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

https://openciv3.org/
625•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...
927•xnx•18h ago•547 comments

What Is Ruliology?

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2026/01/what-is-ruliology/
33•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/
10•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
220•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•142 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/
478•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•161 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•7 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•189 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
133•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

Hello-World iOS App in Assembly

https://gist.github.com/nicolas17/966a03ce49f949dd17b0123415ef2e31
206•pabs3•3mo ago

Comments

starmole•3mo ago
Super cool! Would love to see the build/deploy steps needed.
saagarjha•3mo ago
xcrun -sdk iphoneos clang yellow.asm, pack it into an IPA and sign it
anta40•3mo ago
Hmm doesn't work. Here's the error log (I'm on Mac M2):

https://gist.github.com/anta40/60f62c803a091ad0415d60f8cac55...

saagarjha•3mo ago
Maybe throw in a -framework CoreFoundation
zffr•3mo ago
I just tested this on my computer.

  1. Make a new Xcode iOS project and delete all files except for Info.plist
  2. Remove all keys from Info.plist
  3. In the build settings search for "storyboard" and remove all keys
  4. Add yellow.asm to project
  5. Link UIKit, and Foundation
After all that you can build and run on a simulator
JimDabell•3mo ago
There is also an iOS app implemented in C here:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/10290255/8427

baumschubser•3mo ago
snibbetracker is an example of a C/SDL iOS app. <1MB from the app store which is really wild. https://apps.apple.com/de/app/snibbetracker/id1065797528
c-fe•3mo ago
<1MB is also relatively easy to reach with swiftui apps. I had two fully working ones in the app store below 1MB. They are removed now since I didnt pay the yearly 100€
bloomca•3mo ago
Do you need to pay the license to keep your apps in store? Or did they deprecate some APIs and therefore removed your apps?

Honestly wild if you need to upkeep the license just to have it in store once it is published.

BrianHenryIE•3mo ago
Yes. I have a bike helmet with integrated cameras. The company (Cyclevision) that made it is gone. So no Apple account. So no app for my helmet anymore.
klardotsh•3mo ago
This is yet another example of why open bootloaders to allow alternative firmwares for all gadgets must become legally required. Stuff turning into eWaste (or at least losing what some folks would likely call major functionality) because the creators went out of business and the gadget was locked down is a disaster for both the planet and for the concept that you actually own the stuff you buy.
ghrl•3mo ago
You could check if consumerrights.wiki already has a page on that company and if not create one. It's a great resource that will also be used to justify demands for changes to the DMCA.
anta40•3mo ago
Even better if build steps are provided
azhenley•3mo ago
I’m guessing even this still requires that I use XCode.
abnercoimbre•3mo ago
Is that true? What about the command-line version?
klausa•3mo ago
The Command Line Tools doesn't include the iOS SDK; or a simulator; or any of the other tools required to get it deployed to actual device.
dadoum•3mo ago
It probably doesn't, as you practically never need Xcode for simple apps. From my experience, currently, you need Xcode to compile storyboards (NIB/XIB files) and bundle Assets.car (macOS BOM files); and compile Xcode projects, btw. I may be missing another important feature used in a lot of apps but otherwise for the most part you can build an iOS app without Xcode (or even macOS).
pjmlp•3mo ago
The command line tools are still XCode, in a way.
dadoum•3mo ago
I am not talking about XCode command line tools. I am talking about currently available open-source tools that can actually replace those command line tools. I don't think that would count as Xcode as those tools are available on systems Xcode can't run on.
sanskarix•3mo ago
This kind of thing is how you actually learn what's under the hood. Everyone's building with React Native and Flutter, which is fine until something breaks. Then you're stuck Googling black magic. Starting from assembly teaches you the real cost of abstraction.
internetter•3mo ago
Is this really low level though? Because its hooking UIKit which is very high level relative to ASM. I'd be really curious to see an app draw on iOS without UIKit. I don't know if thats possible.
pjmlp•3mo ago
As low level as it gets.

For lower level one needs something like ESP32, Arduino, retro-coding platforms.

shreddit•3mo ago
Of course it is. You just have to reimplement UIKit in ASM, no big deal…
pjmlp•3mo ago
And even that won't do it, because within the constraints of iOS, eventually that framebuffer with software rendering has to be displayed on the screen via an OS API, which is UI Kit.
fingerlocks•3mo ago
It should be possible.

If you enable the JIT entitlement for personal development, then bundle a mach-o into an entitled app. Or compile it directly on the app and mprotect-x to execute it. Is there something else you can’t do that I’m not considering? I might give this a try.

pjmlp•3mo ago
The point is what is possible within the constrains of public APIs.
fingerlocks•3mo ago
Everything I described is in a public header right inside your iOS SDK folder
pjmlp•3mo ago
I doubt you can render an UI in pure Assembly and show it on the screen without going through UI Kit in a non-rooted device, given that even the device drivers extension points is quite limited.

Which was the whole discussion point that started the thread, how to make a iOS app with zero references to UI Kit.

This isn't an 8 and 16 bit home computers, or games console, with an address for the framebuffer.

Someone•3mo ago
Is syscall a public API on iOS? In the end, you have to call that to get anything on the screen?

Looking at unistd.h, it seems marked as

  __OS_AVAILABILITY_MSG(ios,deprecated=10.0,"syscall(2) is unsupported; "
    "please switch to a supported interface. For SYS_kdebug_trace use kdebug_signpost().")
and syscall numbers seem wrapped by

  #ifdef __APPLE_API_PRIVATE
in *<sys/syscall.h>
pjmlp•3mo ago
Not at all, it is a Linux thing to keep applications doing syscalls, like back in MS-DOS interrupt days.

All other modern OSes give zero guarantees about syscalls.

Indeed, you have to call UI Kit, that is the public API for userspace applications.

Even if via OpenGL ES or Metal, you need a drawing context and a Window to render it.

saagarjha•3mo ago
No, you’ll have to check in with backboard etc before it will let you do anything useful
fingerlocks•3mo ago
You can write directly to the frame buffer, like a video game. You still need the UIKit import to publish, because it has to be bundled into a .ipa which requires an AppDelegate, a UIBundle, among other things.

If you want to “technically” avoid UIKit, you can drop one step lower. UIKit is implemented on CoreAnimation. A bare UIView is nearly a pass through wrapper around CALayer. It wouldn’t be hard to build your own custom UI on CALayers. The old CA tutorials for implementing a ScrollView from the ground up are still floating around out there.

saagarjha•3mo ago
This is an excellent argument for not using assembly, actually
bilekas•3mo ago
The argument is that learning assembly is useful, it gives some insights into what happens under the hood. That seems like a no brainer to me.

Would I use it for production iOS app, no, I don't hate myself that much.

saagarjha•3mo ago
Learning assembly is useful, yes. Learning assembly by reading an app written in assembly…not so much.
flohofwoe•3mo ago
It's still very educational. It shows how ObjC method calls work under the hood, because even calling objc_msgSend() from plain C involves a certain amount of non-obvious magic (because of the variable argument list and return types).

And tbh I'm kinda surprised how little assembly code it is, less than most UI framework hello-worlds in high level languages ;)

saagarjha•3mo ago
You can just cast it to a function pointer of the right type and use it, the ABI is C-compatible
nurettin•3mo ago
All this teaches is how to put parameters on stack, pass them to functions and use the results. It is pretty much a transliteration of what you would do in C.
JojoFatsani•3mo ago
Assembly is fine until it breaks too
SoKamil•3mo ago
You still have whole Objective-C runtime and CoreAnimation, UIKit abstraction under the hood.
bloomca•3mo ago
You have a very long way between assembly and RN/Flutter. I do agree that it helps to know these things, but you need to learn a lot more before it becomes more generally applicable.
wiseowise•3mo ago
Complete bogus. This is programmers machismo that's completely detached from reality.
scrumper•3mo ago
I'm not sure this is entirely fair though I think you're mostly right. The comment you're replying to is right in terms of the value of understanding one or more levels of abstraction below the one you're working in. Conversely you're right in that learning assembler isn't going to do much to help you debug a failing Flutter app. It's just attacking the abstraction stack in detail from the opposite end - equally myopic.

But none the less valuable because of the additional perspective it brings. That's the real point of it, another lens through which to view and understand the mechanics of the application.

shay_ker•3mo ago
This is the most HN comment I’ve seen in a while. The real abstraction here is coding with LLMs btw!!!
ChrisMarshallNY•3mo ago
Very cool, if impractical (it’s likely that you’d never get an ASM app through the App Store Approval process).

ARM Assembly is a much more Byzantine creature, than the old 8- and 16-bit versions I used, way back in the Pleistocene.

I’m always a fan of starting from the “bare metal,” to learn, but these days, it’s a long trip. When I was just a wee sprog, it was only a couple of steps away.

Fokamul•3mo ago
It's likely in future, you won't need app store approval process. I hope that EU will nuke Apple with some huge fines.

And there will be corporate tax per each EU country, it's ridiculous corporates are raking huge money here and paying basically nothing on taxes, well only in Ireland and they're having party.

Anyway, asm is great if you are using iOS emulator and need to do something and since you have root there, well :) (not apple meme simulator)

jeroenhd•3mo ago
You can already deploy apps on alternative stores inside of the EU. Apple has some bullshit fee but Epic has promised to cover that for AltStore.
Ecco•3mo ago
How would that impact the App Store approval? AFAIK they review binaries anyway…
ChrisMarshallNY•3mo ago
They do, but ASM doesn't have the guardrails that the compiled languages have, so it's almost certain that private APIs would get accessed.
einsteinx2•3mo ago
What? That doesn’t make any sense. The only guard rails normal Obj-C has against calling private APIs is that they aren’t listed in the public headers, otherwise you can still easily call them. If you don’t explicitly make calls to private APIs from ASM, the won’t be called. I have no idea why you think “it’s almost certain that private APIs would get accessed.”
zffr•3mo ago
> so it's almost certain that private APIs would get accessed

No it's not. Just like with ObjC or Swift, in ASM you have to be explicit about the APIs you want to call. I don't see how you would accidentally call a private API in ASM.

IMO the bigger risk is attempting to call a method that does not actually exist. ObjC or Swift would protect you from that, but ASM would not and may just crash at runtime.

ChrisMarshallNY•3mo ago
Tell you guys what.

We’ll just leave things as they are.

I’ll forfeit the game.

The field is yours.

Have a great day!

Ecco•3mo ago
Feels like a disassembly of a boilerplate app, as opposed to handcrafted, minimal assembly code.

For instance I’m pretty sure the autorelease pool is unnecessary as long as you don’t use the autorelease mechanism of Objective-C, which you’re most likely not going to do if you’re writing assembly in the first place.

avidphantasm•3mo ago
Looks more sensible than having to use XCode and Apple's atrocious developer documentation.
herodotus•3mo ago
When I was in second or third year of computer science in 1971 or '72, we (of course) learned IBM 360 assembler, but we also had to design a simple binary adder using AND OR and XOR gates. All on paper - no need for any soldering or electronics, which I regret. I cannot remember how many bits of input - probably 4 but may have been 6. But I did do quite a bit of asm programming, including a routine for calculating square roots using Chebyschev polynomials and newtons algorithm.
iMario•3mo ago
Would love to see equivalent in C, not ObjectiveC... plain C.
incanus77•3mo ago
That would be great if iOS supported a GUI in C.
WillAdams•3mo ago
For folks who are curious about this sort of thing and want an approachable starting point, I would recommend:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44882.Code

It would be way cool to see an actual application which wanted this sort of speed optimization --- the last significant assembly language program I can recall using was WriteNow, which was ~100,000 lines of assembly and to this day is my favourite word-processor (well, the NeXT version --- the Mac, even v2.0 suffered in comparison for not having access to Display PostScript and Services).

Really wish that there was a writeup of it at folklore.org --- unfortunately, it only gets a single mention:

https://www.folklore.org/The_Grand_Unified_Model_The_Finder....

(or that there was an equivalent site for the early history of NeXT)

meisel•3mo ago
The real optimization here is to move off UIKit and interact with the GPU more directly