💀👻🎃🦇MOSS 666🦇🎃👻💀

Retrocomputing Maker and Designer in Ontario, Canada. I make stuff without promising a delivery date. I don't do crowdfunding, but I do gratefully accept Patreon and Ko-Fi support for what I do. 

Buy me a coffee!: https://www.ko-fi.com/mos_8502
Become a Patron!: https://patreon.com/Studio8502
Buy my games!: https://studio8502.itch.io/

Public Key

npub1qnufz4pycufk27kkeev5g0fgm0w0tqexsly674s2uwy0tynk5ymsk5hzwk

NIP-05 Address

mos_8502_at_studio8502.ca@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqf7y32sjvwym90ttvuk2y855dhh84svng0jd02c9w8z84jfm2zdcpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsslrxl6

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1qnufz4pycufk27kkeev5g0fgm0w0tqexsly674s2uwy0tynk5ymsk5hzwk

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-10-22 18:02:04 UTC

Discord: Depressing.
Reddit: Resistant.
Mastodon: Miserable.
Facebook: Frightful.
Linkedin: Lethargic.
X: OH COME THE FUCK ON.
Where the hell am I supposed to go to find people interested in my project?

2026-10-15 17:24:17 UTC

- reply

No existing DRM tech can withstand this automated reverse engineering wave. Existing IP law was not meant to counter mass movements of this scale.

2026-10-15 17:22:58 UTC

- reply

I’m just saying that these big corpos pushed AI so hard the government surrendered, and now the people are using the same tools to just take over.

2026-10-15 17:21:24 UTC

- reply

I seem to recall Trump putting a ten year block on AI regulations. That seems to be backfiring.

2026-10-15 17:20:24 UTC

So basically every video game is being cloned now. What do we think of this?

2026-10-09 17:21:34 UTC

- reply

I don't disagree -- but here we are gaming the most optimistic version, for the sake of argument.

2026-10-09 16:32:38 UTC

- reply

It also represents the ultimate triumph of open software against proprietary. In that world, selling software is not economically viable.

2026-10-09 16:29:22 UTC

- reply

This might (might!) be the one thing that survives the inevitable bubble pop. The actual prosocial AI use case that sustains the industry at a reduced level.

2026-10-09 16:25:40 UTC

- reply

We are talking about a potential explosion in software diversity. Bespoke tooling generated on the fly. Projects that would never even be attempted before coming to fruition. Good and bad ideas brought to life. A torrent of absolute dreck and some potentially great stuff too.

2026-10-09 16:17:04 UTC

- reply

Do I think that’s the world we have, or will have? I don’t know. What am I, a psychic? All I do know is there is clearly something to all this agentic bollocks, and I mean to understand it at the same level I do C programming. I will not be denied knowledge in my field. Do I advocate it? No. I’m not saying it’s good or for everyone or even universally useful. I’m saying there’s something here, and I mean to grok it.

2026-10-09 16:14:44 UTC

- reply

The fundamental unit of trade in software has always been developer time. But in this world, the sheer scale of what developer time buys is dramatically greater. Small teams can do in weeks what used to take large teams years. That drives the cost of code way down to near zero.

2026-10-09 16:10:46 UTC

- reply

Hell, in that world the very notion of software copyright might as well vanish like a fart in a windstorm. What does it matter if you own Software X, when I can essentially duplicate it for myself without touching your stuff? You no longer have anything to sell me as far as software goes.

2026-10-09 16:08:09 UTC

It’s a fucked up world we live in. I think we can all agree there. But let’s just for the sake of it, game out the most optimistic version of what’s coming for software.
We are talking about a world where we can “just” vibe code up a functional clone of whatever software for whatever platform. What’s the upshot? Proprietary software is *dead* in that world. D E A D dead. That at least is kind of nice. In a world where a few hundred dollars in token spend buys you a functional clone of Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat, the economics of software have fundamentally changed.

2026-10-06 22:47:45 UTC

- reply

GNUstep does a lot of things for cross-platform compatibility that I'm not doing, and their UI layer is more targeting OPENSTEP by default than Aqua. I'm targeting a near-equivalent of "Snow Leopard with a different non-Unix OS underneath" sort of vibe.

2026-10-06 22:38:59 UTC

- reply

Oh. An opportunity to build software with a better API than you get on Linux, for one thing. A chance to get in on the action in the early days, when a platform really takes shape, before it matures and ossifies.

2026-10-06 22:35:18 UTC

- reply

Sorry?

2026-10-06 22:31:38 UTC

I figure a lot of people will reject Argentum outright. Fair enough. I won't even try to convince purists. They have every right to their preferences.
But those who don't throw out the baby with the bathwater are in for a treat: an API that's as polished as any in the world, on an OS that's not quite like anything else, but a little like a lot of OSes.

2026-09-29 17:51:41 UTC

Name categories I reject wholesale:<li>Anything which draws specific attention to the fact that agentic coding was used; that fact only puts it on par with Linux, Windows, and macOS, go bug them about it.</li><li>Anything fruit- or big-cat-related. I'm not here to get sued by Apple.</li><li>Anything in Latin or Greek. They sound stuffy to an English speaker.</li>
Examples of taken names I like:<li>NewOS</li><li>Haiku OS</li><li>NovaOS</li><li>Afterstep</li><li>Mint</li>

2026-09-20 18:51:08 UTC

- reply

I admit to being insignificant compared to the vast torrent of absolute shit. I just wish I got more credit for the 99.5% agreement I have with the antis.

2026-09-20 18:43:02 UTC

I would say I’m 99.5% anti AI. OpenAI, Anthropic, fuck them all. Wasteful garbage companies scamming investors. Almost every use to which the tech is put? Pure garbage. Especially AI restaurant menus, what the fuck is that about? AI voices? Fuck that shit except for accessibility. AI music is trash. AI images? 99% shit, 1% kind of amusing, 100% not worth the resource use.
That .5% covers experts using AI specifically to generate computer code under supervision and thorough testing in a safe and responsible and prosocial manner, using the most efficient processes available.
And that .5% has cost me a lot. People are strange.

2026-09-03 10:04:12 UTC

Of all the weird shit the AI apocalypse has caused, to me the weirdest is this thing I see where objectively terrible hand-made art is being held up as better than it is. Yeah, almost all AI "art" is objectively terrible, but that doesn't make bad human art any better. Two things can be terrible at the same time.

2026-09-03 01:00:22 UTC

- reply

I'm not interested in yet another kernel to run X11 and GNOME on. I don't care about getting QT apps to run. That space is well-occupied.
I want native software, that fits together into a cohesive system.

2026-09-03 00:58:25 UTC

Traditionally, graphics have been at best an afterthought in Unix-like OSes. Not here. The GUI compositor and widget system will be developed right alongside the kernel and userland, as part of a unified whole.
It ain't Unix, and it ain't gonna pretend to be.

2026-09-02 15:04:29 UTC

- reply

The antis treat all AI as inherently evil, and the pros treat it like the second coming of Alan Turing. It’s exhausting. I just want to make neat stuff and fuck with computers.

2026-09-02 15:03:28 UTC

- reply

It won’t be good enough for the antis, and the pros won’t care enough to not use the big corpo models.

2026-09-02 14:58:21 UTC

- reply

Our use of any technology ought be done with a mind towards prosocial goals.

2026-09-02 14:57:13 UTC

- reply

I think there are productive uses to which the current tech can be put, but giving money to the people running the American industry is a hard no. The Chinese labs are at least focused on doing more with less, getting better efficiency out of it. Plus China leads in solar power.

2026-09-02 14:51:04 UTC

- reply

What kills me is that I’m apparently no more welcome in the AI user community than I am on the anti camp, because I think there are places it shouldn’t be used at all, and there may be side effects that should be addressed and cautions taken.
It’s coming out as bisexual all over again. I’m too gay for the straights and too straight for the gays.

2026-09-02 14:48:51 UTC

- reply

It’s not a generally productive life strategy. It’s also not going to make me any better liked in any community.

2026-09-02 14:47:51 UTC

- reply

The minute someone tells me not to do something I instinctively want to do it harder just to spite them.

2026-09-02 14:47:17 UTC

I have way too much oppositional defiant disorder for some online debates.

2026-09-02 02:29:13 UTC

Picture if you will, a GUI roughly like Mac OS 9, on a Unix-like kernel, with BeOS's neat filesystem tricks, and a filesystem hierarchy that both doesn't look like line noise [cough]unix[cough] and doesn't treat the user like an idiot.

2026-09-01 15:09:04 UTC

Missed a pile of bugs, of course - but they're all fixed now. FNX can mount a HaikuOS partition successfully, and read it. On to seeing if Haiku can do it in the other direction.

2026-08-31 21:59:13 UTC

- reply

Say what you like about me, I don’t inflict my slop on anyone.

2026-08-27 12:51:54 UTC

So. Today is USB day for FNX. Gonna start that after more coffee.
I wonder if I should start a separate Masto or Bsky for FNX, so people who aren’t interested don’t have to see it or mute me. I’m not trying to be pushy with it.

2026-08-24 17:46:29 UTC

- reply

Yeah, invalid input testing is mandatory along with exercising every option and combination thereof.

2026-08-24 01:31:35 UTC

Surfaced kernel bugs with a stress test script that tries every option of every command in Toybox. It's the most aggressive test I could think up with the available software bits, and it's worked. Surfaced and fixed a pile of bugs.

2026-08-23 17:14:24 UTC

- reply

Random ideas:<li>Genix</li><li>Kynix</li><li>Canix</li><li>Onix</li><li>Firix</li><li>Vinix</li><li>Tinix</li>

2026-08-20 18:40:27 UTC

- reply

acer aspire a317-52.

2026-08-20 18:35:39 UTC

- reply

I have no idea what’s in it. I’m just depressed now. I don’t have $85 to blow on useless hardware.

2026-08-20 18:24:36 UTC

Bought a laptop for $85. It’s got 8GB of RAM and 1TB SSD. Unfortunately it’s got Windows 11 on it. Yuck. When I try to install Debian, the installer boots and detects wifi and all that, but it can’t see the internal storage no matter what settings I tweak in the UEFI config.

2026-08-20 01:16:36 UTC

- reply

I'm not converted. It's an experiment. If it becomes financially non-viable, then it stops. However, the Chinese open models are being offered by many different inference providers, which means there's competition in the space, keeping prices low.

2026-08-20 01:07:58 UTC

- reply

I'm poor. I'm only using DeepSeek V4 Flash, and only during cheap off-peak hours, and using a harness designed to get maximum use out of minimum token spend.
And yet, I used it to make a working 65816 DOS-like OS in asm and C from scratch, for a custom hardware platform I invented, *after* using it to make a bespoke cycle-accurate emulator for that platform.

2026-08-20 01:02:07 UTC

- reply

I, personally, am treating it as a laboratory experiment. Contained, isolated, not allowed to affect other codebases, examined for what it can and cannot do, and most important, I'm writing it all down.

2026-08-20 00:46:27 UTC

- reply

I am of the strong opinion that agentic coding is not ready for real-world use on codebases that matter, and may never be ready. It should be treated as strictly experimental.

2026-08-19 18:24:26 UTC

- reply

I am more than willing to consider factors like externalities, resource consumption and feeding billionaire fascists, that sort of sensible argument, from people who are willing to talk about it with an open mind.
However, I am not willing to entertain the notion that using an agentic LLM setup *can't* produce working software -- the evidence falsifies that hypothesis fully and completely.
The fact that virtually all "vibe coded" software is complete and utter trash, a fact I observe and an opinion I agree with, clearly stems from issues separate from whether or not it's actually *possible* to produce good things with it.

2026-08-19 18:17:02 UTC

After much experimentation and much learning, I have decided to retire 65X-DOS and the Nivix emulator as an experimental project.
From it, I learned many things, among them:<li>The fundamental design of 65X-DOS is sound</li><li>Sentinel 65X hardware is unsuited to a command-line based OS that runs from an SD card because of the transfer speed</li><li>DeepSeek V4 Flash is very able to make software that works cheaply, and debugs surprisingly well given the right tooling</li>
I will be archiving the source tree, in case it's ever useful, but I plan no further work on it. The money I spent making it, I feel is well spent -- it bought me a lot of knowledge, cheaply and quickly. I will not, however, be releasing the software, as it's not something I feel comfortable sharing. It was only ever a laboratory experiment.

2026-08-17 22:46:32 UTC

- reply

My close Canadian friends like to joke that I'm a Mexicano Blanco. But that's just unfair to pale Mexicans, who actually grew up in Mexico, and make up about 15-30% of the Mexican population.

2026-08-17 22:40:10 UTC

- reply

Note that I'm as pasty faced as Caucasians come. But I inherited a culture from one half of my family -- both my parents were adopted, my father a white baby to hispanic parents.

2026-08-17 00:18:09 UTC

OH FUCK YOU RIGHT TO HELL
I'll die before I pay that much, no matter how much I want this thing.
Not that I have any spare money for toys at all, mind. I'm just venting spleen. Ignore me.
https://studio8502.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/117/107/972/287/018/617/original/e8374a8dbbeb9549.png

2026-08-16 23:43:52 UTC

RE: https://masto.ai/@phoronix/117107762462257446
The slopcode kernel is out.
No thanks. I have a slopcode kernel already, I designed it myself, so at least there's *some* of me in it.
#note1twg…4fv2

2026-08-16 20:10:17 UTC

Groceries achieved. A friend insisted on taking me for breakfast. He ordered. I was served the most absurd breakfast I’ve ever seen. A six egg omelette stuffed with what had to be two pounds of mixed pulled pork, bacon, and sausage, with a side of about a pound of home fries covered in cheese and hollandaise sauce.

2026-08-13 19:27:50 UTC

- reply

Then why did I bother, just to sate my own curiosity? Because I believe we owe a debt to the truth, that means we should damn things for what they *are* in *fact*, not what we are told they are.

2026-08-13 19:20:49 UTC

- reply

Do I endorse agentic coding? No, for a number of reasons, but among them is not that it "doesn't work". It demonstrably can work, in the right hands. The reasons not to use it aren't technical, they're social.

2026-08-13 19:16:57 UTC

- reply

Should *you* do what I've done? I'm going to go out on a limb and say no, you should not, for many reasons. But that doesn't change the observable fact that decent software *can* be made with it.

2026-08-13 19:14:55 UTC

- reply

Empirical observation trumps any amount of theory and hypothesis. This is axiomatic in scientific thinking. We get answers, and have to modify our questions because of them, not ignoring inconvenient data to support orthodoxy.

2026-08-13 19:12:13 UTC

- reply

Why did I do it at all? Because I wanted to know, for myself, if it could be done. If agentic coding could, in fact, produce decent software, in the hands of an expert.
Turns out it can, and that's gonna put some noses out of joint.

2026-08-13 19:07:00 UTC

- reply

I can't even blame people for not being interested. They have good reasons. Most agentic-made software is pure trash, not fit for purpose, made by people who don't know their ass from their elbow when it comes to software. Even without the other problems, who could blame them for tarring my carefully-designed and thoroughly-tested software with that same brush?

2026-08-13 19:04:43 UTC

65X-DOS has a somewhat MS-DOS like UI. The prompt at boot is sd0:>, using labels instead of drive letters, but otherwise it means the same. It has unix-like command line utilities, except for debug which is like the MS-DOS debugger, only resident in ROM and triggered by the BRK opcode.
There are some interesting utilities already, like ppx.prg, a utility which does for PGZ-format 65816 executables what UPX does for COFF/ELF format x86 ones -- transparent compression of executables, which speeds up loading.
The editor, edit.prg is nano-like for now, but supports line numbers and auto-indent and word wrapping.
It's all working and has a thorough test harness, using the Nivix emulator for Sentinel 65X, which has cycle-accurate W65C265S CPU emulation.
And I feel like I can't release any of it because it's 100% slopware. Carefully designed, well-tested, fully functioning slopware.

2026-08-09 03:34:32 UTC

- reply

I want a television, not an oversized fucking shitass WebOS tablet with HDMI inputs.

2026-08-09 03:32:22 UTC

- reply

My goddamned television shouldn't take five minutes to boot up. It damn sure shouldn't show me *anything* other than whatever video signal is being piped into it from something else.

2026-08-09 03:30:51 UTC

- reply

My goddamned television doesn't need AI. It doesn't need WebOS. It doesn't need *wifi*.
It needs HDMI inputs and optical audio output. That's it.

2026-08-09 03:28:36 UTC

I hate my new TV.
It works fine, the price was fair, and it's slightly bigger than the old one, but it's a "smart" TV.
Not only that, it's got "AI Vision" or some such "feature" that does something or other I have no idea because I disabled everything that could be disabled in the settings and just left it on HDMI input from my Apple TV box.

2026-08-06 18:36:39 UTC

- reply

More or less. I’ve never seen tech divided this badly, and I’ve been here a long time.

2026-08-06 18:24:19 UTC

- reply

The current holy war is far more vitriolic and way less “just ribbing” than even that.

2026-08-06 18:14:00 UTC

- reply

I assure you the vitriol was genuine. I have seen fistfights break out over text editors.

2026-08-06 17:13:34 UTC

I was there for vi/emacs. I was around for GCC/EGCS. I was there for every software holy war you've heard about.
I know a holy war when I smell one.
The thing about a software holy war is that no matter what side you're on, you're on the wrong side.
The only winning move is to do whatever you want to do and fuck the haters with a flaming rake.

2026-08-06 16:16:41 UTC

- reply

Good programmers will produce good stuff no matter what tools they use. Bad programmers will produce bad stuff no matter what they are given to work with.
Good people will make things that help others. Bad people will make things that hurt others.
How is this lost on people?

2026-08-06 16:10:37 UTC

If you think #atomique is "slop", then you're just being needlessly mean.
This looks fucking *great*.
It's not the tool that counts, it's the hand that wields it and the mind that guides it and the soul that inspires it.
https://studio8502.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/117/049/430/930/504/218/original/cb474afab26a564c.png

2026-08-03 22:54:04 UTC

- reply

Every model I spin up on CPU is unusable. Like, one token per minute output.

2026-08-03 22:52:43 UTC

- reply

DeepSeek is like a terabyte in size at full bit depth. Quantized models derived from the big ones can cut that down to something that fits in 24-32GB with some loss in model quality.

2026-08-03 22:51:24 UTC

- reply

You can download the full model behind Kimi or DeepSeek and spin it up locally and connect to it with an agent. It’s just going to run like absolute shit unless the whole model and context fit in VRAM.

2026-08-03 22:46:25 UTC

- reply

Not a thing other than access to adequate hardware with gobs of vram.

2026-08-03 19:55:01 UTC

First impressions of the Reasonix agent harness: Holy shit this thing really does reduce your spend on tokens. I have no idea how it's doing it, but instead of dollars I'm spending cents.

2026-07-31 02:07:44 UTC

- reply

I genuinely want to know how this happens. Thh h e neurobiology of it I mean.

2026-07-30 18:30:53 UTC

- reply

I’ve been using C since the 90s. C++ since the 2000s off and on. I know it. What it can do and can’t. How it works. I get it. I won’t claim I’m an expert, I’ll leave that judgment to my peers, but I think I know my shit.

2026-07-30 18:29:34 UTC

- reply

Fucking eh.

2026-07-30 18:15:19 UTC

- reply

The last thing a new coder should do is use this thing. I don’t subscribe to the hypothesis of deskilling, but I do think use can interfere with learning if not carefully applied - better to just not use it until you are actually seasoned.

2026-07-30 18:12:55 UTC

- reply

The machine excels at this: generating a basically okay if mediocre code expression of well designed and highly specified requirements, in a form an experienced coder can take and iterate on and refine, as long as it has a test suite ready to whap it in the nuts with a ruler when it steps out of line.

2026-07-30 18:01:06 UTC

- reply

“Here is the requirements document. Here is the documentation for the chip. Here is the documentation for this that and the other thing. The goal is to generate this target product in a way that passes this test suite.” Is where you *start*. The process is iterative, and if you don’t understand code you have no tools to judge the output.

2026-07-30 17:57:16 UTC

- reply

I don’t just write a prompt and let the machine pee wherever it wants. That’s stupid. Prompt engineering is an inherently stupid way to use the machine and I have nothing but contempt for it.

2026-07-30 17:54:40 UTC

- reply

Ideally the machine would be a strength multiplier. A thing that frees you from boring, repetitive, mechanistic tasks and lets you focus on what humans do well.

2026-07-30 17:49:25 UTC

- reply

I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Machines are for machine tasks. Things that machines do well that humans either can’t or don’t want to.

2026-07-30 17:45:49 UTC

- reply

Image generation? Christ on a cracker, isn’t there porn enough for everyone already?
Music generation? What does a machine know of the emotions music expresses and creates? What are the mathematics of tears? What is the derivative function of love?
Fact reference? The machine has no idea what a fact even is. All it knows is word tokens and probability.

2026-07-30 17:33:59 UTC

I write prose with my fingers and a keyboard. No AI involvement because there’s no gain to be had there. Nothing the LLM could do to my prose would be an improvement. It wouldn’t even be more convenient. My prose is me. No machine can do that.
Letting the machine wrangle CMake does my brain less damage than actually learning CMake would. Some specific coding tasks suck so much that letting a machine deal with it might actually be better all around.

2026-07-29 22:59:48 UTC

- reply

There is one. It’s very low activity. I mostly just push the design along on my own, occasionally selling a run of boards when there has been sufficient progress. Nobody has the time it takes I think.

2026-07-29 22:53:01 UTC

- reply

If someone wants to put in the work to do a slop free rom, I will sign up for their Patreon.

2026-07-29 22:51:53 UTC

- reply

I think your opinions are based on something important to you. I think you think there is still a chance at a world without slop. I also think I don’t have the time or energy to do the entire platform by hand and nobody else has stepped up to do it.

2026-07-29 22:47:04 UTC

- reply

So I guess you don’t run Linux, windows, or macOS?

2026-07-29 21:55:35 UTC

Sentinel BASIC is officially A Thing™ now.
https://studio8502.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/117/005/491/728/354/188/original/e76c0903b19d9f64.png

2026-07-28 01:07:48 UTC

Fucking… I know we coders were never a real discipline of engineering, but we didn’t have to fall so far.

2026-07-28 00:28:48 UTC

- reply

Do we have to go back to fucking FreeDOS?

2026-07-28 00:26:50 UTC

- reply

How much functionality do we have to lose to be free of slop?

2026-07-28 00:26:31 UTC

In all seriousness: what are the slop free OS projects anymore? NetBSD sure. Haiku? OS/2? Xv6?

2026-07-27 20:40:07 UTC

- reply

In slop world, the food is tasteless grey paste but you're not hungry anyway so it doesn't matter. You can have all the wine you want but it doesn't get you drunk.

2026-07-27 20:38:25 UTC

- reply

In slop world, there are no wrong answers because nobody asks any questions anymore.

2026-07-27 20:37:12 UTC

- reply

In slop world, there are no mistakes, because there is no trying in the first place.

2026-07-27 20:36:02 UTC

- reply

In slop world, you can summon into existence the exact tool you need for any given situation, but the creative drive to solve the problem is leeched away from you.

2026-07-27 20:34:45 UTC

- reply

In slop world, every store is Temu. Every painting is a hotel room landscape. Every song is a quiet, unobjectionable little muzak. Even the porn is boring.

2026-07-27 20:33:02 UTC

In slop world, you can make whatever you want, but nothing is yours. You can have anything you desire for the asking, but none of it will matter. There's no passion, no pain, no drive, no satisfaction.
All of humanity boiled down to something you can consume, but which lacks all flavour and texture.
In slop world, everything is a copy of a copy of a copy of something else. Everything is uncanny valley, we have Backrooms at home wrong.