thats not always easy.
i might make the odd rude conjecture or farcical joke, but i assure you i will strive to be a helpful contributor.
i love to hear from fellow readers of hacker news - if you want to contact me you can use this address:
rocket - force 0 d [ @ ] icloud . com
meet.hn/city/at-Vienna remove all spaces and the []'s in the above, keep the - 0 d ..
- helpfulContrib parentPorting rules is one of the responsibilities of keeping them.
- >Bebe
Awesome shout-out.
Missing: Cabaret Voltaire, Art of Noise, Yes ..
- Multi-tasking that didn't suck.
Same as we use it now, to be frank. Unix workstations as an interaction model have persisted so long because it works just great.
I was writing a lot of Unix software in that period - database apps, business logic, and so on. For me, using an MSDOS-based system was a compromise, which I enhanced by using Desqview to get multi-tasking - it allowed multiple MSDOS instances on a single machine, in which I ran terminal software, compilers (our apps were being ported to MSDOS...), and database admin tasks - just like today.
What we have today in the form of MacOS or Linux workstations is pretty much what we had back then, too. The power is inescapable.
- Work on not seeing class at all - this is the ultimate fluidity.
Embrace differing views. It can be done in a way that makes everyone win.
- Some destruction is necessary for all creation, but generally its a bad idea to destroy the middle class instead of shoring it up.
>making bullshit
Make things that empower people and give them the ability to be class-fluid. That's what the world really needs, after all.
- One of my favourite 8-bit computers of the era is the Oric-1/Atmos micro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric_(computer)
It still to this day has a thriving scene, lots of interesting quirky programs still being written for it. (https://oric.org/)
There is also a thriving hardware hacking scene of course, 21st century peripherals being brought to the user base, and so on.
One of the more interesting things (besides LOCI), is the orix system, which is a 'unix-like' environment for the Oric, which uses avariant of the 6502 cpu.
Its pretty cool - and fun if you're an Oric nerd - but if you like 'unix-like' systems for unusual platforms, put this one in your list to check out, as well:
https://orix.oric.org/twilighte-board-v0-6-user-manual/
Oh, yeah, I know 'unix-like' has a wide scale of sincerity, this is not quite there .. yet .. in terms of having all the unix bits, really .. but it is at least bootstrap in that kind of direction, for the Oric .. anyway ..
- > .. the most frustrating part about software engineers believing themselves to be the part of the business with the most complex, unknowable work. ..
>_Every_ function in a tech business has hidden complexity.
In my opinion, the conflict is in the distinction.
Stereotypes abound, but I have always found in this battle between worlds, there is a simple bridging maneuver: never work for someone, or accept management guidance, from someone who cannot also comfortably do your work. corollary: never manage someone unless you're prepared to do their job for them comfortably.
Yes, this is cold and hard, but so are those stereotypes, kids. There are Manager Engineers and there are Engineer Managers. But there's also just managers and engineers with both skills, simply focusing their work as needed for the specific project. The ultimately fun organization to work in is where different people have different roles in multiple projects, comfortably.
Key word. Getting this mix comfortable is the job of a good CEO, fwiw.
And guess what, it doesn't matter whether the salesperson can do any job but understand just how great this particular hierarchys' products are, and why the end result of this configuration is worth the spend.
- I have written device drivers for, literally, decades now.
Its the old guys who write the best drivers, naturally.
For me, Asterinas represents a refreshing way to approach some thorny problems in the embedded space, in which embedded-Linux on ARM, RISC-V and MIPS is a viable, economically-speaking, platform for a great deal of industry.
While Asterinas is really sexy, if this same approach were taken for, say, FreeRTOS as well along the way .. then there could at least, also, be "on one hands" worth of operating systems, abstracted, in the "lets just use rust' camp ..
- I wanted it to work, but the font used doesn't help.
With a better font, amber-on-black is restful.
- I wonder what the metrics would look like when tested on a tablet device, i.e. no mouse, just finger-drag?
- If you're really objecting to new information systems being created from an existing historical/cultural corpus' as a means of making cultural treasures more accessible to a literate audience, are you really a hacker?
The fact of the use of Maori to organize Maori literature, is of immense interest, whether it suits a foreign, supposed culture more, or otherwise.
This is a new method of organizing an important corpus of cultural knowledge, granting new insight to an intended audience.
Why not applaud its utility, rather than immediately disregard the results to be attained?
Or have you, indeed, found it wanting as a means of searching for specific details in the Maori collection?
>gaslighting
I think the standard issue, if you feel like this, is to check oneself, before one wrecks oneself. Here, let me show you the gaslight: "has no historical basis", "just Maori-themed", "forms of record keeping", "no meaningful information classification system", "I feel.."
- I agree with you completely and will happily join you into the grey zone by stating simply, anyone who objects to new information systems being created on the basis of heritage/historical/cultural grounds, is just a wannabe hacker, and thats just not news.
- So .. you're willing to learn Maori in order to gain equality, or not?
I personally see nothing wrong with this classification system, and if it serves its intended purpose of making Maori literature more accessible, then what the heck, hackers?
Language usage like this is great. Think of all the things you can learn now.
Seriously.
- "Religion" literally means, 'the device which binds people into one', and is not the only form of this very same device.
Latin religare ‘to bind’.
We are all bound "in legion" (literally, by the strong, cured ligaments of a foot) here on HN, for example. Ligament and Legion and Religion are all based on the same common root: a way to bind people together, strongly.
So forget about trying to make the human capability to become an egregore exclusive to those who organize around religion. We humans don't get anything done unless we are bound together, as one, around a common purpose.
- Has there been a final solution to the VSCode phoning-home problem?
Last time I tried to use it in my environment, it triggered too many 'external network requests' for the liking of our IT guy. We relegated it to the "Do Not Use" pile as a result.
Has this been resolved? Nobody in my team wants to use an IDE that sends data back to its masters ..
- I remember getting computer magazines for birthday presents in the 70's/80's, which you could play into your computer from Dad's record player and load up a few of the type-ins .. I had a small suite of them, as well as some music variants. They were fun, but I transferred most of the interesting stuff to cassette tape, anyway.
These Bhutan stamps are delightful, and inspire me to learn more about the country. I hope there might be the prospect of future new releases, this is a kind of thing I could really get into.
A fun thought-game is to construct a small player stamp, onto which you drop a content stamp, blow a little, and hear the results .. I once knew a guy whose business-card could be used to play a record, barely audible, but still ..
- All it needs is a stamp that is a flip-out groove player, you just put one of the other stamps on it, blow, and listen ..
- >Lua is such a treat.
It sure is.
I've been using Lua professionally and personally for some decades now, and I think that there is no need to be surprised that more projects don't provide a Lua scripting layer, because actually, Lua is everywhere. And the scripting aspect is one thing - but its not the only reason to use Lua.
Lua is so easily embeddable and functionally productive as a development tool, its not always necessarily necessary to have this layer exposed to the user.
Sure, engines and things provide scripting, and that is a need/want of the respective markets. Who doesn't love redis, et al.?
But Lua can be put in places where the scripting aspect is merely a development method, and in the end shipped product, things are tightly bound to bytecode as an application framework beyond scripting.
The point being, Lua is such a treat that it is, literally, in places you might least expect - or at least, will find under a lot of covers.
And after all, thats the beauty of it: as an embedded language/VM/function interface, Lua can sure scale to different territories.
- I already do this with UTM. Whats the difference? Worth converting?
- Disclaimer: 55 year old here. I've been programming computers since I was 8. I say this only so that it is understood that I have seen multiple generations of humanity acquiring and discarding multiple iterations of technology, and can punctuate my life by the name of the system your parents have in the attic, probably. As a hacker.
Getting old really sneaks up on you. You're having your best years, then you're having some more best years, and then .. suddenly .. you're in the middle of some years that aren't going so great, and well .. things go a bit down-hill from there.
Which is to say don't take your youth for granted. 55 is not 'that' old, but I can count through the decades the souls I've seen come and go, finally. And I know I could soon be among them.
So as I consider how quickly the last 10 years have passed, and how quickly the next 10 years may pass, if at all, I can say this: don't waste your time. Its all you've truly got. Material things come and go and don't mean anything - the people you meet along the way, the wonderful, intelligent and inspiring things you will see - this is what life is providing you.
Don't take it for granted.
- In 1996, I started an online service for musicians which spanned continents, and gave a very small, elite group of us, a servicable means of distributing our .txt and .zip (and .AIF .. .mp3! oh my!) files around the world in a way we could, as a community, kind of pool together, see what happened on a friday, and listen to a bunch of weird and often wonderful new music, fresh from the grill so to speak.
This small community grew, and evolved, and turned into a real-time, in-person scene, with meet-ups across the globe. Members came and went, some tragically, some not much more than a fleeting hello and goodbye, but along the way some very interesting, truly underground music came about.
Anyway, Bowie was prescient at that time, and if we had his details we would have loved for him to know, that a couple of real cowboys got together with some hippies and aliens and lovers, and rocked out a couple times. We even did some Bowie covers, of course. ;)
The site is still out there, in archive.org, but I dare not reveal its nature, for the sake of the legends that will be be spawned from the secret treats that remain, buried, deep within.
- Unethical parents. Parents who are so detached, themselves, that they cannot see the harm being done to their children.
That's the point with abusive techniques such as this - they become generationally intertwined.
Its about the kids. Those kids become parents. Those parents have kids. The abusive trauma transcends generations.
- Here in Austria, we are being threatened with a visit from the bayliff if we don't pay the "ORF tax", which funds television and radio transmissions.
Its pretty heinous, especially for those of us who simply don't consume mainstream Austrian media in any form.
However, there is nothing to be done. The tax has to be paid.
ORF is heinous propaganda, and I despise it, as I do with all mainstream Austria media, which is inexcusably corrupt.
- The Tatung Einstein is a great cross platform development system for Z80 based machines. You can do a lot with it, in an old school fashion, for systems like the Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC and so on.
- > Learning projects like this is about to get a lot less accessible due to the extreme tariffs and elimination of the de minimis exemption.
Only for Americans, though.
Plenty of kids in third world countries can benefit from the technology involved in this project - and will.
That is a net gain for the world, in spite of what America is doing to itself.
- All we really need is to get Starship finished, and then open source it.
Once that's out there, and the Germans and the Japanese and the Australians can all build their own, then space .. itself .. will be the true haven of free thinkers and creative artists.
While we are all bound by gravity, we are bound to each other. When that changes, the sky is the limit on human potential.
- This is great news for those of us who are into retro computing.
Not just because its a great magazine, but it indicates the rise of the retro-computing market as a source of revenue.
There is very definitely an upswell of interest in older computing platforms. As someone who has kept every computer he's ever coded on since 1978, and regularly exhibits them in functioning condition (over 40,000 visitors at one exhibit here in Vienna, alone) I am 100% going to subscribe to this and support its continued publication.
Old computers never die. Their users do.