The stack of least resistance
Hey 👋 — today's issue has a real "back to basics" streak running through it: a HyperCard revival, a teacher who ditched Python for a 1970s stack language, and a peek into the seedy underground economy built on top of very modern LLM APIs.
Decker, a platform that builds on the legacy of Hypercard and classic macOS
Decker is an open-source multimedia authoring tool that picks up where HyperCard left off, letting you build interactive documents, mini-games, and zines with its own tidy scripting language called Lil. Projects export to standalone HTML or native binaries, so what you make on it actually stays yours and actually keeps working — a small miracle these days. It's the kind of tool that makes you remember why HyperCard felt like magic in the first place: approachable, self-contained, no strings attached.
"Decker includes no advertising, telemetry, gamification, slop-generator integration, or other intrusions on user privacy and autonomy." — Decker
(via HN discussion)
Teaching kids Forth
In a similar back-to-basics spirit, one teacher explains why she skipped Python and Scratch entirely and taught middle and high schoolers Forth instead — its stack-based model and near-nonexistent syntax mean students spend their mental effort on logic, not semicolons. It's a refreshing argument for stripping a first language down to its studs rather than padding it with training wheels. (via Lobsters)
An inside look at the relay market powering token resellers and fraud
Less wholesome: an investigation into a Chinese underground market that resells discounted LLM API access by pooling stolen or abused API keys through open-source proxy software like one-api and new-api. It's a fascinating, slightly unnerving look at how quickly a legitimate open-source tool can get repurposed into fraud infrastructure once there's money sloshing around token prices. (via Simon Willison)
Quick hits
- Scanner for cellular automata rule space — an interactive way to go rule-hunting instead of guessing.
- A Rust, Wayland, Vulkan 3D CRT screencast app — for when your recordings need a little scanline nostalgia.
- PGSimCity - How PostgreSQL Works — SimCity, but the city is your database internals.
- Reverse Minesweeper — the mines are trying to find you now.
- Kill The Cookie Banner — a campaign aiming to make "accept all" a relic of the past.
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