Interesting stuff I found - July 2026
RetroPad - Notepad from XP in 2,749 bytes
Dave Plummer (of Windows Task Manager fame) rewrote Windows XP Notepad feature-for-feature in x86 assembly.
| RetroPad on GitHub | Tom’s Hardware article |
How Transformers actually work
Matthias Kainer tries to explain to his 12-year-old how ChatGPT knows what word comes next, and why LLMs confidently make things up. The most important takeaway is that LLMs do not emit facts.
So what’s the next word, then?
The only trait that predicts RTO objections is narcissism
6 years of research, peer reviewed: “The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism - the tendency to be self-centered and entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status - and the more they favored return-to-office mandates.”
| NYT Opinion | ScienceDirect study |
Open CoDesign - open source Claude Design alternative
Prompt-to-prototype tool that runs locally. Interesting alternative to the various closed-source AI design tools.
China’s Great Green Wall grows faster than natural forests
66 billion trees planted since 1978.
WSL Container - public preview
Linux containers directly in Windows via WSL, no Docker needed. Presumably will be supported by Aspire. I had to nudge the update a bit to get wslc.exe CLI. GA expected fall 2026.
devenv - declarative developer environments
Nix-based tool for reproducible dev environments. 100,000+ packages, 50+ language support, processes, services, git hooks, and container generation. Under 100ms shell activation with caching. I keep circling back to Nix tooling; devenv seems like the most approachable entry point.
| devenv.sh | NixOS-WSL |
mise - dev tools, env vars, and tasks
Similar space to devenv but with a different philosophy. Single mise.toml per project to manage tools, env vars, and tasks. 1000+ tools. Quick mise use node@24 python@3.13 to pin versions per project.
DSC v3.2.0 - PowerShell Desired State Configuration
New built-in Windows resources (services, firewall rules, SSH config), experimental Bicep integration via gRPC, version pinning, --what-if for individual resources, and a richer expression language.
Winget-AutoUpdate
Automatically updates apps via winget on a schedule. It seems to work via scheduled tasks.
Naiad - .NET Mermaid renderer
Renders Mermaid diagrams to SVG (and PNG) in .NET with no browser or JavaScript runtime required. The live editor at naiad.papyrine.org runs entirely on Blazor WebAssembly. Usage requires paying the maintainer.
Hardened git clone commands
Came across this, worth bookmarking: a safer git clone command that disables aliases, fsmonitor, bare repository auto-detection, hooks, and templates, with a shallow clone. Useful when pulling untrusted repos.
git \
-c alias.clone= \
-c core.fsmonitor=false \
-c safe.bareRepository=explicit \
-c core.hooksPath=/dev/null \
clone \
--template= \
https://github.com/someuser/someproject.git \
--depth 1 \
/tmp/someuser/someproject
Why hardened git clone commands matter
Castor - cast web video from your terminal
Point it at a web page and it finds the video, extracts the stream, transcodes it, and casts to your TV via DLNA or Chromecast. Supports auto-generated subtitles via whisper. I have not tested this, but it looks interesting.
It seems Google Home is having trouble with older-gen Chromecasts after factory reset, at least for me. I had to reset a Chromecast during vacation and while Google Home could not set it up on the new wifi, this script worked flawlessly.
Cemu 2.6 - Wii U emulator
A Wii U emulator - I have previously tried Dolphin for pure Wii games. Also someone is working on compiling Mario Kart Wii for PC (without emulator)
| Cemu | Mario Kart Wiicompiled |
Meta is destroying its engineering culture
The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter on Meta’s shift away from engineering-first culture. Worth reading if you are interested in how big tech companies are restructuring around AI.