I'm up for both a new phone and a new laptop, I have an Iphone 8 and a Macbook pro (2020) that was a freebie from an old job.

I wanted a new Iphone, but if I did that, only a Macbook can put music on it and that's half what I use my phone for. I don't really need a new laptop, but all of my other devices are Linux and can't put music on an Iphone. So seems like it's either all or nothing here. Either I switch to Android, or I go buy two expensive Apple products soon.

Iphones have always been great to me, the only reason I need a new phone right now is because Apple refuses to support mine any more. The Macbook though, I had that for only a year before the logic board gave out and bricked it. Is that just something that happens with Macbooks? Are all Apple products actually trash and I've just gotten lucky with both Iphone 4s and Iphone 8 being built for war?

Am I dumb for avoiding Android like the plague? Every Android phone I've ever met is loaded with tons of bloatware and insecure as hell, seems like the Windows of the phone world.

I've grown increasingly unsure about if I'll stay with this profession long term thanks to the AI "revolution". Not because I think I'll be replaced, I have an extremely wide set of skills thanks to working over a decade in small startups so I think I'm safe for a long while to come.

No, I've grown weary because an increasingly larger share of the code that we produce is expected to be ai generated and with it shorter timelines and I just plain don't like it. I think we reached a tipping point around Claude opus 4.5 where it really is capable and that's only going to continue to get better. But damnit I like coding, I enjoy the problem solving and I feel that's getting stripped away from me basically overnight. Also, as these models become more and more capable I think the number of companies vibe coding to a product with fields of junior level engineers is going to grow which is going to push down senior job opportunities and wages.

So now I'm left wondering if it's time to start pointing towards a new career. I really love building stuff and solving problems so maybe I go back to school and switch to some other flavor of engineering? Idk. Curious where other's heads are at with this.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/3

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/2

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/1

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

In the Tildes Minecraft weekly thread a little while back, there was some discussion about self-hosting images. I've finally done the thing, and figured I'd share the results.

The primary goal is to make something as simple as possible: I don't really care about galleries or albums, or different file formats, or fancy automatic deduplication etc. I just want to grab an image and throw it up on a link that I can share.

I do care about easily importing images from various sources, and stripping image metadata.

The simplest solution I came up with that addresses all these while requiring minimal changes to my existing self-hosted setup is this:

• Serve a directory of static files from /var/www/i.allemangd.dev on a subdomain with a new server {} block in my existing nginx config.
• Upload images to that directory via scp. Then access is controlled by SSH and VPN and I don't need to worry about authentication.
• Convert everything to webp and strip metadata with imagemagick.
• Don't worry about albums or galleries with the automated tool. I can manually edit the folder structure or rename via ssh/sshfs, but the automated tool just dumps images to a flat directory of $(uuidgen).webp.
• Pull from the clipboard via xclip by default (I only need to support one platform), or via stdin, path, or url on the command line.
• Everything in a short autoloded zsh function, and configure destination host/dir/url by environment variables in zshrc.

The code is at https://git.allemangd.dev/me/imup. @creesch, @Durinthal, @hamstergeddon, @trim: you all participated in my call for recommendations, so have a ping here in case you're interested in the solution I've landed on.

So, with all that, I'll move some of my minecraft screenshots off of imgur via this tool:

$ imup \
  'https://i.imgur.com/ecokmB1.png' 'https://i.imgur.com/UNs1mlr.jpeg' 'https://i.imgur.com/83ChnpP.png' \
  2026-01-20_22.15.08.png  2026-01-21_23.06.18.png \
  --tag mc

I expect the two workflows from here on will be one of:

• Navigate to my minecraft screenshots directory and execute imup $(date -I)_*.png to share recent updates on the weekly thread. Now just run imup *.png.
• Prt Sc; "Copy to Clipboard"; imup; Paste the url.

Some adjustments I might make in the future are:

• Instead of naming the file by a uuid, name the file by a hash. This way reuploading files won't explode the size of that directory - my "weekly update" thing could just be imup *.png in the screenshots directory. This is done.

• Synchronize via rsync instead of scp. It should be faster. Instead I now synchronize via temporary sshfs. I think rsync in principle could be faster but this is easier.

• Set up an sshfs mount with this connection so my minecraft screenshots folder links directly to the static files, like https://i.allemangd.dev/mc/<date>.png. Then no manual commands are necessary. I'm a little hesitant to do that, though, since I'm not sure what happens if I put sshfs to offline host in my fstab, and probably not all my screenshots need to be public. I think I will not do this for fear of accidentally leaking something via an automatically-uploaded file in that directory. Better to be explicit.

UPDATE: I've rewritten the thing in Python. I now name the files by hash and have a simple linking scheme for "tags". Installation is as easy as uv tool install git+https://git.allemangd.dev/me/imup, and I can carry my config around in dotfiles.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

LISP and schemes have always, from a distance appeared to be the best way to write code. I even started my own language that has languished for the past couple years, and it's taken on a pseudo-likeness to (scheme)-like languages by accident.

This brings me to my questions -

1. How did you start?
2. Does anyone here do systems-level scheme/lisp? what do you program in for that?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Is it just me, or is it weird that every terminal starts at the top-left? After three commands, your prompt stays at the bottom of the screen for the rest of the session anyway.

I added this to my fish_greeting last month. (You could add something similar to .bashrc / .zshrc):

printf "\033[$LINES;1H"

If you want to print a status line or two after this then subtract the number of extra lines:

printf '\033[%s;1H' (math $LINES - 1)
cat /proc/loadavg

It might take some getting used to but it feels a lot more natural. When opening a new window or pane, the prompt is always closer to the previous one so my eyes don't need to move as much.

It's a small subtle thing but I think it is an improvement. Return to teletype.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

A month ago I decided to take a look at Zed. It hasn't hit 1.0 yet so I wasn't sure if I'd like it. But I haven't opened any other code editors since the first launch. It's open source and seems to be cross-licensed with multiple free software licenses.

Beyond the nice GUI performance from their use of native code it's clear that my use of VSCode forks for the last few years has kept me held back. There are lots of little things I love about Zed like how you can edit code within the search results page. Or how you can use your own self-hosted LLM without the outrageous shenanigans required to do so with Cursor.

I'm doing a long overdo computer update (new CPU, mobo, and RAM), and am going to be reinstalling windows for the first time in a while. My current system is still on Win10 due to incompatiblity with Win11, however I wouldn't have updated to Win11 until now anyway. I have Win11 on a Surface Pro and with recent updates adding features that match my existing muscle memory better (such as allowing expanded window buttons and putting Start on the left), I'm not as resistant to installing Win11 on my new hardware. I have access to the Education version of Win11 which after some research looks like it's basically Windows Enterprise and that itself seems like a big feature since it shouldn't come with a lot of the bloat apps already.

With that in mind I have few questions:

1. Does anyone have a PowerShell script they've put together to run on a fresh Windows 11 install that configures a lot of the settings to make it behave more like Win10 (and it's predecessors), toggles privacy settings on, etc. I am not looking for something that tries to strip anything out, I just want something that will save me time chasing down all the settings I've slowly found and adjusted on my Surface. I have the default folders like Pictures and Documents pointed to a drive on a seperate drive from my Windows drive specifically to make migrating to a new installation easier. I'd love something that prompts me to update where those shortcuts should point as well.
2. Does anyone have any protips for getting the bulk of programs I need installed? I looked at Winget and Chocolatey a couple years ago, but they didn't quite look as fuss free as I was looking for. I generally avoid installing things from the Microsoft app store (which I understand would make this easier if I was willing to lean more into the Microsoft ecosystem). I'd love something (script based or otherwise) that's going to grab and install the program (rather than app) for a list of things like Firefox, Spotify, Steam, Miniconda, etc. I plan to make a list of programs I have installed that I know I will want to reinstall before doing the fresh install, but I'm making a plan to make installing everything as easy as possible. If there's a reliable script based way to install like 80% of my main programs I'd be thrilled to only have to track down and install more specialized stuff.
3. Any general advice for transfering my browser data? I use Firefox, am signed in to an account, and think I have everything set to sync. However I'd love to bring over all my browser tabs and windows I'm still working in. I did look up how to transfer the browser data and found a Mozilla article for it, just wasn't sure if anyone had a method they discovered and like better.

Thanks in advance for tips and advice.

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/6

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/7

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>