Top all-time · #4785
catskull.net
Personal blog · catskull.net · on HN as catskullprogrammingweb
catskull.net is a personal blog at catskull.net about programming and web. Since 2015, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 48 times, most often “What's the best AV1 encoder in 2025? I encoded four thousand GIFs to find out”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-05, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link catskull.net posts on Ghostty terminal shader support and on the Game Boy boot screen logo check, which covers its technical details. No comment judges the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
mostly harmless
Most-linked posts?
- What's the best AV1 encoder in 2025? I encoded four thousand GIFs to find out4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-05-23
- Reverse Engineering the Gameboy Boot Screen (2015)4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2017-10-15
- Fun with Ghostty Shaders4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-08-05
- A note on iOS 12.2 input types2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-04-17
- Where do you want to go today? (2024)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-09-03
- Adding 4 more 2.5GbE interfaces to the GMKtec NucBox G92 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-24
What Hacker News says?
She did! A few years ago I actually tracked down the source of that, which was an interview done for an obscure textbook and republished it on my blog if you are interested in learning more: https://catskull.net/interview-with-margaret-h-hamilton.html
Comment linking /interview-with-margaret-h-hamilton.html
on “Margaret Hamilton has died”Submitted What is going on right now? as a story · 378 points
HN discussionOne fun thing, it supports shaders: https://catskull.net/fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html
Comment linking /fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html
on “Ghostty is now non-profit”Submitted I'm Betting on HTML as a story · 42 points
HN discussionWhile foot focuses on minimalism, Ghostty brings along a shit ton of features like support for Kitty's ( https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/ ) graphics protocol (in terminal images! - https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/graphics-protocol/ ), advanced window management (windows, tabs, splits) and OpenGL pixelshaders ( https://catskull.net/fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html ) Given features it's more comparable to Kitty than foot…
Comment linking /fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html
on “Ghostty is now non-profit”Submitted Thoughts on Debugging as a story · 41 points
HN discussionI started a podcast and have been having a lot of fun talking with staff-level engineers about their passions. It’s called Interrobang. https://catskull.net/podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/interrobang-with-dave-... I built the whole tech stack with Jekyll and Cloudflare and wrote about it on my blog: https://catskull.net/podcast-workflow.html Finally, I built a simple chat app as a web component with a…
Comment linking /the-most-dangerous-app.html
on “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)”Submitted Adding 4 more 2.5GbE interfaces to the GMKtec NucBox G9 as a story · 16 points
HN discussionI have ghostty set up with this “starfield” shader: https://github.com/0xhckr/ghostty-shaders/blob/main/starfiel... I also have it set up to do adaptive theme, so in light mode the galaxy is mostly just a little noise on the black text but in dark mode it’s like I’m piloting a space ship. Highly recommend. I also documented a few other shaders on my blog here: https://catskull.net/fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html Edit:…
Comment linking /fun-with-ghostty-shaders.html
on “Cool-retro-term: terminal emulator which mimics look and feel of CRTs”Submitted Likes – A decentralized social network in a single HTML tag as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSee also https://catskull.net/gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html
Comment linking /gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html
on “Making a Game Boy Game. Part 1: Getting Started”Submitted Assume people use reader mode as a story · 10 points
HN discussionI quite like the licensing trick Nintendo used on the gameboy as an example of this. [0] Essentially, the gameboy expected a bitmap of the Nintendo logo to be present on the cartridge rom, and was shown on screen at boot. It had to match a version stored on the gameboy itself or else the game wouldn’t start. The thinking (that I’m not sure was ever tested) was that someone producing a game that tried to trick consum…
Comment linking /gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html
on “The Curious Case of MD5”Submitted What's the best AV1 encoder in 2025? I encoded four thousand GIFs to find out as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI love MacSourcePorts.com! If you're keen, I sat down with Tom a few months ago and we talked about the site and his passion for this stuff. Super interesting fella and a heck of a nice guy! https://catskull.net/podcast#episode-14-tom-macsourceports-m...
Comment linking /podcast
on “Mac Source Ports – Run old games on new Macs”Submitted Reverse Engineering the Gameboy Boot Screen (2015) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI did some testing with the 3 main AV1 encoders with gifs (avif). They’re pretty good. But not as good as jpeg xl but currently basically only Safari supports it. See my blog: https://catskull.net/libaom-vs-svtav1-vs-rav1e-2025.html For most “normie” use cases, I’d recommend cloudflares image transforms which are available on free tier. I actually wrote a small Jekyll plugin for my site to auto prefix images with th…
Comment linking /libaom-vs-svtav1-vs-rav1e-2025.html
on “AOMedia Announces Year-End Launch of Next-Gen Video Codec AV2”Submitted Reverse Engineering the Gameboy Boot Screen as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe Gameboy did similar. For some odd reason they only verified the top half of the logo, though, so some devs got creative http://fuji.drillspirits.net/?post=87 Technical details here: https://catskull.net/gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html
Comment linking /gameboy-boot-screen-logo.html
on “Ask HN: What's the point of the TM and (R) symbols?”Submitted Where's the Quality? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI made a little chat room with cloudflare “durable objects” and then wired an “AI worker” to respond to your messages with various personas. No invite or login required! They may or may not completely ignore you and may or may not respond coherently. https://catskull.net/chat
Comment linking /chat
on “What happens when 10k AI agents are left to self-govern in a virtual world?”Submitted Is the Browser Up to Date? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMicrosoft dumped $100 million on this huge marketing campaign with a simple question: “Where do you want to go today?” I love it. It really captures the seemingly endless new digital world that was emerging in the 90’s and in many ways is still evolving 30 years later. I love the promo video they made too: https://youtu.be/KNLDLVJZx0o I love it so much I wrote a blog post inspired by it: https://catskull.net/where-d…
Comment linking /where-do-you-want-to-go-today.html
on “The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering”Submitted Stop Using Grey Text as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI've written quite a few web components that were more or less standalone. I've looked at lit quite a bit but never fully understood the "why". Could someone share their own personal experience with why they needed lit? What does it offer that can't be done with standard spec web components? For me, a big draw of web components is that there's no `npm install` needed. I prefer to ship my components as plain JS files…
Comment linking /likes
on “Web Components: The Framework-Free Renaissance”Submitted What's the best AV1 encoder in 2025? I encoded four thousand GIFs to find out as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Public Web Comments with Cloudflare Email Workers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Chrome Web Store feels 5 years old as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to fail a technical interview as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fun with Ghostty Shaders as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
