Top all-time · #2054
A Token of My Extreme
Personal blog · tomscii.sig7.seprogramminghardware
A Token of My Extreme is a personal blog at tomscii.sig7.se about programming and hardware. Since 2021, 36 different Hacker News readers have linked it 55 times, most often “Measured typing latency of popular terminal emulators”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (25) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for terminal typing-latency comparisons and the write-up on how the Zutty terminal renders text. It also has posts on power-supply and buck-converter design.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called "great", "useful", "interesting" and "comprehensive" for the Zutty typing-latency piece and the posts on how Zutty works.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 25 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Drench yourself in first-class paranoia
Most-linked posts?
- Measured typing latency of popular terminal emulators9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2021-04-01
- Zutty(Zero-cost Unicode Teletype): A high-end terminal for low-end systems6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2022-03-23
- Zutty is the best X terminal emulator you have never heard of5 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2021-01-11
- How Zutty Works: Rendering a Terminal with an OpenGL Compute Shader3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2021-01-11
- The complete idiot's guide to OpenBSD on the Pinebook Pro3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-02-10
- A Bottle of Light2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-23
- De-smarting the Marshall Uxbridge2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-01-08
- SMT and the ultimate LCD-SPI interface2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-03-22
- Ditching GitHub (2024)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-01-21
- Synchronous Buck Converter for 12V/5A Output2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-10-24
What Hacker News says?
Compared to a similar 6yo [1] and 3yo[2] (by zutty maker) comparisons, VTE terminals still (at least pre-46) bad in latency front. (They're as high as VS Code based beuke article.) Xterm still rules it. (Pointed in [2], this is due to direct rendering via Xlib which comes with the downside of having poor throughput.) Alacritty significantly improved, Konsole got worse. About Alacritty, it's pointed in [2], there wer…
Comment linking /2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty
on “How much faster are the Gnome 46 terminals?”Submitted De-smarting the Marshall Uxbridge as a story · 292 points
HN discussionkitty has lower latency than Alacritty. Alacritty is optimized for throughput and is the best for that, but I don't understand who would prefer throughput over latency in a terminal setting. I switched from kitty to wezterm. I don't have an official benchmark like the below [1], but low latency is an explicit goal of the project and it seems on par with kitty. [1] https://tomscii.sig7.se/2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zu…
Comment linking /2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty
on “Use Alacritty instead of Termite”Submitted My new PSU burns out – I fix it, and torture it by cracking water as a story · 184 points
HN discussionCool article! Where did you learn PSU design? Are you "classically" trained or self taught? edit: The article on the design of the PSU is also great: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2024/04/300W-Linear-DualTracking-Lab...
Comment linking /2024/04/300W-Linear-DualTracking-Lab-PSU
on “My new PSU burns out – I fix it, and torture it by cracking water”Submitted The complete idiot's guide to OpenBSD on the Pinebook Pro as a story · 124 points
HN discussionDiagram of the bare circuit board. So you can see the overhead view of the run from VIN to Q5 that blew. https://tomscii.sig7.se/images/linear-dual-lab-psu/pcb-front... Edit: I'm not the writer of the article...
Comment linking /images/linear-dual-lab-psu/pcb-front.png
on “My new PSU burns out – I fix it, and torture it by cracking water”Submitted The Barium Experiment as a story · 87 points
HN discussionThere are various ways to take advantage of the GPU -- the so-called GPU-accelerated terminals contain bespoke OpenGL programs ("shaders") to do rendering on the GPU. Here's an interesting way of doing it: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/11/How-Zutty-works
Comment linking /2020/11/How-Zutty-works
on “XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought”Submitted Ditching GitHub (2024) as a story · 51 points
HN discussionMost "modern" terminals are surprisingly buggy (for lack of a better word), that is, they do not conform to the VT100-series specs (and less documented, but well known quirks). Here's a look at some of them: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-...
Comment linking /2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-of-Zutty
on “XTerm: It's Better Than You Thought”Submitted Taming the buck with a Type III compensator as a story · 43 points
HN discussionst is such an outlier in those measurements that it makes you wonder whether something is potentially wrong with the test setup. There's another set of latency measurements here: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty In those, st is roughly similar in performance to urvxt and Alacritty.
Comment linking /2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty
on “Suckless.org – software that sucks less”Submitted Zutty is the best X terminal emulator you have never heard of as a story · 7 points
HN discussionThis is also great: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty The typing latency on zutty is the biggest feature for me. Everything feels snappy.
Comment linking /2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty
on “Zutty: Zero-cost Unicode Teletype, high-end terminal for low-end systems”Submitted Ditching GitHub as a story · 6 points
HN discussionhttps://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-... is also useful as a comparison piece.
Comment linking /2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-of-Zutty
on “Zutty: Zero-cost Unicode Teletype, high-end terminal for low-end systems”Submitted Measured typing latency of popular terminal emulators as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI can pronounce the name of this software correctly. Now that's something I guess. https://tomscii.sig7.se/zutty/wiki/FAQ.html#How%20do%20I%20c...
Comment linking /zutty/wiki/FAQ.html
on “Zutty: Zero-cost Unicode Teletype, high-end terminal for low-end systems”Submitted The complete idiot's guide to OpenBSD on the Pinebook Pro as a story · 3 points
HN discussionHomepage: https://tomscii.sig7.se/zutty/
Comment linking /zutty/
on “Zutty: Zero-cost Unicode Teletype, high-end terminal for low-end systems”Submitted Barium 0.2 – What's New? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe zutty project had an interesting article on terminal latency, as well: https://tomscii.sig7.se/2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty
Comment linking /2021/01/Typing-latency-of-Zutty
on “Terminal Latency (2017)”Submitted Synchronous Buck Converter for 12V/5A Output as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI hope he targets something better than a vt102 (going for 520 like Zutty would be good) and remembers to do extensive checking with VTTEST. Blog post from the Zutty creator about correctness: < https://tomscii.sig7.se/2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-... >
Comment linking /2020/12/A-totally-biased-comparison-of-Zutty
on “Terminal Latency”Submitted SMT and the ultimate LCD-SPI interface as a story · 2 points
HN discussionZutty is also cool: https://tomscii.sig7.se/zutty/ It's correct (like XTerm) while still being very fast.
Comment linking /zutty/
on “Kitty: The fast, feature-rich, GPU based terminal emulator”Submitted SMT and the ultimate LCD-SPI interface as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe post just before that one... https://tomscii.sig7.se/2024/10/Synchronous-buck-converter-1...
Comment linking /2024/10/Synchronous-buck-converter-12V5A
on “Taming the buck with a Type III compensator”Submitted μMon: Stupid simple monitoring as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
