Hacker News Reader

LouDNLon Parsing EDIFACT in Python with syntax trees

Really nice! I've been preparing to parse this for a possible customer in another language. Thanks for the insights.

LouDNLon Usbsid-Pico: Bridging Real Commodore 64 Sound to Modern USB

Nice! The setup looks a lot like esp32-sidview. Are you also using hc595?

LouDNLon Usbsid-Pico: Bridging Real Commodore 64 Sound to Modern USB

Thanks for the compliment! Why did you stop your project? I have some diy kits for the 1.3 board available in my shop if you're interested. I actually own the ARMSID and an ARM2SID.

LouDNLon Usbsid-Pico: Bridging Real Commodore 64 Sound to Modern USB

Thank you, they are most definitely my favorite!

LouDNLon Usbsid-Pico: Bridging Real Commodore 64 Sound to Modern USB

Thanks! Maybe it's on one of the floppies I have here?

LouDNLon Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

Just released USBSID-Pico v1.5 an improved pcb without jumpers. USBSID-Pico is a RaspberryPi Pico/PicoW (RP2040) & Pico2/Pico2W (RP2350) based board for interfacing one or two MOS SID chips and/or hardware SID emulators over (WEB)USB with your computer, phone, ASID supporting player or USB midi controller. https://github.com/LouDnl/USBSID-Pico

LouDNLon Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?

2 years ago I wanted an easy way to listen to commodore 64 sid tunes on my computer without the need of powering on my c64 everytime but with the benefits of having real sid chips. After doing some research I concluded that the available uab hardware sid boards were either unavailable or outdated. This started my journey to create my own usb board, USBSID-Pico. Currently at version 1.3 of the pcb with an improved version and pro version in development.

The board is supported in various commodore 64 emulators, sid trackers and web players. It also supports midi (still in active development) and even has an onboard embedded emulator.

As far as I know there are now approximately 300+ boards in the hands of enthusiasts. Ranging from users, chiptunes lovers, demo creators to musicians. The board and it's firmware are open source, and the board is available at PCBWay and via my Tindie. Just yesterday I shipped 11 new boards to new owners across the globe.

From personal need to niche hobby supplying fun to other enthusiasts in just 2 years

LouDNLon Bringing Clojure programming to Enterprise (2021)

It's good to read that Clojure is getting more and more exposure. I write Clojure fpr my day job and wouldn't want to swap it for anything. The community is small but very helpfull and easy reachable. The learning curve is steap indeed, but very much worth it!

LouDNLon Do developers lose most of their time to tech debt and broken tooling?

For me as the only developer at the company I work for it's either having to break creative (thinking) flow to switch to anything else that is expected or asked from me by my employer/colleagues, my own thought process wandering off due to unexpected hickups / issues I come across and have to fix first, or not remembering why or how I made something the way I did. On top of that it's also having to figure out my predecessors code descriptions.

LouDNLon Modern SID chip substitutes [video]

Each one would fit perfectly on USBSID-Pico

LouDNLon Unofficial Microsoft Teams client for Linux

Please don't, now I can no longer say that I cannot use teams. If you want to use it so bad, go back to Windows...

LouDNLon Ask HN: Are there many C developers here?

As a hobby more C and embedded C then C++, but yeah! Clojure day job.

LouDNLon Developing a Space Flight Simulator in Clojure

As a Clojure developer for many years, this is one of the coolest projects I've seen! Going to read your blog with interest!

LouDNLon Google Gemini is about to control your messages and calls, even if you say no

What I didnt read is what Android version this applies to? I have no Gemini app on my Samsung Galaxy S10+

LouDNLon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)

This month I released USBSID-Pico v1.3 pcb via PCBWay and Retro8BitStore and yesterday firmware version v0.5.0-BETA. The new pcb now supports mixed MOS6581 / MOS8580 chips (voltage) at the same time and new firmware brings a lot of tweaks and improvements making Commodore64 digitunes play better on Windows.

USBSID-Pico is a RPi Pico (RP2040/W RP2350/W) based board for interfacing one or two MOS SID chips and/or hardware SID emulators over (WEB)USB with your computer, phone, ASID supporting player or USB midi controller.

More info at https://github.com/LouDnl/USBSID-Pico

LouDNLon LSP client in Clojure in 200 lines of code

Clojure isn't dying, it's a niche language with a very much alive community. I admit that jobs are limited, but the ones that do exist are very interesting. My day job consists solely of programming in Clojure, so no, dead is not the correct word here.

LouDNLon Top Vibe Coding Tools – Find the Best Tools for Vibe Coding

Same here, too funny

LouDNLon Ask HN: What are you working on (September 2024)?

Working on a v1 firmware for USBSID-Pico now that I have ordered the first v1 pcbs.

https://github.com/LouDnl/USBSID-Pico USBSID-Pico is a RasberryPi Pico based board for interfacing one or two MOS SID chips and/or hardware SID emulators with a computer/phone over USB.

LouDNLon Tank Runs for Its Life Under Constant Barrage of Attack Drones

As hobby FPV pilot I can say that this is not good for our hobby. On the other hand defending your country with any means possible is a good thing.

LouDNLon Why is Jepsen written in Clojure?

You obviously dont code in Clojure for a loving. Clojure's eco system and community is well maintained. Clojure comes in multiple flavors where Clojure and Clojurescript are 2 mainly used. Ofcourse there is also Babashka, Scittle etc., but all derive from clj or cljs. As far as development tooling it all depends on the platform you code on and what ide suits your needs. Emacs, Neovim, VScode, IntelliJ for example have different tooling. Build systems differ and suits ones needs, for clj deps.edn is the current lost used followed by leiningen. For cljs there is shadowcljs and many more. I agree that as new comer this can be quite overwhelming, but the community is great and always helpful. I program for a living and have done so in multiple languages, Clojure is by far my most favorite.

LouDNLon Man Was Rescued in a One in Million Chance but What Discovered Was Horrifying

Whats with the clickbait title?

LouDNLon The US Could Use Some Separation of Media and State

On top of that, they need separation of state and religion.

LouDNLon Ever-expanding animation of the life of the 796th floor of a space station

Seriously cool

LouDNLon Reviewing code is more horrible than writing code

If you find writing code horrible and reviewing code even more horrible, you're in the wrong profession.

LouDNLon Ask HN: Is Mastodon the best alternative to Twitter?

Aye. I moved from the bird to the elephant and will never go back The crowd on Masto is a lot less toxic and theres no Musk

LouDNLon Meister Eckhart by Rudolf Steiner

Biggest bullshit creator ever being the ground layer for anthroposophytes

LouDNLon Can you be radicalised by watching 'Great British Railway Journeys'?

Read the article and without reading the books that are mentioned I believe it's a writers rant. But that doesnt mean you could not be radicalised by reading books. It is more then just that, radicalisation is due to external influence and internal unrest and or being angry about something and finding like minded people.

LouDNLon Making an embedded Linux computer (2014)

Nice, still relevant

LouDNLon Theory of Multiple Intelligences

This theory is nonsense and is not proven with science. Yet another spin from the alternative/ anthroposophic church.

https://researched.org.uk/2018/09/26/myth-busting-gardners-m...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/unique-everybody-els...

LouDNLon DARPA Developing Wing-in-Ground Effect Cargo Seaplane

Made me think of this https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a33808381... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan