Cody Boone Ferguson

https://fosstodon.org/@xexyl

I have the honour that I have written several tools (txzchk, others) for the International Obfuscated C Code Contest [IOCCC] judges and co-developing several other tools (e.g. jparse, a JSON parser in C) with Landon Curt Noll, a founder and judge of the IOCCC . I'm also a six time winner of the IOCCC. I love dinosaurs, volcanoes (and all other natural disasters fascinate me as well) and space. I'm an avid reader, Tolkienist and a Second World War buff. I've loved bears since I was a baby.

Main page: https://xexyl.net
Winning IOCCC entries: https://www.ioccc.org/authors.html#Cody_Boone_Ferguson
GitHub: https://github.com/xexyl
Personal IOCCC website: https://ioccc.xexyl.net

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Last Notes

2026-09-13 21:49:31 GMT

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here’s a very old deck. You can see how it used to be. This is from 1989.
#Uno
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/117/265/924/893/034/905/original/224a85c9683e82f5.png

2026-08-26 21:22:57 GMT

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as far as ‘free speech’ goes I am reminded of a cartoon. Two people.
First one says ‘I support free speech just not hate speech’.
Second person replies ‘I support physics just not gravity’.
Simple fact is that you can’t have one without the other.
No. I don’t have a good answer to the issue but I also don’t care to even try because it’s a very complicated thing.

2026-08-26 18:01:32 GMT

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but then I never understood how anyone could think it would be good for you when it makes you start coughing at first.
The tobacco industry of course would beg to differ. Though I rather guess that they don’t differ but just don’t care because ‘money’. Which is a lot worse.
Well that’s people for you.
Best wishes.

2026-08-26 17:58:53 GMT

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that’s good.
It’s not for a lot of people of course.
A tragic fact is that more schizophrenics smoke than the rest of the population.
There are many tragic facts about the disease besides that.
I know that people say that they didn’t use to know better but plenty of people knew better even centuries ago (doctors included).
I have an amusing set of papers on that.

2026-08-26 17:22:21 GMT

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well I am glad at least you stopped smoking for your sake (and the sake of those you encounter)!
Well done.

2026-08-26 17:14:54 GMT

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a match as a bookmark? Well last time I tried (something I knew would happen and it was quite deliberate for a very specific thing) paper burns.
And that could easily ignite.
The surrounding is one thing. The book though, if it caught fire, that would be tragic.

2026-08-26 17:08:51 GMT

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that’s totally bonkers.

2026-08-26 17:07:53 GMT

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that’s funny. But do you really do this or are you just joking?

2026-08-13 11:38:30 GMT

I thought of this years back. I see patterns a lot in words and other things as well. #shapes #square #rectangle #stairs
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/117/087/991/703/215/673/original/9a1cd4373977df98.jpg

2026-08-02 16:14:55 GMT

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it is precisely the same except that one uses fire and the other another way. The end result is the same. Except of course with book burning the people come next, very often. But that's another matter entirely. It is incomprehensible and it is an ugly thing. If they don't want the books they don't have to destroy them. Destroying books is a horrible thing to do. There is never any excuse. It is part of destroying culture and more than that. Little gits.

2026-07-30 16:27:21 GMT

What the absolute hell. If they don’t want them any more then donate them to a library.
Bloody gits.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-destroying-rare-books

2026-07-29 16:45:09 GMT

RE: https://mastodonapp.uk/@bbcnewsfeed/117004213021885583
I cannot express how much I want this to continue.
#ai #llm
#note1d84…f8s3

2026-07-29 00:15:08 GMT

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well as an ailurophile it is a lovely photo so thanks!

2026-07-28 00:51:02 GMT

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what a great photo. Somewhere I have on film a picture of a now very late cat of mine lying down on top of my then CRT monitor.
At least I hope I have it somewhere. All photos of her are either film or else a digital camera but it was a very long time ago now.
Thanks for sharing.

2026-06-16 15:48:43 GMT

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there’s an extremely annoying bug with named-chroot where on updates it changes ownership of the directory and then when it (automatically) restarts it it fails to start.
This is a terrible design and really needs to change.
But should I report it on RL bugs or upstream at Red Hat? Iirc it happened in CentOS too but which is better? Can’t tell you how many times I start an update and then walk away and suddenly hosts using the DNS server can’t resolve anything.
Appreciate it.

2025-08-06 11:12:15 GMT

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and someone should start a list of all the broken code LLM has generated and link back to his post. Maybe I should. Just a matter of finding the time. He doesn’t have a bloody clue. It’s just noise from a person who clearly doesn’t know much about programming if he knows anything about it at all.

2025-08-06 11:08:41 GMT

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he is a bloody idiot. He doesn’t even know what #AI is! He means #LLM. LLM generates buggy code and often doesn’t even compile. Often it is not portable. It is non deterministic. That alone should say everything. The AI craze is the tech Frankenstein and it’s a giant scam. I wouldn’t worry about what someone who clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about let alone his arse from his elbow is talking about. AI my arse.

2025-06-09 15:49:42 GMT

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the funny thing about the try.sh and try.alt.sh scripts when I devised the system is that it's based solely on the fact the remarks have 'Try:'. It was really that boring but also useful. And now you like submissions that use them. So I guess boring things can also be fun when it comes to the IOCCC! 🙂

2024-12-25 14:19:35 GMT

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Very nice, thanks! Best wishes! If you celebrate Christmas have a great one with you and yours! And a good new year too. Cheers.

2024-12-21 15:15:18 GMT

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beautiful. You don’t have to say if you don’t want to (in any way - I don’t even) but whereabouts is this? Cheers mate and thanks for sharing either way! Wondrous photos!

2024-12-21 15:08:41 GMT

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what matters is that one uses what works for them. Of course this doesn’t always happen but if they can find the right thing that’s great.
It doesn’t make their choice wrong. Unless it’s EMACS instead of vim. Then they made the wrong decision. But otherwise … okay if they insist I suppose it’s okay if they want to use an obese woolly mammoth. Well I will stop there. You get the point! Best wishes!

2024-12-21 12:53:27 GMT

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hope it works well for you! When I used firefox I used NoScript. Very nice extension. But many years back I made my DNS server also blacklist a very long list of ad servers. I have no sympathy for them especially with malvertisements. And as far as google goes: the fact they allow people to make their page look different even pushing out malware is appalling. And don’t get me started on interrupting videos constantly.

2024-12-21 12:46:05 GMT

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I hope the irony I am reading was intended because it’s brilliant and very valid. I find it hard to believe that anyone is actually forced to use chrome: more like an excuse for justifying it or being unwilling to use something else (no disrespect meant to those who feel like they have no choice but for something like this I find it hard to believe).

2024-08-11 18:52:38 GMT

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when I see RPG I immediately think of role-playing games. If it’s a language I have heard of it is not coming to my mind.

2024-08-11 17:57:28 GMT

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I taught myself asm too. Never had to use FORTRAN and I am thankful for that.
I am perhaps younger than you but not sure. I am 42. Well I must go. Good day! Thanks for the dialogue!

2024-08-11 17:55:57 GMT

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I loved asm. In school I was taking a C++ course but on my free time I was doing low level asm (like direct I/O). The course was boring me to tears. I have always loved C though but I am self taught. If you have what it takes you don’t need to be taught it.
But for me it is a hobby. I suspect it would be different for me if it was a job. Fortunately I have the choice.

2024-08-11 17:43:58 GMT

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me too.
There have been times where it was not fun but that was not because programming is not fun but rather because I was in a bad way at the time.
But I have always returned to it. I don’t see that changing.
I am sure some people do it for other reasons but I think they are missing the point made here. But who knows. Maybe they tried it and didn’t like it. It’s not for everyone.