{"slug": "you-can-debug-anything", "title": "You can debug anything", "summary": "A NixOS user reported that Anthropic's Claude AI fixed an endless Stardew Valley online loading screen by patching the headers of two GOG Galaxy SDK binaries, libGalaxy64.so and libGalaxyCSharpGlue.so, so they no longer request an executable stack that glibc 2.4.1+ refuses to run. The author noted Claude located the fix on the Stardew Valley forums rather than deriving it from first principles, and described using the same approach to diagnose a Chrome PulseAudio playback bug, a Vulkan default-GPU issue in Clair Obscur, and a ClickHouse/Iceberg SQL bug with IS NOT NULL.", "body_md": "The other day I opened Stardew Valley online but got an endless loading screen:\n\nMy desktop computer runs [NixOS](https://nixos.org/), so I get\nbugs like this often. I was about to play on my laptop instead,\nbut on a whim, I sicced my boy Claude on it.\n\nClaude fixed it. Apparently Stardew Valley uses the\n[GOG Galaxy SDK](https://docs.gog.com/sdk/) for networking (even\non Steam), and\n[glibc 2.4.1+ refuses to run](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2025-01/msg00014.html#:~:text=*%20dlopen%20and%20dlmopen,objects%20will%0A%20%20fail.)\ntwo of its binaries (`libGalaxy64.so` and\n`libGalaxyCSharpGlue.so`) because they request an executable\nstack. Claude patched their headers to not ask for it, and it\nworked.[1](#footnote-second-problem)\n\nTo be fair, Claude didn’t solve the executable stack thing from\nfirst principles.\n[It found the solution on the internet.](https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/stuck-on-connecting-to-online-services-screen-when-trying-to-play-co-op.37195/)[2](#footnote-navier-stokes)\n\nI like how easily you can debug random issues like this\nnowadays. Previously I would have just updated my drivers and\nrebooted, which has like an 80% success rate. And if that didn’t\nwork I’d try another computer. But you don’t learn anything from\nthat. More fun to resist rebooting until you’ve found the cause\nand learned something weird about your operating\nsystem.[3](#footnote-nixos-plug)\n\nA few other things I’ve troubleshot in the same way recently:\n\n- Chrome has a bug where if you restart PulseAudio underneath\nit,\n[audio playback stops working](https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41461763)\n- My low framerate in Clair Obscur was because Vulkan has no concept of a default GPU, so the game was randomly choosing my iGPU\n- A strange ClickHouse / Iceberg SQL bug when using\n`IS NOT NULL` <sup>[4](#footnote-clickhouse-iceberg-bug)</sup>\n- Laptop GPU power saving features are the cause of all evil in the world. Like seriously, why is this so hard. I’ve never had a Linux laptop that just worked when you plugged in a monitor. AMD, Nvidia, doesn’t matter. Nobody will ever fix this.\n\nMoral of the story is that if you like learning weird things\nabout computers, resist the urge to fix things the easy way.\nPoke around yourself and break stuff more. Even if you’re out of\nyour depth,\n[you can usually binary search to the root cause in O(log n) time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECE_principle).[5](#footnote-mece)\n\nI don’t actually do that, but it’s good advice. I just sic AI on\nit. Not as good, but\neasier.[6](#footnote-debugging-character-building)\n\n## Footnotes\n\n1. Well, that was the first problem. The second was me plugging both ends of an ethernet cable into the same switch. In my defense, I am stupid. [↩](#footnote-second-problem-ref)\n2. Especially when you record the solution in a config file so it automatically applies to all your computers and you never have to think about it again #NixOs [↩](#footnote-nixos-plug-ref)\n3. I was running into weird crashes on a huge SQL query, so I told Claude to binary search it’s way to a minimum reproducible example. Then I took a long walk. I came back to Claude proclaiming victory in all caps. [My GitHub issue was quickly resolved.](https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse/issues/106147) Props to ClickHouse, I love those guys.[↩](#footnote-clickhouse-iceberg-bug-ref)\n4. I swear I’ve read a blog post about using the MECE framework to debug software, but I can’t find it. Please help. [↩](#footnote-mece-ref)\n5. I know this post is basically just AI glaze, but sigh, I miss building character by banging my head against an instrutable bug for days. Or exploring an open source repo looking for the bug that I swear is not mine. [↩](#footnote-debugging-character-building-ref)\n\nWell, that was the first problem. The second was me plugging both ends of an ethernet cable into the same switch. In my defense, I am stupid.\n\nEspecially when you record the solution in a config file so it automatically applies to all your computers and you never have to think about it again #NixOs\n\nI was running into weird crashes on a huge SQL query, so I told\nClaude to binary search it’s way to a minimum reproducible\nexample. Then I took a long walk. I came back to Claude\nproclaiming victory in all caps. [My GitHub issue was quickly resolved.](https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse/issues/106147) Props to ClickHouse, I love those guys.\n\nI swear I’ve read a blog post about using the MECE framework to debug software, but I can’t find it. Please help.\n\nI know this post is basically just AI glaze, but sigh, I miss building character by banging my head against an instrutable bug for days. Or exploring an open source repo looking for the bug that I swear is not mine.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/you-can-debug-anything", "canonical_source": "https://joshmoody.org/blog/debug-anything/", "published_at": "2026-09-16 07:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-16 07:06:27.853369+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-tools", "ai-products", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["Claude", "Anthropic", "Stardew Valley", "GOG Galaxy SDK", "NixOS", "glibc", "Chrome", "ClickHouse"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/you-can-debug-anything", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/you-can-debug-anything.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/you-can-debug-anything.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/you-can-debug-anything.jsonld"}}