site Mishap Shows Perilous State of Storied Space Program
A Soyuz launch at Baikonur damaged Russia’s only launchpad capable of sending astronauts and crucial propellant to the ISS. “The rocket itself headed to space without incident, taking three astronauts – Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev of Russia and Chris Williams of NASA – to the space station,” reports the New York Ti … ⌘ Read more

Rust Updates For Linux 6.19, Rust Minimum Baseline To Likely Follow Debian Stable
Miguel Ojeda has already submitted the core Rust programming language infrastructure updates intended for the Linux 6.19 merge window. In the pull request he also notes that moving forward the minimum supported Rust version for compiling the Linux kernel will likely follow whatever the minimum Rust version currently in use by the latest Debian stable release… ⌘ Read more

Steam Machine, Continued Open-Source Rust Usage & Linux Kernel Happenings In November
It was an eventful past month with Valve announcing the new Steam Machine, a lot of new Linux kernel activity, the continued increase of Rust programming language adoption by open-source projects, a lot of fun hardware benchmarks, and more. There were 283 original news articles on Phoronix the past month about Linux/open-source software and hardware plus another 18 featured Linux hardware reviews / multi-page benchmark articles. … ⌘ Read more

@prologic@twtxt.net Nothing stops you from programming while in Vietnam. 😏😈😅

Linux 6.19 Will Allow You To Write I2C Drivers In Rust
With the upcoming Linux 6.19 kernel cycle there are yet more Rust kernel bindings being introduced and other additions to make it possible to write more Linux kernel drivers within the Rust programming language. Among the new Rust additions expected for Linux 6.19 are making it possible to write Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus drivers in Rust… ⌘ Read more

Lions ‘threw the kitchen sink’ but nothing could halt Roos’ perfect season
Creating history by winning consecutive premierships and completing an unbeaten season is just reward for North Melbourne’s boundary-pushing AFLW program. ⌘ Read more

Algol 68 Programming Language Front-End Merged Into GCC 16
Making for an exciting holiday weekend night is the Algol 68 programming language front-end “ga68” being merged into the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) codebase. After COBOL language support landed in GCC 15 earlier this year, next year’s GCC 16 release is adding support for the half-century old Algol 68 programming language… ⌘ Read more

Sterile flies take to the sky in Kangaroo Island eradication push
Researchers on Kangaroo Island have been breeding and releasing millions of sterile Australian sheep blowflies in an attempt to eradicate the pest. ⌘ Read more

Plastic can be programmed to have a lifespan of days, months or years
Inspired by natural polymers like DNA, chemists have devised a way to engineer plastic so it breaks down when it is no longer needed, rather than polluting the environment ⌘ Read more

NASA Reduces Flights on Boeing’s Starliner After Botched Astronaut Mission
An anonymous reader shares a report: NASA has slashed the number of astronaut missions on Boeing’s Starliner contract and said the spacecraft’s next mission to the International Space Station will fly without a crew, reducing the scope of a program hobbled by engineering woes and outpaced by SpaceX. The most recent mishap oc … ⌘ Read more