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Scientists Create Robotic Rabbits to Fight Invasive Burmese Pythons in Florida

https://scienceclock.com/robotic-rabbits-invasive-burmese-pythons-florida/
1•sylvainkalache•23s ago•0 comments

Veritasium: The Ridiculous Engineering of ASML Machine [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
1•sbt567•5m ago•0 comments

Fixing a Buffer Overflow in Unix v4 Like It's 1973

https://sigma-star.at/blog/2025/12/unix-v4-buffer-overflow/
1•birdculture•6m ago•0 comments

CCC&T – Cosmic ray, the Climate Catastrophe and Trains [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-ccc-t-cosmic-ray-the-climate-catastrophe-and-trains
1•doener•15m ago•0 comments

The Dying Art of Being a Bum

https://shagbark.substack.com/p/the-dying-art-of-being-a-bum
2•bookofjoe•15m ago•0 comments

OmniFlowAI

1•aiyetanm•16m ago•1 comments

Coding Dissent: Art, Technology, and Tactical Media [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-coding-dissent-art-technology-and-tactical-media
1•doener•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Gradient – A 1-click mood journal for 2026, running locally

https://gradientjournal.co/
1•ashahab28•17m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I built a Python wrapper to query Uniswap v3 directly

https://github.com/qoery-com/qoery-py
1•SamTinnerholm•17m ago•0 comments

To sign or not to sign: Practical vulnerabilities in GPG and friends [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-to-sign-or-not-to-sign-practical-vulnerabilities-i
1•doener•18m ago•0 comments

CES 2026: Where enthusiasm meets reality and technology proves its worth

https://comuniq.xyz/post?t=673
1•01-_-•19m ago•0 comments

Equal Length Words

https://susam.net/eql.html
2•susam•25m ago•0 comments

Computer use or tool calling – what's best for real world work agents?

1•akshat77•31m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Remove your data from 100 platforms without signing up

https://www.offlist.me
1•rahulkandoriya•31m ago•2 comments

Exploring the Untouched Abandoned IBM Corporate Retreat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjQ2PAgUcM8
1•dandelionv1bes•36m ago•0 comments

iPad kids are more anxious, less resilient, and slower decision makers

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/30/ipad_kids_are_more_anxious/
1•Bender•37m ago•0 comments

Global coal demand has reached a plateau and may well decline slightly by 2030

https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-has-reached-a-plateau-and-may-well-decline-slightly-b...
1•smurda•37m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Interactive magical particles simulation in pure C++ (SDL2)

https://github.com/CoolMartinBonk/Gift-from-other-planet
1•martin2000•38m ago•0 comments

Beyond New START: What Happens Next in Nuclear Arms Control?

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/beyond-new-start-what-happens-n...
1•zeristor•39m ago•0 comments

The most durable tech is boring, old, and everywhere

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/31/long_lived_tech/
1•Bender•39m ago•0 comments

IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasnt taken over the world, dont call it a failure

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/31/ipv6_at_30/
2•Bender•40m ago•0 comments

CATL Makes Big Announcement on Sodium Batteries for 2026

https://cleantechnica.com/2025/12/29/catl-makes-big-announcement-on-sodium-batteries-for-2026/
1•ksec•44m ago•0 comments

Peek-a-boo and the First Lesson in Awareness [essay]

https://omegaaxiommeta.substack.com/p/why-we-play-peek-a-boo-contrast-pattern
1•nilegreen•50m ago•1 comments

Enough of the 'Hey you ' faux-friend nonsense. You're a business, not my mate

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/01/the-hill-i-will-die-on-business-friend-indi...
5•beardyw•52m ago•0 comments

Built AI chatbot platform to be 100% EU-hosted after customers refused OpenAI

https://www.chatvia.ai
1•mayahi•58m ago•0 comments

Bulgaria joins euro area from 1 January

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/de/ip_25_3123
2•yreg•58m ago•0 comments

China builds a record-breaking hypergravity machine to compress space & time

https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3338193/china-builds...
1•mnming•1h ago•0 comments

Windows 11 Outperforming Linux on an Intel Arrow Lake H Laptop

https://www.phoronix.com/review/windows-beats-linux-arl-h
31•tuananh•1h ago•13 comments

Deltax: A non-decision AI governance framework with explicit stop conditions

https://zenodo.org/records/18100154
1•DELTA-X•1h ago•1 comments

Bluetooth Headphone Jacking: A Key to Your Phone [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-bluetooth-headphone-jacking-a-key-to-your-phone
3•AndrewDucker•1h ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

I Miss Visual Basic

https://micro.webology.dev/2025/05/11/i-miss-visual-basic/
19•speckx•7mo ago

Comments

lysace•7mo ago
There has been so much VB love here lately. Here are some counterpoints:

In the 90s, when you saw that a Windows app needed Visual Basic DLLs, you kind of knew that the app in question was very likely created by a complete amateur.

The best apps tended to be tiny and written in C by wizards.

pvg•7mo ago
Some miss old handy tools, others miss the old gatekeeping.
lysace•7mo ago
Gatekeeping or not, it was a useful indicator. There was so much crap.
rbanffy•7mo ago
I’ve seen terrible programs written in all sorts of languages.
lysace•7mo ago
And there were no patterns, particulary between 1992-1995, for MS Windows apps?
tptacek•7mo ago
Bracketing this with '92-'95 makes the claim so much funnier.
rbanffy•7mo ago
One thing VB allowed was horrible visual design. When you wrote a Windows app in C or C++, you are happy when the button appears in the UI and you leave it alone at that point. VB allowed people to customise their buttons with all sorts of colours and patterns no sane UI designer would attempt.
pvg•7mo ago
Same with Hypercard, perhaps even more so since Hypercard let you respond to UI gestures the standard UI didn't really use like mouseovers.
rbanffy•7mo ago
HyperCard, at least initially, didn’t have color, so it somewhat limited how horrendous the UI could be.
tptacek•7mo ago
[Nobody][1] [ever][2] [wrote][3] [crap][4] [in][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail] [C][6].
guidedlight•7mo ago
Most apps in the 90’s/early 00’s were tiny. They did one thing well.

It’s in that context, VB did really well. The thing that VB didn’t do well is scale due to language limitations, but for tiny apps it didn’t matter.

mattl•7mo ago
When you go to a modern website and you see it downloads 900kb of JavaScript just to show you the homepage, how do you feel about that?

I was a VB developer for a few years. I'm trying to remember the name of the tool we used to bundle VB applications into a single binary. It wasn't a Microsoft tool.

lysace•7mo ago
> When you go to a modern website and you see it downloads 900kb of JavaScript just to show you the homepage, how do you feel about that?

That shipping sites like that should cause you to pay some kind of tax. Use that tax income to invest in software security.

mattl•7mo ago
I saw a thread the other day on creating a website without JavaScript and so many people were saying it couldn’t be done.
rbanffy•7mo ago
I like the idea of an IDE with integrated GUI builder. We had a couple - I used NetBeans to make Java ME applications for phones.

Shouldn’t be too hard to build a framework that loads a GUI definition and auto-binds UI events to functions according to a naming convention. I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t already such a thing for Python.

guidedlight•7mo ago
VB UI’s tended to be fixed and designed for a world where everyone ran a 4:3 640x480 VGA monitor. This made VB’s UI builder very easy to achieve good results.

I’m not sure the same approach would work today.

rbanffy•7mo ago
Just replace pixels with millimetres and we are safe.

At some point it got anchors in the widgets so you could position it at a distance of another control or the window border (at least). The same effect can be done with layout managers and other tricks.

jenkstom•7mo ago
Why not Delphi? And why not Lazarus?
mattl•7mo ago
> Why not Lazarus?

I've never heard of this or if I have, I don't remember it.

It's an open source IDE that's Delphi compatible. The author of the article is trying to make a Mac app.

* Downloads are from an ad-ridden SourceForge page.

* I download Lazarus I don't get a nice little Mac app... I get a folder full of stuff

* Starting the app, macOS tells me “lazarus” is damaged and can’t be opened. You should move it to the Trash.

* On the project screenshots page, ReactOS is shown before macOS and macOS screenshots are from a while ago.

Contrast that experience with... VSCodium, the open source community version of VSCode.

* Download is from GitHub, no ads.

* Downloads a disk image with a familiar pattern

* Drag the VSCodium app bundle to my Applications folder

* I get prompted if I want to open it as it's something downloaded... and VSCodium opens (slowly at first) -- up pops a message saying I've downloaded the x86 version by mistake and I should download the ARM64 version and there's a link to do it... downloading the correct version and it opens instantly.

--

All of this to say... with any project, open source or proprietary there is a sense of native/correctly packaged for your OS that's obvious, and if a project doesn't do that I wonder if anyone is using it for that OS.

TrackerFF•7mo ago
VB.NET works just fine, no? Granted it is 13-14 years since I last time touched VB.NET, but slapping together apps in visual studio was a breeze. If something serious hasn't happened since then, it should still be easy.
gschizas•7mo ago
Modern VB.NET (and C#) suffer from overcomplication, from trying to do too much. And at the same time, not doing enough.

There are (at least) three ways to make a desktop application (Classic Windows Forms, XAML and other, more different XAML, for what used to be Metro/Windows Store apps). Not all functionality overlaps between them.

There are a plethora of (paid) custom controls which reimplement the wheel for all of those (because Microsoft didn't bundle in some elementary Windows controls)

That being said, I personally miss LightSwitch.

neonsunset•7mo ago
You are confusing platform-specific(!) GUI frameworks with the languages themselves, which have been long "divorced" from the platform they initially targeted.
jperoutek•7mo ago
VB.NET is still a supported platform by microsoft, with the GUI builder and everything. We still use VB.NET exclusively at my current job, for better or for worse. With the addition of tools and libraries like DevExpress, its honestly not a bad setup.
mattl•7mo ago
IIRC, VB.NET disregarded the 20+ years of VB developers for the most part.
nom•7mo ago
VB will always have a special place in my heart.

  On Error Resume Next
dyl000•7mo ago
I was a real big fan of vb.net! Built so much with it.
sph•7mo ago
I started with VB6, but I was not a great fan of the language. Soon, I moved to MSVC++6 with MFC, and even though it had its own RAD system for designing dialogs, it was so half-arsed and limiting compared to Visual Basic. You couldn't even change the foreground colour of a label!

I still remember the envy when I found out Delphi developers were not subject to these silly restrictions, and their GUIs were always so colourful.