mos_8502 :verified: 🇨🇦

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/

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nos.lol

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Last Notes

2026-08-24 22:00:17 GMT

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Prove it's your work. Show me your work in anything I generate, and I will gladly remove it. It's on you to show you've been wronged somehow.

2026-08-24 17:02:55 GMT

I'm gonna start criticizing people for using makefiles. Build your software manually, like a Real Programmer.

2026-08-23 17:14:24 GMT

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

2026-08-23 17:11:19 GMT

Currently grinding on finishing the transition from 32-bit to full 64-bit native code.
While that goes about its business, I've been convinced to change the name of this thing, to make clear it's not compatible with or competing with Fiwix mainline. It's now its own thing.
So it needs a name.
Let's see... 64-bit amd64 native Unix-like monolithic kernel... An -ix suffix is definitely appropriate...

2026-08-21 21:16:03 GMT

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Right now, I'm watching the machine try to make the PS/2 keyboard emulated by QEMU work.

2026-08-21 21:15:00 GMT

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I'm learning a lot of interesting (to me) stuff. I wouldn't say the slop machine is teaching me -- I'm making the far less grandiose and more testable claim that I'm learning from poking it and observing the responses and judging the output.

2026-08-21 21:03:15 GMT

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Plus it's only experimental. Not like anyone will ever use it in anger. Like, even if I keep it around, who wants to use a tiny Unix-like that was ported to amd64 with a slop machine?

2026-08-21 20:53:56 GMT

Ahaha. UEFI provides a framebuffer I can just use with fbcon instead of using old school 80x25 VGA text mode.

2026-08-16 19:51:04 GMT

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There’s always furigana?

2026-08-06 18:36:39 GMT

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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 GMT

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

2026-08-06 18:14:00 GMT

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

2026-08-06 17:13:34 GMT

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 16:55:08 GMT

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Mare Imbicilius

2026-08-03 22:54:04 GMT

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

2026-08-03 22:52:43 GMT

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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 22:46:25 GMT

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

2026-08-03 19:55:01 GMT

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.

2026-07-30 23:50:29 GMT

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I feel this so hard and it pains me to my core.

2026-07-30 18:30:53 GMT

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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 18:15:19 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 17:33:59 GMT

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 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 GMT

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

2026-07-29 21:55:35 GMT

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

2026-07-27 20:36:02 GMT

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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 GMT

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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 GMT

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.

2026-07-27 19:31:44 GMT

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I’m a slopper. You’re a slopper. We are all sloppers slopping slop at the wall whether we like it or not

2026-07-27 19:30:46 GMT

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Craft is dead and its corpse has been fashioned into a slop marionette.

2026-07-27 19:29:28 GMT

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Taking a coffee break while the machine codes. Sloppuchino.

2026-07-27 19:27:17 GMT

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Through the slopping glass

2026-07-27 19:27:01 GMT

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Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

2026-07-27 19:25:29 GMT

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Slop scrum. Slump?

2026-07-27 19:25:15 GMT

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Plaigile development

2026-07-27 19:24:23 GMT

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Token Driven Development

2026-07-27 19:24:05 GMT

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Test driven sloperation

2026-07-27 19:23:28 GMT

Formally verified slop

2026-07-27 18:25:13 GMT

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Every test I come up with the thing passes. It runs at 60fps, locked at 8MHz. It needs to emulate the SNES ports, cartridge port, and future keyboard matrix still.

2026-07-27 18:21:13 GMT

The machine seems to excel at converting documentation and specification into test cases, at least.
Within a week or so (I ain’t paying for more tokens) the 65816 emulation in Nivix will be formally verified cycle accurate and bus accurate per the published WDC documentation. That’s legitimately impressive for a clanker.
I hate it so much I wish I could go back in time and give Sam Altman’s dad a condom. But it is, in fact, impressive.

2026-07-27 18:11:12 GMT

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When I broke up with Twitter and Reddit, I blocked them at the hosts file level.

2026-07-27 01:46:32 GMT

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All the ethical arguments are correct. And they’re all irrelevant because there is no longer a way to avoid slopcode. It’s here. It’s everywhere. Even after the American industry collapses it will still be with us.

2026-07-27 01:45:02 GMT

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How am I to adapt to the new reality and maintain my self respect? For better or worse, I am fit only for programming.

2026-07-27 01:40:36 GMT

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What bothers me most is that there’s no world where this goes away. This is how it is now. I hate it so much and it’s here to stay.
My craft will look nothing like itself in one generation.

2026-07-27 01:38:07 GMT

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If it were just a new way to code I could find a way to accept it. OOP was a new way to code. TDD was a new way to code. Coding evolves as every skill.
But this tech incentivizes the worst instincts of laziness and blind acceptance.

2026-07-27 01:36:16 GMT

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Best case scenario. It works as advertised and delivers everything it promises to programming. In that world, why would a new dev bother learning to actually read code, develop the judgment and skill I have? This tech encourages accepting the output blindly.

2026-07-27 01:33:26 GMT

I’m not convinced deskilling is actually a thing. But I’m convinced this tech devalues skill, which is just as bad.

2026-07-26 23:02:35 GMT

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I'm the opposite of proud of this. I wanted it to fail. I wanted to burn a week's worth of Codex tokens and have nothing to show for it so I could say "yeah, it's still not viable for my workflow".

2026-07-26 23:00:14 GMT

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It runs at emulated 8MHz, locked at 60FPS. It's slop that does exactly what I wanted it to do.
And I'm so mad about it I could shit fire and save the matches.

2026-07-26 22:59:29 GMT

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It doesn't emulate the UARTs because Sentinel 65X doesn't use them. But it emulates the memory mapping, interrupt controller, all 8 timers, the bus mapping to VERA, all that.

2026-07-26 22:57:59 GMT

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As far as I know, until today there was no software emulator of the W65C265S microcontroller. So that's a thing.

2026-07-26 22:56:06 GMT

Well. Now I have a Sentinel 65X emulator. Cycle-accurate, full test coverage, VERA emulation, the whole schmeer.
I can't copyright it. It's pure slop. I didn't write any of the code. So I guess that makes it public domain? Not that I would have charged for slopcode anyway.

2026-07-26 21:16:10 GMT

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I've spent nearly four decades learning to be the best programmer I could be. I have forgotten more about coding than most people will ever have the chance to learn. To briefly toot my own horn, I'm fucking good at this shit.
And this fucking slop extruder just did in fifteen minutes what would have taken me probably five weeks to do on my own.

2026-07-26 21:12:12 GMT

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Can you even be said to be "good" at slop-coding?

2026-07-26 21:11:52 GMT

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Who even am I anymore? Any idiot could have done what I just did and got the same result.

2026-07-26 21:10:40 GMT

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I haven't been this angry since... fuck, literally since a friend was assaulted. My hands want to crush trachea.

2026-07-26 21:08:56 GMT

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I'm angry that this exists. I'm angry that it *works*. I'm angry that my whole life's collection of programming skill led to this place. I'm so angry I could spit.

2026-07-26 21:07:38 GMT

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In my efforts to figure out how to live in slop world, I just handed the machine the design files and datasheets relevant to Sentinel 65X, and told it to use C++ and SDL to make a cycle-accurate emulator for the machine.
And it pooped one out in about fifteen minutes that runs the current test harness ROM perfectly, right down to the test beeps.
I hate this, so, so much. I am so angry, and I have nowhere but here to vent.

2026-07-26 21:04:43 GMT

I'm kind of spinning right now. Like... existential crisis mode activated. We have lost cabin pressure.

2026-07-25 17:01:15 GMT

In good news, I sold some copies of Mazes of Malice overnight so I can treat myself to a tandoori paneer pizza instead of a bowl of rice.

2026-07-25 16:19:58 GMT

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Yes, I’m having a normal one over this. All the ethical choices are taken from me. All I have left are varying levels of unethical choice - and levels don’t matter, a choice is either ethical or it’s no.

2026-07-24 05:43:47 GMT

It’s discrimination of the worst kind (the I kind against me) that I don’t have a remotely modern GPU in this rig.

2026-07-23 17:06:24 GMT

Question: If I had successfully ported the Fiwix kernel to run in amd64 long mode, but had otherwise not changed it at all, would anyone be interested in that?
Not saying I've done it, but I'm examining it as a next project.

2026-07-19 22:48:44 GMT

You may use, copy, sell, transfer, and sub license this software in any form or medium, binary or source, for any purpose, under the following conditions:<li>you may not add or mix in the output of any “large language model” or similar technology to this software</li><li>you may not use this software as “training data” for any “large language model” or similar technology</li><li>you agree that your personal conduct will remain in compliance with the code of conduct for the length of your use of this software</li><li>you agree that your rights to use this software are terminated when the code of conduct or any term of this license are violated</li>

2026-07-19 18:47:33 GMT

SCCP is better in some ways than Git.

2026-07-17 21:26:28 GMT

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No to AI. Yes to trade unions. No to racism. Yes to inclusion.

2026-07-17 21:25:16 GMT

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A movement that asks only that you be willing to learn C and be a decent human being.

2026-07-17 21:18:24 GMT

I may not be as good a programmer as Richard Stallman but I also don’t sexually harass women and I don’t defend nonces, and I’m just as hardcore about my principles.

2026-07-16 20:38:29 GMT

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Personally, for a small project, I don't see the need for a fancy accelerated X11 server like Xorg (unless it compiles and runs easily, of course!). A simple 2D-only X11 server with the basic extensions needed to support modern versions of Motif is plenty.

2026-07-16 20:35:12 GMT

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It needs an X11 server.

2026-07-16 20:28:54 GMT

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There is also https://www.fiwix.org/, which *seems* to be slop-free.

2026-07-16 18:27:20 GMT

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Twenty plus years of Debian down the tubes. Thanks, Linus.

2026-07-16 18:27:01 GMT

Now I need to back my shit up and fucking wipe and install FreeBSD. Not a project I want to take on, TBH.

2026-07-16 14:32:55 GMT

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Where is that special someone we can rally around? What can we do to get better leaders?

2026-07-16 14:31:24 GMT

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The so called heroes of free software and open source are monsters. Stallman is an unwashed pervert. Raymond is a vile racist.

2026-07-16 14:27:15 GMT

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The Free Software Foundation is a confederacy of nonces. Open source is nothing but corporate backed slopware now.
What place is there for a programmer with ethics and values?

2026-07-16 14:25:54 GMT

I’m growing increasingly disenchanted with “Free Software” and “Open Source” as movements.

2026-07-14 18:12:51 GMT

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Some people really seem to have a hate on for it.

2026-07-14 18:09:15 GMT

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No. What has that to do with GUI toolkits if I can ask?

2026-07-14 18:00:24 GMT

I care about X11 because I like Motif. I like the chunky chiseled look and feel. I like the way the API works. I like how fast it is on anything reasonably modern. I like how it doesn’t try to be flashy and shiny.

2026-07-14 00:50:03 GMT

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76% humidity.

2026-07-13 22:17:39 GMT

This shit is just unreasonable.
https://studio8502.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/914/982/665/718/322/original/64eb3f27b9b525c7.jpeg

2026-07-13 20:47:58 GMT

What's the one thing you can do to most improve your C programming skills?
In my opinion, adding -Wall -Wextra -Werror to your CFLAGS, is the answer.
This flag combo turns on a lot more error checking, and turns all "warnings" into hard errors that stop the compiler in its tracks. This forces you to fix things that technically compile but shouldn't.

2026-07-13 19:56:50 GMT

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You program by developing types that represent your functionality as the place where most of the functionality lies.
It's not OOP, there's no message passing or inheritance, but there is a cosmetic similarity to OOP styles.

2026-07-13 19:55:15 GMT

I prefer a model of C programming that often gets derided as "C++ in C" because it relies on opaque types and accessor/mutator APIs, which do resemble what you get in C++ OOP.
I just find it's much easier long-term to maintain code written this way. There's a load of boilerplate, but you learn to relax about that and just go Zen around it.

2026-07-13 19:30:11 GMT

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You want to know why _Generic is so weird? I'm your guy.
You want to understand why we need both argc and argv in main()? I'm your Huckleberry.
You want to grok how to write a Man page for your thing? I'm around.
But all that's so last century.

2026-07-13 19:22:06 GMT

I watched someone vibe code a little app. And yes, it's a neat curiosity that the machine is able to do that.
But aside from the known effects and externalities, I just found watching it depressing. It takes the wind out of my sails for programming in general.
Like, let's give it the best case scenario, it's delivering on all promises, then what the fuck does anyone need me for?
Worst case scenario, it renders most programmers unable to program on their own and leaves them dependent on the machine, in which case what the fuck does anyone need me for?

2026-07-09 01:32:49 GMT

We programmers used to be a proper profession.
https://studio8502.files.fedi.monster/media_attachments/files/116/887/437/179/531/667/original/1dc9cb7c7dac480a.png

2026-07-09 00:20:44 GMT

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Given the lack of feedback, I feel like most people who bought them didn't even play them. Which, I mean, it's your money, spend it how you please, but I really wanted the feedback.

2026-07-09 00:19:29 GMT

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I can't be too bitter. There's only so many people actively playing C64 games.
But I think Mazes of Malice and Gridlocker were particularly clever games. Pity so few people will ever play them.

2026-07-09 00:18:35 GMT

My games were on sale for a month, and that moved a whole nother three copies total.
Well, that pretty much tears it, I'm a failure at being a game developer.
Let's just hope Sentinel 65X goes a little better.

2026-07-06 19:07:06 GMT

Idiomatic C can look a bit strange to new coders.<code>void foo() { for (;;) {} } </code>
This for construct is shorthand for "do nothing, over and over again, forever." Why is this ever useful? Let's say your program is not driven by a conventional main() function, but by hardware interrupts; those interrupts will break the CPU out of the loop and run your custom code, but you still need something for the CPU to do in between IRQ handlers.

2026-07-06 18:54:11 GMT

The big challenge in C, for me at least, is keeping code organized. It's simple enough to lint and format an individual file so it's readable, but how do you organize the code of the whole project?
Well, what I like to do is have one .h/.c file pair for each type I create. The .h file specifies the type and its API, and the .c file implements it. Pretty conventional stuff, mind you. Nothing special about it, but there are no "universal" practices in a language that enforces almost no safety at all.

2026-07-06 18:09:44 GMT

I would teach C programming if I thought anyone would pay for the class.
I could talk about typedef and unions and tag namespace for hours. But that's not what's fashionable.

2026-07-04 00:16:27 GMT

They want to go to Japan to buy anime merch and manga.
I want to stay at a hot spring inn and go see a rakugo show and eat with sumo wrestlers and go to Akihabara to buy obsolete and obscure computers and video games.

2026-06-29 21:31:19 GMT

Socialist discourse doesn’t bother to cover the important things. Like how after we replace the police, which agency will be responsible for tasering sovereign citizens so I can watch it on YouTube while smoking a blunt?

2026-06-29 17:47:18 GMT

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It's for line-level audio, with +3.3V and +5V available for power.