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OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

https://openciv3.org/
624•klaussilveira•12h ago•182 comments

The Waymo World Model

https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-frontier-for-autonomous-driving-simula...
926•xnx•18h ago•548 comments

What Is Ruliology?

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/01/what-is-ruliology/
32•helloplanets•4d ago•24 comments

How we made geo joins 400× faster with H3 indexes

https://floedb.ai/blog/how-we-made-geo-joins-400-faster-with-h3-indexes
109•matheusalmeida•1d ago•27 comments

Jeffrey Snover: "Welcome to the Room"

https://www.jsnover.com/blog/2026/02/01/welcome-to-the-room/
9•kaonwarb•3d ago•7 comments

Unseen Footage of Atari Battlezone Arcade Cabinet Production

https://arcadeblogger.com/2026/02/02/unseen-footage-of-atari-battlezone-cabinet-production/
40•videotopia•4d ago•1 comments

Show HN: Look Ma, No Linux: Shell, App Installer, Vi, Cc on ESP32-S3 / BreezyBox

https://github.com/valdanylchuk/breezydemo
219•isitcontent•13h ago•25 comments

Monty: A minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for use by AI

https://github.com/pydantic/monty
210•dmpetrov•13h ago•103 comments

Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use

https://vecti.com
322•vecti•15h ago•143 comments

Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/
370•ostacke•18h ago•94 comments

Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS

https://github.com/microsoft/litebox
358•aktau•19h ago•181 comments

Hackers (1995) Animated Experience

https://hackers-1995.vercel.app/
477•todsacerdoti•20h ago•232 comments

Show HN: If you lose your memory, how to regain access to your computer?

https://eljojo.github.io/rememory/
272•eljojo•15h ago•160 comments

An Update on Heroku

https://www.heroku.com/blog/an-update-on-heroku/
402•lstoll•19h ago•271 comments

Dark Alley Mathematics

https://blog.szczepan.org/blog/three-points/
85•quibono•4d ago•20 comments

Vocal Guide – belt sing without killing yourself

https://jesperordrup.github.io/vocal-guide/
14•jesperordrup•2h ago•6 comments

Delimited Continuations vs. Lwt for Threads

https://mirageos.org/blog/delimcc-vs-lwt
25•romes•4d ago•3 comments

PC Floppy Copy Protection: Vault Prolok

https://martypc.blogspot.com/2024/09/pc-floppy-copy-protection-vault-prolok.html
56•kmm•5d ago•3 comments

Start all of your commands with a comma

https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2009/commands-with-comma/
3•theblazehen•2d ago•0 comments

Was Benoit Mandelbrot a hedgehog or a fox?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01122
12•bikenaga•3d ago•2 comments

How to effectively write quality code with AI

https://heidenstedt.org/posts/2026/how-to-effectively-write-quality-code-with-ai/
244•i5heu•15h ago•188 comments

Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server

https://developers.googleblog.com/introducing-the-developer-knowledge-api-and-mcp-server/
52•gfortaine•10h ago•21 comments

I spent 5 years in DevOps – Solutions engineering gave me what I was missing

https://infisical.com/blog/devops-to-solutions-engineering
140•vmatsiiako•17h ago•63 comments

Understanding Neural Network, Visually

https://visualrambling.space/neural-network/
280•surprisetalk•3d ago•37 comments

I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams

https://kirkville.com/i-now-assume-that-all-ads-on-apple-news-are-scams/
1058•cdrnsf•22h ago•433 comments

Why I Joined OpenAI

https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2026-02-07/why-i-joined-openai.html
132•SerCe•8h ago•117 comments

Show HN: R3forth, a ColorForth-inspired language with a tiny VM

https://github.com/phreda4/r3
70•phreda4•12h ago•14 comments

Female Asian Elephant Calf Born at the Smithsonian National Zoo

https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/female-asian-elephant-calf-born-smithsonians-national-zoo-an...
28•gmays•8h ago•11 comments

Learning from context is harder than we thought

https://hy.tencent.com/research/100025?langVersion=en
176•limoce•3d ago•96 comments

FORTH? Really!?

https://rescrv.net/w/2026/02/06/associative
63•rescrv•20h ago•22 comments
Open in hackernews

The POSIX specification of vi

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/vi.html
92•exvi•6mo ago

Comments

wahern•6mo ago
For exploring the POSIX standard the frames version is very useful: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/
nickandbro•6mo ago
Love vi, made a Vimgolf like app called:

https://vimgolf.ai

because I like vi so much. Although the app uses neovim underneath the hood because it had an easier API to work with.

BipolarCapybara•6mo ago
Great site! I've been wanting to learn it for the past couple of weeks, but didn't have enough motivation to sit trhough tutorials. +1
Onawa•6mo ago
I learned vi(m) using https://vim-adventures.com/. It's $25 US for a 6-month license, which is a bit short. But I felt I got my money's worth out of it and continue to use and love vi(m) to this day.
nickandbro•6mo ago
Big fan of vim adventures too! It definitely gamifies the learning of vim. Mine is more for the vim enthusiast who want to measure up against other vim power users.
nickandbro•6mo ago
Thank you! It’s an unfinished project of mine. Still looking at adding more levels and allowing users to upload their own.
jmholla•6mo ago
Once you're the slightest but comfortable navigating vi, I highly recommend Practical Vim. [0] It tooke me a few days to get through, but I'm 100% in vim these days and more effective in it than in my old primary editor PyCharm.

[0]: https://pragprog.com/titles/dnvim2/practical-vim-second-edit...

cocoa19•6mo ago
Can I suggest dropping the sign up requirement and email verification to try it out?
nickandbro•6mo ago
I agree! I am just working the containerization of the vim instances. Right now using k8, but wasting $$$ on infra. Moving to cloudflare containers to save that $$$ and make it more available. In the mean time, temporary email sites are allowed and not black listed.
rdancer•6mo ago
Marvellous!

:w<CR> should count the same as ZZ for the purposes of hiding better solutions, else it's fairly easy to walk up the leaderboard even though the better solutions are ostensibly hidden.

nickandbro•6mo ago
Thanks, appreciate the feedback
anthk•6mo ago
Spawn vi or nvi (nvi2 under OpenBSD, it has unicode). Then, press [esc] and run: :viusage [Return] [Esc] :exusage[Return] Now you know the basics. Viusage: keyboard commands while in editing mode. Exusage: typed commands for the command (:) mode.
Joker_vD•6mo ago
Ugh, all this crazy head-spinning cursor commotion... I'll just keep using ed, thank you very much.
n3t•6mo ago
Yeah, it's just better to stick to the standard editor.
chongli•6mo ago
Just start ex instead. Command-based line editing without the hassle of a cursor.
fuzztester•6mo ago
COPY CON ...

on DOS, bro.

nuttin else comes close

or if ur 2 weak, edlin.

EvanAnderson•6mo ago
I actually use "COPY CON" a fair amount. Also a decent amount of "cat > foo.sh".
fuzztester•6mo ago
Ha ha.

Same here.

Also, in shell,

  >file 
can be used to delete a file, IIRC. Not at a Unix box right now, so can't check.

And:

  echo * 
is the poor man's ls command, as in, "poor man, his Unix OS is corrupted , and many commands are missing".

And similarly dd is that man's cat command. :)

fuzztester•6mo ago
yes, it makes sense in some situations, because if all you want to do create a small batch (.BAT) file of a few lines, and you are a careful / good typist, the COPY CON method can be a lot faster then firing up your favourite editor, even a fast one like vim, to create the file, save it and exit.

and the same applies for UNIX.

pjmlp•6mo ago
I did my high school typewriting test in PC skills using edlin, and never ever used it again.

For coding in MS-DOS, I was using Borland IDEs, and there was the nice Q programmers editor as well.

fuzztester•6mo ago
I used many text editors over the years.

At one time, I used PFE, the Programmer's File Editor, which was lightweight and fast, on Windows.

It had a feature of being able to open large files.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer's_File_Editor

https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/people/steveb/cpaap/pfe/

Rendello•6mo ago
Always keep your copy of Ed Mastery on-hand:

https://mwl.io/nonfiction/tools#ed

anthk•6mo ago
If you think about it, it's a cheap book on sed too.
haunter•6mo ago
Huawei EulerOS is one of the few POSIX compliant Linux distros, but it’s a commercial one [0]

But it has a FOSS release, openEuler [1]

I actually want to download it now to check if the vi there is really that POSIX version

0, https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3622.htm

1, https://www.openeuler.org/en/

ksherlock•6mo ago
Wikipedia says it's based off RHEL and this[1] suggests it just vim.

1: https://dl-cdn.openeuler.openatom.cn/openEuler-25.03/source/...

Are they actually UNIX Conformant? That PDF just says they've entered a trademark license agreement. They're not listed in the conformance database.

https://www.opengroup.org/csq/search/t=XY1.html

ksherlock•6mo ago
FWIW, OS X uses vim so if any of the conformance tests check, it can be made to pass.

Solaris, AIX, and probably everyone else use the BSD/AT&T vi.

skissane•6mo ago
> Are they actually UNIX Conformant? That PDF just says they've entered a trademark license agreement. They're not listed in the conformance database.

They were an official UNIX – https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3622.htm – but they aren't any more.

To be an official UNIX, you need to both pass the test suite and pay the trademark license fee. And the license fee needs to be renewed once every X years. And if you don't pay the renewal, you are no longer an official UNIX, even if you still pass all the tests.

This is why Solaris is no longer an official UNIX – someone at Oracle decided paying UNIX trademark license fees was a waste of money, so they stopped – and hence Solaris is no longer officially UNIX any more.

An I'm pretty sure the same thing happened with Huawei EulerOS. Probably someone at Huawei realised that zero customers cared whether EulerOS was officially "UNIX", and hence decided that paying the renewal was a waste of money. And they are probably right about that. 30 years ago, being officially "UNIX" or not could be a deal-breaker, nowadays I doubt a single customer cares.

unmole•6mo ago
I used to work for Huawei. From what I remember, vi was just vim.
pdw•6mo ago
Somebody spent time and money to make vim posix-compliant: https://vimhelp.org/vi_diff.txt.html#posix
chasil•6mo ago
You can see all the userland utilities by removing the "vi.HTML" suffix from the URL.

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/

anthk•6mo ago
>mailx

mbox should die; or maybe set as a legacy option. Current systems can handle thousands of email by using maildirs.

Also, one day bsdgames will enter into POSIX maybe but as a test case, in order to be sure on how well the POSIX compatible API behaves.

Phantasia(6) could be rewritten for balance and such...

wpollock•6mo ago
>mbox should die;

Mbox is useful for backups and for migration between different email systems (that use different databases internally). Mbox is also fine if you only have a hundred or so email folders and only process a few dozen emails a day, say for personal use (e.g. Thunderbird or k9).

I agree that mbox is not okay for large scale mail servers. Maildir+ works much better in such cases.

anthk•6mo ago
So does Maildir; reusing it between Mutt and GNUs or Claws Mail should be a child's play.

Once you have tar to preserve perms just in case, your are done.

Mbox on big mailboxes it's hell, anyone can understand that linear parsing will be slow as hell. It's like looking up a word file in a dictionary word by word from A to Z instead of directly heading to the first word letter...

userbinator•6mo ago
It's notable that vi has been specified by POSIX (along with ed and ex), but not emacs.
spauldo•6mo ago
vi was born on UNIX early enough that every UNIX wound up with it.

Emacs was born on mainframes and made its way to UNIX much later, after vi had already become the standard.

anthk•6mo ago
This. Emacs came from GNU which GNU is not Unix; Emacs it's a tool to give Unix users freedoom (and a Lisp, OFC) from the Lisp Machines RMS used to use. Also, Emacs it's really huge, the closes to a "Posix Emacs" would be mg, as it's included under the OpenBSD base, but sadly it doesn't support Unicode. If it supported it, tons of Emacs users would use it as a quick editing tool, as 'mg' still launchers faster than 'emacs -nw -Q'.

And, as you said, Emacs and Lisp were for big machines, and Emacs it's like psychodelic/progressive rock: something to freely experiment creatively without machine restrictions. If you improvise "live", as jazz masters do (Lisp Machines), the better.

Unix would be like techno music from Kraftwerk: simple but well made beats and samples -machine made-, repetitive, they sound automated. But once they are put together they create something new and brilliant. Some people remix these samples and they create crazy stuff like the songs of The Avalanches, too. Kinda like Unix orthogonality between small tools and pipes.

Very different philosophies, but mixing GNU (Unix clone) and Emacs (Emacs from ITS was distinct from GNU Emacs) created something really powerful. For instance, you could automate mail and usenet fetching and sending data in the background with daemons (freeing resources for Emacs and unblocking I/O) and hack the frontend/parsing code like crazy, Or Telega, with telega and telega-server as the daemon to talk with Telegram, or even something like Mu and Mu4e for Email. Or simply, EMMS calling mpv in the background for audio and video playing -you can watch movies fom Emacs- (and mpv itself to yt-dlp for online videos) seamlessly.

In the art world, that would be like industrial music, a mix between automatization and improvisation, and, FFS, Ministry and some Prodigy songs were 100x better than Techno subgenres and every Hair Rock and Heavy Metal band with the same poses and tropes everywhere...

kragen•6mo ago
Just to clarify, Emacs came from ITS, predating GNU by IIRC almost a decade and even the actual construction of any Lisp machines. GNU Emacs was at least the fifth Emacs, following the original PDP-10 Emacs, Multics Emacs, Zmacs, and Gosmacs.
anthk•6mo ago
I hope the downvote isn't because of your answer, because I already mentioned that. I even emulated ITS under Simh, and I tried both Emacs and MacLisp.
kragen•6mo ago
I hope not too; your comment was very good, just a little confusing.
spauldo•6mo ago
Who got downvoted? Both of your comments were accurate. The music comparison stuff is subjective, but that's not worth a downvote.

(I don't know how to see downvotes in Hacki, hence why I ask.)

kragen•6mo ago
Possibly at some point anthk's comment was downvoted?
skissane•6mo ago
> Emacs was born on mainframes and made its way to UNIX much later, after vi had already become the standard.

Berkeley released the first version of vi in 1978–development had started in 1976 but I don't believe pre-1978 versions were released publicly. The first versions of Unix for Emacs (James Gosling's implementation, and Warren Montgomery's implementation, developed independently of each other) were released in 1981. But I don't think that three year head start was the biggest factor here.

I think a much bigger factor was the fact that vi came with BSD Unix for free, while Gosling Emacs was being sold as a commercial product (although also freely available under rather restrictive terms); I'm not sure what terms Montgomery Emacs (from Bell Labs) was available under, but it soon evolved into CCA Emacs (a commercial product). Free very often beats commercial. The first release of GNU Emacs wasn't until 1985.

And then another major factor was that in 1983, AT&T decided to make vi part of UNIX System V. I think the reasons they decided against Emacs included the fact that they could get vi for free from Berkeley, whereas the most popular Unix Emacs implementations in 1983 they'd have to pay licensing fees for commercial use. Montgomery Emacs was developed by Bell Labs so they owned that, but it was relatively primitive and obscure; CCA Emacs was derived from Montgomery's, but had rewritten all the code so no longer was under Bell Labs copyright; GNU Emacs likewise started out as a modified version of Gosling's Emacs and then escaped Gosling's copyright by rewriting all his code, but in 1983 it wasn't an option yet, and its (proto-GPL) licensing terms likely would have been too scary for AT&T's lawyers anyway.

PhilipRoman•6mo ago
https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/xrat/V4_xcu...

> The community of emacs editing enthusiasts was adamant that the full emacs editor not be included in IEEE Std 1003.2-1992 because they were concerned that an attempt to standardize this very powerful environment would encourage vendors to ship versions conforming strictly to the standard, but lacking the extensibility required by the community. The author of the original emacs program also expressed his desire to omit the program. Furthermore, there were a number of historical UNIX systems that did not include emacs, or included it without supporting it, but there were very few that did not include and support vi.

eviks•6mo ago
> Move Down

> Synopsis:

> [count] j

Why would you ever specify configurable shortcuts? Does is break posix when a user changes them?

porridgeraisin•6mo ago
> Does it break posix

A vim that ships out of the box with different shortcuts than those -- I presume yes. But if the user configures them then it's upto them I guess. Just like a user can swap around /bin/cat and /bin/echo.

wpollock•6mo ago
Note that vim includes a useful tutorial you can invoke by "vimtutor" on the command line or from within vim with ":help tutor"; for neovim try ":Tutorial".
anthk•6mo ago
Nvi has :viusage and :exusage. Vim is not POSIX vi; vim to vi it's what zsh it's to sh. Nvi2 it's closer as it has very few additions on top of vi, but it has Unicode support which can be a lifesaver if you live in Europe or Japan, allowing you to use Nvi everywhere (I do, as it's my post editor under Mutt/Slrn,Tut and so on).
gpvos•6mo ago
Note that vim is not POSIX-compliant, as it has no open mode.

Open mode is a kind of single-line visual mode. I actually used it quite a bit over a 1200-baud modem line.

webdevver•6mo ago
posix to linux is what web standards are to chrome