Profoundly Nerdy

My retro computing niche is source code archaeology: the art of reconstructing maintainable source code from disassembly and reverse engineering. It's harder than it sounds but also fascinating and rewarding. I also enjoy working with unpopular or niche programming languages. I very much follow the beat of a different drum.

retro: [#c64](https://bitbang.social/tags/c64 )
code: [#rakulang](https://bitbang.social/tags/rakulang ) [#perl](https://bitbang.social/tags/perl )
linux: [#gentoo](https://bitbang.social/tags/gentoo )

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Last Notes

2026-05-26 19:45:56 UTC

Those of you with terminal and plain text first workflows, how did you handle academia? I'm imagining a mix of git, pandoc, and vimwiki or org-mode.
Is there a good article on how to setup such a workflow? Any pitfalls?
#linux #freebsd #cli #terminal #vim #emacs #college #university #acadamia

2026-04-29 16:45:13 UTC

Can someone recommended good meal creation guides for home canned/lacto-fermented foods?
Any suggestions on what to plant in a small garden?
#canning #lactofermenting #prepping #gardening

2026-04-15 13:44:26 UTC

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Do you need to authenticate to a Google account to make it work?

2026-04-14 19:31:19 UTC

I'm thinking about getting a used Jeep, 10-ish years old. I'm concerned about intrusive data harvesting from the vehicle. I'd still like to be able to use my phone's GPS functionality with the infotainment display IF I can do it with a FOSS software stack that respects privacy and a degoogled phone. Suggestions?
Any tips for preventing the vehicle from phoning home more generally is also welcome.
#jeep #privacy #grapheneos #askfedi

2026-04-07 21:03:40 UTC

I'm looking for a modern introduction to #C. Something that is slow and steady but through. This is as much for systems programming on Linux as embedded work; I intend to do a bit of both. Any suggestions would be helpful. #programing #programinghelp #askfedi

2025-12-29 17:45:41 UTC

Programming languages that change how you think about programming...
* Assembly
* BASIC
* Forth
* Haskell
* Lisp
* Perl
* Raku
What else should be on this list?
#programming #assembly #basic #freebasic #forth #haskell #lisp #perl #rakulang

2025-12-24 11:47:26 UTC

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Evolution is proof of life.

2025-12-23 19:10:03 UTC

Learning Perl needs a 9th edition. Perl has changed a lot in the past 5 years, especially with respect to the object system.
Thoughts?
#perl #programming

2025-12-16 23:45:27 UTC

How do I configure VICE so that I can telnet to the C64's serial port?
#c64 #retrocomputing #emulation

2025-12-15 20:37:51 UTC

The open source vim-like spreadsheet program sc-im is wonderful to work with. If you use Vim regularly, it quickly becomes intuitive.
sc-im is entirely viable as a LibreOffice Calc or Microsoft Office Excel alternative in the terminal. It even supports embedded Lua scripting. It's a one-man passion project that really needs more hands.
https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im
#foss #opensource #vi #vim #neovim #libreoffice #excel #programming #lua

2025-11-05 20:14:53 UTC

Is #Perl's jump in the #tiobe index reflective of anything real? #programming

2025-11-03 16:08:55 UTC

Is anyone here using ZFS as their daily driver file system of choice on Gentoo? I like FreeBSD's ZFS integration and want to replicate some of that. It seems more polished than BTRFS.
Unfortunately, it looks like the Gentoo wiki is a bit out of date when it comes to ZFS knowledge.
#Gentoo #FreeBSD #ZFS #BTRFS #Linux #sysadmin

2025-10-23 01:26:02 UTC

I know there are big archives of historical Usenet posts online. Are there similar Echonet archives from Fidonet?
#usenet #fidonet #retrocomputing #sysadmin #bbs

2025-09-12 14:16:37 UTC

My club is getting into CW. I just watched HRCC's video on CW over UHF/VHF, using a lightly nodded Quansheng HT.
Has anybody here ever run a CW net on these frequencies? How does propagation compare to FM? #hamradio #morsecode

2025-07-20 18:12:27 UTC

What are your thoughts on #Matrix as a Discord replacement? What about Matrix as a modernized #IRC? Is bridging to other services *reliably* still an issue?

2025-06-17 23:26:43 UTC

I'm jealous, bitcoiners can backup their wallers to seed phrases. It's not really possible to do the same thing with PGP keys.
#cybersecurity #pgp #bitcoin #backups #pki

2025-06-15 13:32:02 UTC

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As a Gentoo user I really find myself appreciating the BSD ecosystem. Do you have the equivalent of a use flag to enable/disable dependencies?

2025-06-04 22:43:25 UTC

Does Forth have well-known foot-guns at all like C? The lack of a preprocessor eliminates a class of foot-guns. I'm less certain about null pointers, use after fee and friends. Anything uniquely problematic with Forth?
#programming #c #forth

2025-05-18 18:29:40 UTC

What would you consider the single most sophisticated piece of software ever written for the C64?
I'm on the fence between GEOS and the Newcomer RPG. The former is a whole OS but the latter uses effectively all of the C64's memory and its 14 disks long!
#c64 #retrocomputing #retrogaming #geos

2025-05-12 20:56:42 UTC

Back in the day when 40 column displays were common on microcomputers, was email and newsgroup participation with 80 column systems awkward? Be that FidoNet and Echomail or the real ARPANET / Internet if (somehow) available.
By the time I was connecting to BBS systems I had access to an 80 column machine, so I don't personally recall.
#retrocomputing #usenet #email #bbs

2025-04-27 13:40:29 UTC

Those of you who taught yourself to code at a young age, how old were you and what language was it, and on what platform?
How would you suggest replicating the experience for current or future generations?
For me it was BASIC at about 13 years old, but I think it would have been much sooner if I had regular access to a computer sooner. I started on a used Commodore 128D but ended up on a Laser Apple II clone.
#programming #retrocomputing #askfedi

2024-12-26 03:12:48 UTC

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I went to *try* to implement a very simple interpreter on the virtual C64. I'll have it listen for input over RS-232. There should be a way to bind a TCP port to the virtual RS-232 port. Then, from the Linux host I can pop open a terminal window and telnet to the virtual C64 user port. It will be expecting input. I pass it text and it should store, fetch, or execute as instructed.
Better? Or clear as mud?

2024-12-26 02:26:51 UTC

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No, I want to be able to pass data (text) from a terminal window into VICE via RS232. There is no BBS. From the C64's perspective I'll be remoting into it.

2024-12-25 19:27:45 UTC

How do I telnet to the #c64 serial port in #VICE? I assume VICE has some way to set this up. #retrocomputing

2024-12-13 16:42:39 UTC

I REALLY enjoy Displaced Gamers' content on #YouTube. Are there similar channels that do code disassembly and breakdown? I learn a lot watching this channel.
I'm mostly a 6502 guy, but I'll take ASM on any platform if I'm perfectly honest.
#retrocomputing #retrogaming #programming #reverseengineering #asm

2024-12-13 13:31:22 UTC

Were there 8-bit processors with significantly more than 64kB of directly addressable RAM back in the day? I'm not counting bank switching. Bonus if the thing had a hardware stack (or two) that could be relocated.
#retrocomputing #programming

2024-11-07 01:33:43 UTC

Newish #hamradio guy here. What are some common breaches of etiquette new CW operators make? I'm currently learning #morsecode at 20wpm.
The learning process is painfully slow, but I am learning.

2024-10-28 18:29:36 UTC

There is an interesting discussion in on the #Rakulang github repo about the toggle method.
https://github.com/rakudo/rakudo/issues/2089
I've never understood the utility of this one. Can someone explain an ideal use case?
It seems like it's just semantic sugar on top of just using logical not to invert a Bool blindly. Am I missing something? Possibly something obvious?
#programming

2024-10-17 01:34:08 UTC

What is your favorite or most useful one-liner and why? Any tips for improving the readability of one-liner code?
#awk #sed #perl #rakulang #forth #ruby #bash #shell #programming

2024-10-13 01:24:51 UTC

Is there an #Amiga counterpart to #C64 https://csdb.dk? Lost of modern hacks to old games, etc. #retrogaming

2024-10-13 01:22:27 UTC

Were the #Amiga versions of the Goldbox #DND games better than the #C64 and #MSDOS versions?

2024-09-04 20:14:30 UTC

Graybeard devs, how the heck did you get stuff done prior to proper version control? I'm sure you took backups to cover your ass, but what other stuff did you have to do?
#programming #linux #retrocomputing

2024-09-01 15:47:40 UTC

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It helps a lot.
How big of a PITA is the hardware compatibility issue these days?

2024-09-01 15:34:11 UTC

People who prefer BSD over Linux, why? Also do BSD admins compile their programs, akin to Gentoo in the Linux world, or are packages all binary?
Honest question, not a prelude to flaming anyone over their OS.
#Linux #openbsd #freebsd #netbsd #Gentoo #sysadmin

2024-08-28 20:41:39 UTC

The best thing about the #Fediverse: #Mastodon, #Lemmy, etc. is that it does not care if #Reddit is down.
If an instance fails in the Fediverse, I just pick up and move to an new server. Centralization has taken us backwards. #Usenet showed us the way back in 1979!
#socialmedia

2024-08-08 13:12:31 UTC

Is there a #Fullthrust-like game for #Linux or #DOS? Think turn-based mass unit combat, hex square-based movement, fleets and lots of tactical strategy.
#opensource #retrogaming

2024-06-27 14:32:27 UTC

In "Party Like It's 19100+e^iπ" Curtis Poe mentioned (future?) #Perl support for operator chaining. To use his example:
```perl
my $val = $obj?->this?->then?->that;
```
Can't #Rakulang do this natively already with a slightly different syntax?
The audio quality of the YouTube video wasn't what it could have been, so someone please speak up if I misunderstood his point.

2024-05-31 20:57:20 UTC

Were here any good artillery games for the #C64 akin to Scorched Earth or maybe Gorillas.bas?
The later versions of Scorched Earth were especially fun.
#retrogaming

2024-05-24 22:09:25 UTC

Can anyone recommend a #roguelike for the #c64 or even the #commodorepet? Period or modern, either is fine as long as it's fun.
#retrocomputing